TRENTON, N.J. — The Democratic governor of New Jersey has signed a bill into law that grants $9.5 million to family planning groups in the state, including the abortion and contraception giant Planned Parenthood, after the organization declined to comply with new Health and Human Services (HHS) rules and consequently lost federal Title X funding.
“Today, I signed a bill replacing Title X funding to ensure access to health care and family planning resources,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement posted to social media on Thursday. “The Title X gag rule is nothing less than an attack on the health care of thousands of women and families. In New Jersey, we will #ProtectX.”
As previously reported, Planned Parenthood sued HHS last year after it announced its intention to revert to the 1988 standard under the Reagan administration, which disqualified family planning organizations from receiving Title X funds if abortions are performed in the same building where contraceptives and other family planning services are offered.
The change meant that abortion providers would either have to divide their services into two separate physical locations, or lose funding.
“This rule will require Title X providers to maintain physical and financial separation from locations which provide abortion as a method of family planning,” a document released by HHS outlined.
“This physical and financial separation will ensure compliance with the statutory requirement that Title X funding not support programs where abortion is a method of family planning — and is consistent with the plain text of Section 1008, legislative history, and case law,” it stated.
The rule change also removed a requirement under the Clinton administration to refer for abortions, and conversely prohibited recipients from providing referrals at all. Title X grantees now may not “perform, promote, or support abortion as a method of family planning.”
In August, in the midst of the legal battle, Planned Parenthood announced that it was withdrawing from the Title X program, and HHS characterized the matter as being that the organization chose not to comply .
“Every grantee had the choice to accept the grant and comply with the program’s regulations or not accept the grant if they did not want to comply,” it outlined. “Some grantees are now blaming the government for their own actions — having chosen to accept the grant while failing to comply with the regulations that accompany it — and they are abandoning their obligations to serve their patients under the program.”
According to North Jersey.com, out of the 45 facilities that have been receiving Title X funds in New Jersey, Planned Parenthood operated 22, but generated the most patronage. There are more than 100 entities in the state that offer contraception.
Following Planned Parenthood’s decision, some local governments — such as Washtenaw County, Michigan — consequently decided to provide funding to the organization since it would no longer qualify for the federal program. In New Jersey, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, introduced a bill in September that would provide $9.5 million in funding to any group that no longer qualifies for Title X.
“This bill proposes to supplement the Fiscal Year 2020 annual appropriations act by making an appropriation of $9.5 million from the General Fund to the Department of Health (DOH) for Family Planning Services grants,” the legislation read in part.
“It is the sponsor’s intent that this supplemental appropriation will provide continuity and stability for the funding of family planning services provided to low income women in the State by replacing any federal funding that family planning providers will lose with the adoption of new federal regulations governing the use of Title X funding. These revised federal regulations, among other provisions, prohibit recipients of Title X funding from referring patients for abortions.”
The proposal specifically noted that Planned Parenthood withdrew from the program “rather than comply with the new Title X regulations, and compromise the organization’s core mission of providing women comprehensive information and access to reproductive healthcare.”
However, some lawmakers were opposed to the move, stating that taxpayer money should not be used to fund controversial entities that end the lives of unborn children.
“As the father of three young children, I’m proudly pro-life and don’t believe our tax dollars should be used to support organizations whose primary focus is providing abortions,” Sen. Mike Testa, R-Cumberland, remarked in a statement.
However, despite the opposition, the bill passed both the Assembly and the Senate in November and December respectively, and Gov. Murphy signed the measure into law on Thursday — with Planned Parenthood representatives present.
According to NJ.com, Murphy claimed that HHS had “made a conscious decision to block women from vital information critical to their health,” and that the state was rather going to “stand with Planned Parenthood and with all who stand for reproductive rights, and to stop President Trump from harming our fellow New Jerseyans.”
View his remarks from the signing/press conference in full here.
As previously reported, while modern-day Planned Parenthood leaders ardently argue that abortion is a mother’s “right,” the organization’s feminist founder, Margaret Sanger, actually wrote against abortion, stating that “the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.”
“The great majority of women … belong to the working class. Nearly all of these women will fall into one of two general groups — the ones who are having children against their wills, and those who, to escape this evil, find refuge in abortion. Being given their choice by society — to continue to be overburdened mothers or to submit to a humiliating, repulsive, painful and too often gravely dangerous operation, those women in whom the feminine urge to freedom is strongest choose the abortionist,” she remarked in her book “Woman and the New Race.”
Sanger stated that there are potential consequences to having an abortion that are unsafe for women.
“The womb may not return to its natural size, but remain large and heavy, tending to fall away from its natural position. Abortion often leaves the uterus in a condition to conceive easily again and unless prevention is strictly followed another pregnancy will surely occur. Frequent abortions tend to cause barrenness and serious, painful pelvic ailments. These and other conditions arising from such operations are very likely to ruin a woman’s general health,” she wrote.
However, Sanger’s solution to countering abortion was birth control, initially naming her organization the American Birth Control League.
“The question that society must answer is this: Shall family limitation be achieved through birth control or abortion? Shall normal, safe, effective contraceptives be employed, or shall we continue to force women to the abnormal, often dangerous surgical operation?” she asked.
She decried large families, writing, “The most serious evil of our times is that of encouraging the bringing into the world of large families. The most immoral practice of the day is breeding too many children.” She claimed that children get lost in large families and end up in jail or as prostitutes.
Sanger was also an advocate of eugenics against the disabled, as she made a correlation between birth control and the purification of the races. She additionally called for the sterilization of women in the “moron class,” referring to those with disabilities as being “morons,” “idiots” and “imbeciles.”
“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives,” Sanger wrote. “If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.”
Proverbs 6 says that “God hates … hands that shed innocent blood.”
The Bible also speaks to the common root of the issue: fornication.
1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 teaches, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God. … For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us His holy Spirit.”
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