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Planned Parenthood

Sen. Lankford: Defund organ harvesting

James Lankford
Anti-abortion activists rally in April 2015 in Washington, D.C.

If you haven’t seen the videos about Planned Parenthood’s operation to harvest human body parts from abortions, I suggest you view them. It might change your mind about whether taxpayers should help fund Planned Parenthood.

While our nation is divided on abortion, we shouldn’t force the taxes of Americans who strongly oppose organ harvesting or abortion to continue to fund an organization that carries out these inhumane practices. About 40% of Planned Parenthood’s funding comes from hardworking taxpayers, which leaves its other resources available to perform these barbaric procedures.

The videos bring up legal questions of whether Planned Parenthood complies with federal laws regulating the use of fetal tissue, alteration of procedures used to terminate pregnancies, the purpose of obtaining tissue and partial-birth abortion procedures. At the very least, federal funding should cease while an investigation occurs.

Many Americans believe these unborn lives are fully human. When Planned Parenthood sells unique human organs to research labs, by definition, they had to be unique human lives when they were aborted. These organs cannot be “just tissue” in the womb, but later sold as the liver, heart or brain of humans.

The measure scheduled for a Senate vote Monday would redirect federal funds now meant for Planned Parenthood to entities such as community health centers, many of which serve low-income patients. While Planned Parenthood runs about 700 centers nationwide, community health centers serve patients at more than 9,100 locations — 13 times the number of Planned Parenthood centers.

It’s past time to redirect Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding to community health centers. It’s also time for Americans to decide why there is more outrage over the death of “Cecil the lion” in Zimbabwe and lesser prairie chicken eggs in the Midwest than for unborn children who have a developed brain, liver, kidneys and heart. It is time to stop looking away and ignoring the difficult truth; that is a child, not tissue.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., is a co-sponsor of the measure to defund Planned Parenthood.

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