FUNDING FOR FAMILY PLANNING SERVICES

Politics...

I just heard that the NJ Senate will meet to vote on S120, which "Makes FY 2018 supplemental appropriation of $7,453,000 to DOH for family planning services".  This is not as straightforward as it may seem...

Our new governor, Phil Murphy, wants to give back to Planned Parenthood for supporting his campaign and under the guise of "restoring funding to women's health clinics, including Planned Parenthood".  

"Women are dying in this state thanks to the cuts that the governor and the lieutenant governor have endorsed now for seven-and-a-half years," Murphy said after receiving the endorsement from Planned Parenthood. "This is life and death. This is really life and death. They put a lot of women at stake."

But the state's Department of Health disagreed, calling Murphy's "claim made that women are dying due to reduced funding for family planning services is flat out untrue," according to spokeswoman Donna Leusner.  "The death rate of women of childbearing age has been decreasing in New Jersey, due in part to investments made by the Christie Administration in women's health including Medicaid expansion, community health centers, and cancer prevention and screening," she said. "To say otherwise is irresponsible."

"New Jersey voters should be alarmed that a billionaire candidate is promising to spend millions of our taxpayer dollars to fund a partisan, political organization who have a well documented record in New Jersey of waste, fraud and abuse," said NJ Right to Life's Executive Director, Marie Tasy.

"You are known by the company you keep and I'm in damn good company this morning," Murphy said on the day of this announcement, with about two dozen Planned Parenthood staff and supports standing behind him.

My question is, why do we need to give $7.4 million a year to a so-called nonprofit group that has $1.6 BILLION IN ASSETS?

Women have access to affordable health care through Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) FQHCs provide more health care services than Planned Parenthood. The only thing they do not do is abortions. The taxpayer dollars that used to go to Planned Parenthood now fund these health centers in New Jersey, ensuring that women have access to quality care.  

According to a report from the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, Planned Parenthood have been involved in illegal and unethical practices. They have failed to protect patients' privacy, violating HIPAA laws. "Violations occurred when the abortion clinics disclosed patients' individually identifiable health information."  

They have failed to obtain informed consent. And they have participated in illegal practices using techniques that resulted in infants born alive during abortion. According to the report, many researchers want tissue from late-gestation infants "untainted by feticidal agents" and that "abortion providers may modify abortion procedures, in apparent violation of the law, to increase the odds of getting an intact infant cadaver". 

Last month (December 2017), it was announced that the Justice Department is going to investigate Planned Parenthood's illegal activities.    

Planned Parenthood has also been accused of fraudulent billing practices: billing Medicaid for millions of dollars in services that did not qualify as family planning as well improper billing for abortions.

Other crimes include failing to report child sex trafficking.  In an interview with Live Action, former Planned Parenthood clinic manager Ramona Trevino said, "instead of training employees to help trafficking victims, the organization held sessions on how to determine whether they were being secretly recorded. Planned Parenthood officials played all of the undercover footage from the Live Action investigation in order to illustrate how clinic managers could better identify undercover journalists."  

Clearly, Planned Parenthood does not care about the well-being of the women they serve.  

Here are a dozen things the media won't tell you about Planned Parenthood.

Does Planned Parenthood have the best interests and welfare of women at heart? Does Governor Phil Murphy?  Do YOU want what's best for women?  

Click here to see the letter I sent to Senator Christopher "Kip" Bateman.

Time is of the essence. Please contact our NJ State Senator and tell him to vote NO on S120.