Dear Speaker Ryan and Majority
Leader McConnell:
Thank you for your strong, principled
and common-sense leadership on the issue of preventing American tax dollars
from funding abortion on demand. Thank you also for your commitment to
providing healthcare access to the poor and other vulnerable patients in need.
On behalf of the over 18,000 members
of the Christian Medical Association, we urge you to:
1.
ensure
the reallocation of funding currently used by abortion-performing, partisan
political organizations such as Planned Parenthood, by directing that funding instead
to the over 13,000 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and Rural Health
Centers (RHCs); and,
2.
overturn,
through the Congressional Review Act, the US Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) rule finalized December 19, 2016, titled "Compliance with Title X Requirements by Project
Recipients in Selecting Subrecipients," in order to ensure that states are
allowed to take a similar direction in allocating federal funding.
Many of our members serve in federally
funded centers that focus on providing care to patients regardless of who the
patient is or what the patient's values, orientation, ethnicity or any other
qualities may be. As you know well, needy patients depend on these centers and
on physicians like our members to provide healthcare when likely no one else
would provide healthcare for them. FQHCs provide comprehensive services and a
“medical home” for whole families and work in the areas of most critical need.
According to the independent
government watchdog (GAO) in 2012, FQHCs served 21 million individuals and
provided services including STD testing, cancer screening and contraceptive
management, as well as other services including immunizations and general child
wellness exams. FQHCs and RHCs often meet patient needs on modest budgets, and
those who serve in these centers often do so at great personal financial
sacrifice. Unlike Planned Parenthood, which follows an aggressive business plan
designed to maximize profits on services such as abortion, these centers exist
for the purpose of serving the nation's most needy patients.
Yet some medical groups like the American
Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, whose pro-abortion ideology aligns
with Planned Parenthood and whose members profit personally from working with
Planned Parenthood, decry "political interference in the patient-physician
relationship." This cry comes, oddly enough, while applying pressure on
politicians to fund political groups like Planned Parenthood. It is also worth
observing what sources such as the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and
PolitiFact National have confirmed--that Planned Parenthood spends millions of
dollars each year for one partisan purpose: to elect Democrats and defeat
Republicans.
It's hard to get more political than
that, and it's impossible to get more politically partisan than that.
The majority of Americans do not
want their tax dollars to subsidize abortion, and they certainly do not want
their tax dollars to subsidize an abortion-performing partisan political
machine. Because of the strong concern of American taxpayers, existing federal
law addresses direct funding of abortion. However, the fungible nature of
federal grants to Planned Parenthood means that every American's tax dollars,
regardless of their convictions about abortion, are being used to prop up the
abortion industry.
Any organization that wishes to
avoid political entanglement can do so quite easily--by simply foregoing government
funding. Those who seek funding should expect federal and/or state oversight,
requirements and standards.
Even the most modest of standards
should disqualify from federal funding organizations such as Planned
Parenthood, given the recent findings of the Select Investigative Panel on
Infant Lives, the list of 15 criminal and regulatory referrals made by the
Panel, and the referral by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to the FBI and
the Department of Justice for investigation and potential prosecution.
If any organization can and should do
without federal funding, the billion-dollar, corrupt abortion business Planned
Parenthood is a prime example.
We respectfully urge you to
reallocate American tax dollars away from such profit-centered, divisive and
partisan organizations and provide funding instead to patient-centered,
non-controversial and nonpartisan Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs)
and Rural Health Centers (RHCs). And we urge you to ensure that states can do
the same, applying reasonable state standards and requirements to those who seek
to use taxpayer funds.
Thank you very much for your
consideration of these views.
Sincerely,
David
Stevens, MD, MA (Ethics)
CEO
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