Republicans must regain their seriousness on the issue of life.
Republicans must regain their seriousness on the issue of life.
J uly 4, 2026, is, of course, the 250th birthday of the United States. It’s also the day we might resume federal funding of the abortion giant Planned Parenthood.
Don’t Republicans have control of Congress and the White House? Hasn’t the pro-abortion side been warning that a second Donald Trump term would see the introduction of all kinds of restrictions on abortion? That doctors would be forced to ensure that babies are born at all costs to pregnant women (which was either a scare tactic or the result of honest confusion, but never true)? That pro-lifers don’t care about women or babies after birth (never mind the many debates about family leave, foster care, and adoption that are being debated on the political right)?
Yes, well, here we are. It’s true that the ridiculously named One Big Beautiful Bill Act prohibited federal Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood for a year (a prohibition that is set to expire soon). But the issue of abortion has never been and will never be about short-term political victories. It has to be beyond partisanship because it is about life quite literally. And yet the GOP removed the issue from its platform. Democrats’ quaint talk of “safe, legal, and rare” abortion, meanwhile, went out the window a long time ago.
Jor-El Godsey is the president of Heartbeat International, which, unlike Planned Parenthood, really is on the front lines helping women. (The State of California is currently trying to prohibit Heartbeat from offering a fairly simple abortion-pill-reversal protocol that involves progesterone, a normal and natural hormone during pregnancy.) Godsey has to be realistic. “Publicly, Planned Parenthood is decrying an increasing number of closures of its brick-and-mortar facilities,” he told me. “However, in the boardroom, they are likely celebrating as their primary product, abortion pills, moves online with much less overhead, facilitating greater profit margins.” And soon, if they’re once again “re-empowered with U.S. taxpayer largesse, they’ll enjoy a windfall they can redirect into the purchasing of political power and profit-making marketing.”
“People ask whether Planned Parenthood’s best days are behind them,” Melissa Ohden, founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, notes. “I’d argue the opposite — and that’s what should concern every American taxpayer.” Crucially, “with the abortion pill now driving the majority of abortions in this country, they don’t need a clinic on every corner anymore. They need an app and a mailing address. And rather than advocate for the kind of oversight that would protect women and children, they have consistently opposed every regulatory safeguard proposed.”
Ohden, who survived a botched saline abortion herself, warns of the dangers of the lack of regulation. She points to an Ethics and Public Policy Center study of nearly 866,000 chemical-abortion cases that found “that 1 in 19 women underwent a repeat abortion within 45 days, meaning the first attempt failed.” Ohden adds:
We have seen what that unregulated access looks like in practice. A 17-year-old girl in Carencro, Louisiana, allegedly poisoned by her own father with mifepristone — without her knowledge or consent — and rushed to the hospital for an emergency C-section at 23 weeks. Her baby was born alive, weighing one pound, and is fighting for life in the NICU. That is the reality we are being asked to fund.
Ohden wants more than just the defunding of Planned Parenthood: accountability for an institution that demands all but total obedience. Taxpayers’ declaration of independence from Planned Parenthood is the very least we should expect from a healthy nation.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.