If you need help getting motivated for the midterm elections, two words ought to do the trick: Planned Parenthood. America's biggest abortion business is back in court, demanding money that they don't need -- and, more importantly, don't deserve! And unfortunately, some judges seem all too willing to help.
In the real world, no one would keep paying for a service that didn't work – or worse, hurt the people using it. But that's exactly what U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice is insisting of taxpayers. When President Trump pulled the plug on Planned Parenthood's teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) grants at HHS, Cecile Richards's group was enraged. After all, sex ed is the organization's best way to build up future clients. They encourage promiscuous sex, and then, when the birth control they suggest fails (as the group expects it will), those same teenagers become the next generation of abortion consumers.
When you frame it that way, it's really no wonder that the Richards would sue the president's team at HHS, desperate to keep her pipeline to future clients open. "The Trump administration is clearly trying to push their abstinence-only agenda," argued Planned Parenthood attorney Carrie Flaxman. Well, guess what? That's the president's prerogative! If Planned Parenthood wanted the White House to push another agenda, it should have persuaded more Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton. Elections have consequences, and one of 2016's is that President Trump is finally taking an honest look at the country's approach to sex ed. And guess what he discovered? The same thing as Obama's CDC: the Left's strategy isn't working.
Unfortunately, Judge Rice couldn't put aside his own activism long enough to realize it. Instead, he ruled that HHS can't sever ties with Planned Parenthood, no matter how little good it's doing. "The Court finds that HHS arbitrarily and capriciously terminated the TPP program," he wrote. Hardly! Reams of HHS's data found that, "More than 80 percent of teens in the program fared either worse or no better than their peers who were not a part of the program." Even Obama's officials admitted as much, explaining in the largest CDC study of its kind that abstinence education was a much better choice. "The virginal students rate significantly and consistently better in nearly all health-related behaviors and measures than their sexually-active peers."
Still, Judge Rice insists that, "The public interest weighs in favor of [Planned Parenthood], as it would prevent harm to the community... and prevent loss of data regarding the effectiveness of teen pregnancy prevention." Translation: We should still throw your hard-earned money at a program that's failing students, because -- after all -- it's Planned Parenthood.
Attorneys for Trump's Justice Department pushed back. "The plaintiffs are here claiming legal rights they do not have," one fired back. "There is no legal entitlement to further funding beyond each funding year. It's the agency's discretion." Apart from the fact that it's not effective, radical sex ed isn't what parents want! Believe it or not, this is something both parties agree on. Seventy-five percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Republicans think schools should teach kids to wait to have sex. And they believe it so strongly that they're willing to pull their kids out of class to prove it. Monday's Sex Ed Sit Out should have been all the encouragement President Trump needed to keep fighting on this front. Based on the outpouring of support for the idea, parents are sick and tired of groups like Planned Parenthood sinking their talons into kids – and using our tax dollars to do it.
Elsewhere, a group of 15 attorneys general are trying to keep Planned Parenthood's mitts off of their state Medicaid accounts. In a brief to the Supreme Court, they urge the justices to let states decide how their money should be spent. Now that the circuit courts are split on the question of whether states like Kansas can defund the abortion business, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are hoping SCOTUS will take the case that decides the issue.
"[B]y the terms of the Medicaid Act federal-state contract," they write, "the states, not federal courts, are empowered to determine the qualifications for eligible health care providers." What's more, they go on, "the meaning of 'qualified' provider is found not in the Medicaid Act itself, but in state regulations and state Medicaid plans, which set forth the reasons that a provider's Medicaid agreement may be terminated. The Medicaid Act provides discretion for states in designing and administering their programs within broad federal guidelines."
Kansas had four good reasons -- from its own regulations -- for severing ties with Planned Parenthood: "noncompliance with applicable state laws, administrative regulations or program issuances concerning medical providers; noncompliance with the terms of a provider agreement; unethical or unprofessional conduct; and other good cause." It's astonishing that any court would argue that this state -- or any other -- should keep throwing money at an organization that violates local laws. Unfortunately, several have. It's one of the many reasons President Trump is working so fast to appoint judges who uphold the rule of law. If pro-lifers didn't understand the importance of judicial confirmations before, they certainly do now!
