EXCLUSIVE: Pro-life groups ramp up pressure on Senate to act before Planned Parenthood funding ban expires
EXCLUSIVE: A coalition of pro-life groups, including Lila Rose’s Live Action, Students for Life, CatholicVote and others, is urging the Senate to take urgent action to enact a decade-long ban...
By Fox News · Fox News
EXCLUSIVE: A coalition of pro-life groups, including Lila Rose’s Live Action, Students for Life, CatholicVote and others, is urging the Senate to take urgent action to enact a decade-long ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers before a July 4 deadline. Senate Republicans hope to nail down the first step of their party-line funding package for immigration operations this week. The current prohibition on federal tax dollar funding for abortion businesses, which President Donald Trump signed as part of last year’s budget bill, is set to expire this Independence Day. With the deadline fast approaching and congressional majorities subject to change this November, the groups stressed in a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune that the lives of unborn children — and hundreds of millions in annual tax dollars — are at stake. In their letter to Thune, the pro-life leaders wrote that extending the prohibition is a matter of urgent fiscal responsibility, saying the "financial stakes are significant" and that a 10-year extension "would represent one of the most meaningful pro-taxpayer reforms Congress can enact." PRO-LIFE GROUPS WARN TRUMP HYDE AMENDMENT IS 'NON-NEGOTIABLE' AFTER FLEXIBILITY REMARKS Before the big, beautiful bill’s provision took effect, Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion business in America, received nearly $800 million annually in taxpayer funding, primarily through federal health programs. The letter asserts that "at a time of historic federal debt and growing budgetary pressure, continuing to subsidize the abortion industry is neither fiscally responsible nor defensible." Though federal law bans taxpayer money from covering most abortions, many Republicans have long argued that abortion businesses such as Planned Parenthood use Medicaid money for other health services to subsidize abortion. Under the tax provision in Trump's 2025 spending bill, Medicaid payments are barred from going to abortion businesses, i…