By Micaiah Bilger, LifeNews.com
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky filed two pro-life bills recently to protect unborn babies and American taxpayers from the billion-dollar abortion chain Planned Parenthood.
The Republican senator said unborn babies deserve to be protected under the law, CNS News reports.
“Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood will tell you differently, but every single life matters, including the unborn,” he said in a statement. “I was proud to force the Senate to vote on defunding this organization. Our nation cannot expect to fully protect and maintain our other rights if we do not respect the fundamental right to life even starting in the womb.”
His first bill, the Life at Conception Act (Senate Bill 99), would make it clear that the 14th Amendment protects the right to life for all human beings at every stage of development, starting at conception.
A medical doctor by trade, Paul knows that a unique, living human being comes into existence at the moment of conception, and an abortion unnecessarily destroys that human being’s life.
His other bill, the Defund Planned Parenthood Act (Senate Bill 139), targets the largest abortion provider in the U.S. The legislation would prohibit federal taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups.
Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report, which is publicly available online, lists 345,672 abortions, an increase of nearly 4 percent from the previous year. The number represents more than one third of all abortions in the U.S.
According to the report, it received more than $500 million in taxpayer funds that year.
Meanwhile, the same report showed that many of Planned Parenthood’s actual health services continue to decline. It provided less contraception, sterilizations, cancer screenings, adoption referrals and other women’s health services than the previous year, mirroring a continued downward trend. Its patient numbers also have been dropping steadily over the past decade.
For years, pro-life advocates have been pointing out these statistics and numerous scandals involving allegations of selling aborted baby body parts and covering up the sexual abuse of minors as they urge lawmakers to defund Planned Parenthood of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.