President Donald Trump speaks at a March for Life rally, Friday, Jan. 24, 2020, on the National Mall in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
A group of Republicans are reportedly lobbying to protect Planned Parenthood’s federal funding as the GOP caucus in the House debates what to include in what President Donald Trump has deemed his “big, beautiful bill,” a reconciliation package meant to push much of his agenda through Congress.
According to NOTUS, moderates like Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Jen Kiggans (R-VA) are all fighting to continue sending federal tax dollars to the country’s largest abortion provider.
“Moderate Republicans will likely be anti-abortion advocates’ biggest hurdle in their mission to ban federal funding from Planned Parenthood in a reconciliation package — and some are already voicing their opposition,” reported NOTUS, which noted that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), a stalwart pro-life advocate, has already promised activist groups that the bill will “redirect funds away from Big Abortion.”
For his part, Fitzpatrick expressed his intention to raise the issue during a meeting on Tuesday night, arguing that “there’s other policy areas that we need to focus on.”
Lawler held his cards closer to the vest in public, telling NOTUS that “fundamentally, obviously, from the standpoint of providing health care to women, you know, I’m not for taking away people’s health care.”
“Obviously, Planned Parenthood does provide a lot of services outside of abortion-related services, and so, you know, I’d have to see what they’re proposing,” he added.
Trump signed an executive order “to end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion” shortly after taking office this January, revoking a pair of executive orders signed by his predecessor in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Vice President JD Vance said on the campaign trail last year that a Trump-Vance administration would support measures to defund Planned Parenthood.
“On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood, look, I mean our view is we don’t think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions,” he said at the time. “That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around. It will remain a consistent view.”
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