Formerly Leftist Court UPHOLDS Trump’s Ban on Abortion Funding

P. Gardner Goldsmith | February 27, 2020
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On Monday, February 24, 2020 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Trump administration's move to withhold Title X taxpayer funding from medical organizations that also engage in abortions.

It's been a long road to get there.

 

In December, President Trump saw Lawrence Van Dyke appointed to the long-collectivist, 29 member, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This was his tenth appointment to that court in three years, bringing the general balance of “liberals” versus “conservatives” to a slim edge of two liberal judges – in a court that for decades has been utterly dominated by leftists. 

Of course, the descriptors offered above come with many qualifications, but a stunning new Ninth Circuit ruling just upheld President Trump’s June ban on federal funding of “family planning clinics” that also handle abortions. And this seems to indicate that the ideological change in the court is bearing fruit.

Mary Margaret Olohan reports for The Daily Caller:

The court upheld the Trump administration’s June 2019 declaration that taxpayer-funded clinics must stop referring women for abortions or be stripped of their Title X funding.

As I wrote last year, the case stems from Trump’s March 2019 move to withhold Title X “family assistance” tax moola from medical organizations that also engage in abortions, and, despite supporters of Planned Parenthood constantly saying that the organization is not “performing abortions in their clinics”, for some odd reason, PP filed suit to stop the ban and to keep taxpayer cash flowing to them.

Indeed, supporters of Planned Parenthood often claimed that all PP did was “advise” women on where they could get abortions, but this is belied by the fact that the world’s largest so-called “family planning” corporation runs abortion clinics and often refers women to clinics under its umbrella. While Trump’s move wouldn’t stop PP employees from referring pregnant women to non-PP abortion dens, it would withhold Title X funds from PP until the corporation divests itself from its own abortion mills. Writes Olohan:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) followed the decision in June by alerting clinics that it would enforce the administration’s ban. Planned Parenthood withdrew from the Title X federal family planning program, thereby forgoing about $60 million a year, in August 2019 rather than comply with this decision.

So, as you can see, and as I reported in August, the mucky-mucks at PP decided it was more important to continue making money from their line of life-taking factories than to divest from them and continue receiving the Title X funds. At the time, many leftist media parrots heralded this as a “courageous” move and portrayed Trump as utterly out of bounds.

But, as I noted in August and as John McCormack observed for National Review, the 1970 Title X “Family Health” statute specifies:

None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.

Yet, despite trying to appear “courageous” for no longer demanding the tax cash, Planned Parenthood still pursued the case.

And, as of Monday, February 24, 2020, it lost in the long-leftist Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This will inspire many leftists to flip their proverbial wigs. But it’s important to keep a few things in mind.

First, the claim we often hear about PP only engaging in “advising” women on where to get abortions is belied by PP’s own ties to abortion clinics to which it refers women. As I observed in my August piece and McCormack noted for National Review:

In short, the 'gag rule' isn’t really a 'gag rule.' Planned Parenthood is free under the regulation to provide abortion counseling, but it doesn’t want to separate its contraception business from its abortion business, as required by the statute establishing Title X.

Second, the $60 million that PP “courageously” declined in August appears to have been turned away because PP refused to split its “family planning clinics” from its abortion industry offices, and also appears to have been declined because high-ups at PP and their lawyers suspected the Court would rule against them – which just occurred – and they wouldn’t be getting the money, anyway.

But the most important facet of this story is often missed, and that is that the US Constitution and fundamental human ethics DO NOT SANCTION TAX CASH GOING TO ANYONE FOR FAMILY HEALTHCARE AT ALL. 

It would be nice if the judges of the Ninth Circuit would rule on THAT. Far too many have become acclimated to the panoply of federal programs and handouts that have been piled, one atop the last, on US statute files and on the backs of US taxpayers in ever-more expensive generational debt.

So as we see President Trump’s “conservative” judicial appointees upholding his decision to not send tax cash to abortion factories like Planned Parenthood, it’s probably good to keep in mind that this isn’t a cure-all.

The mindset supporting unconstitutional “family” programs and generational debt has not been challenged in the court.

But we can challenge it in the court of public opinion.

One doesn’t help “families” by saddling them with generational debt they never chose.

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