by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer

(May 22, 2008) Pro-life advocates are furious with Congressional Democrats who inserted funding for Planned Parenthood into an Iraq war supplement bill which will result in handing over more taxpayer dollars to the nation’s largest abortion business.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is accused of masterminding the controversial earmark, which will help Planned Parenthood and family planning businesses buy birth control and Plan B emergency contraception at a discount.

Family Research Council President, Tony Perkins, said the provision will become a cash cow for university health centers and Planned Parenthood facilities who can turn a profit from selling the morning after pill even though they make significant funding on the markup from the drugs previously.

“So the $165 billion question is: What does any of this have to do with Iraq? Absolutely nothing,” he said. “Reid’s personal political agenda is exposing our active-duty troops to new risks as they wait on Congress to duke out the abortion provisions.”

Rather than honoring our soldiers with the funding they need, Perkins said the Senate is “stuffing the war supplemental bill with pro-abortion paybacks for groups like Planned Parenthood. Despite the urgent needs of our servicemen, Reid and his liberal allies are more concerned about funding the war against the unborn than the war in Iraq.”

The editors of National Review Online also expressed their outrage over the bill. “As U.S.-led Coalition forces closed in on an al-Qaeda leader in Samarra on Tuesday, Harry Reid was running a special operation of his own: figuring out how to shoehorn a sop to Planned Parenthood into the bill to fund our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,” they wrote.

“We should be able to fund our troops in the field without paying billions of dollars in ransom to Congress’s pet projects,” they said.

“Harry Reid should send the president a war-funding bill that actually funds the war – as opposed to one that funds domestic pressure groups — and should do so before Memorial Day.”

Perkins agreed. “Harry Reid has a funny way of expressing his appreciation for our troops this Memorial Day,” he said.

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