by Harold Hutchison
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa introduced legislation in the Senate on Wednesday to ban federal funding for Planned Parenthood after the organization received COVID-19 relief funds.
According to a December 17, 2020 and 2021 report, at least $120 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans were provided to Planned Parenthood affiliates in violation of “applicable affiliation rules and size standards” during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic . letter which Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky sent to then-Small Business Administration Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman. Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation that she legislation would ensure that a nonprofit organization known for promoting abortion does not receive taxpayer funds.
“The nation’s largest abortion provider should not receive a penny in federal funding,” Ernst told DCNF. “Planned Parenthood has already been caught with its hand in the cookie jar, siphoning off millions in pandemic relief meant for Mom and Pop stores. I stand up for the most vulnerable among us, the unborn, and make sure that women and children receive support instead of abortion.”
The Susan B. Anthony List gave Ernst an A+ rating scorecard for the term of office that began on January 3, 2021. She received the same rating for the first term of office that began in 2015.
Ernst’s legislation states that “no federal funds may be made available to Planned Parenthood Federation of America or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, successors or clinics.”
Planned Parenthood of Central and Western New York touted receiving a fully foreclosed $2.6 million loan through PPP in 2021. bulletin article stating that the loan has been forgiven.
“On May 19, 2020, SBA notified several PPFA affiliates that they had unlawfully submitted applications for 38 PPP loans totaling more than $80 million,” Paul wrote in the Dec. 17 letter. “The SBA has determined that these local PPFA affiliates are ineligible for PPP loans under applicable affiliate rules and size standards and that the loans they received should be repaid.”
“Despite this decision, the SBA has approved additional loans in 2021 totaling nearly $40 million,” Paul wrote. “In addition, you allowed at least 34 Planned Parenthood PPP loans to be forgiven.”
The group has taken legal action against abortion restrictions in many red states, including defiant South Carolina’s heartbeat law and secured funding for Missouri taxpayers through: court ruling. The state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the measure to defund Planned Parenthood violated state constitutional provisions and the organization’s right to equal protection.
Organization too called virginity is a “made-up concept” that was “simply created to control and shame people,” while claiming that the term is not “inclusive” of the LGBT community.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, held many racist views and made statements disparaging some minorities, including stating that Australian aborigines were “the lowest known species of the human family” in her 1913. book “What every girl should know.” She also stated that in 1939 letter that she did not want the fact that she sought the “extermination of the Negro population” to “come to light.”
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Harold Hutchison is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
