WASHINGTON (BP)–Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s government funding keeps mounting.
Its recently released report for the 2008-09 year showed the country’s leading abortion provider received $363.2 million in government grants and contracts. That compares with $349.6 million in such funding received during 2007-08. The figures are based on a financial year that goes from July to June.
Planned Parenthood’s total revenue in 2008-09 was $1.1 billion, according to the report. Its revenue from the previous year was $1.04 billion.
Planned Parenthood affiliates performed 324,008 abortions in 2008, the latest year for which statistics have been reported by the organization. That was an increase of nearly 19,000 abortions from the previous year.
Pro-life legislators are expected to make a renewed effort in the next session of Congress to pass a bill that would withhold Title X funds from PPFA and other abortion providers. Title X is the federal government’s family planning program.
“It is morally wrong to end an unborn human life by abortion. It is also morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use those funds to promote abortion,” Rep. Mike Pence, R.-Ind., said in a written statement Dec. 18. Pence is the sponsor of the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act.
“Planned Parenthood’s own report shows that the largest abortion provider in America is being bankrolled by American taxpayers,” Pence said. “With a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate, there is simply no reason during these tough economic times why taxpayers’ hard-earned money should fund the activities of abortion providers and equip them with the resources they need to end innocent human life.”
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Tom Strode is the Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press.
