Yet another shameful handout to baby killers
The city council is not pro-choice and never has been. They are pro-abortion.
The City Council voted on June 14 to give thousands of dollars of tax money to an organization that kills babies and another one that has a fund to pay for killing babies. The funding passed 8-0, as was expected. The council has been funding Planned Parenthood for 24 years, and has been funding All Options for 7 years. As usual, pro-life citizens showed up at the meeting (or attended on Zoom) to speak against this abuse of the council's authority to spend thousands of dollars to make a pro-abortion political statement.
Two public comments at the city council meeting perfectly summarized the Leftist ideology about "rights." In order to support "rights" you have to force other people to pay for things you want. The Bloomington City Council was not standing up for "women's rights" when they funded All Options and Planned Parenthood. They were forcing others who do not agree with abortion to fund organizations that either perform abortions or pay for women to get abortions.
It is not necessary to fund All Options to pay for diapers, or to fund Planned Parenthood to pay for birth control. There are plenty of charitable organizations the city could work with to provide diapers, and they could also work with the township trustees. In fact, the Perry Township Trustee's Office is next door to All Options. The city could work with the county health department to provide birth control. The idea that it is "necessary" to fund PP and AO in order to support "women's rights" is a partisan statement, not a policy statement. It was more clear this year than ever before that the thousands of dollars given to these two wicked organizations is a political statement.
In response to a faithful pro-life woman who spoke against the funding and cited Scripture, a public comment that followed cited "separation of church and state." If that person truly believed in that concept, she would not support forcing Christians who oppose abortion to pay for abortion. The city council would take a neutral, truly pro-choice position and allow us to choose for ourselves which charitable organizations we want to support. But the city council is not pro-choice and never has been. They are pro-abortion.
In his comments, an at-large city councilor claimed that tax dollars do not fund abortion. This is both factually false and a misdirect. Even if tax dollars did not directly fund abortion, the opposition to funding Planned Parenthood and All Options is that people do not want to be forced to fund organizations that are directly involved in killing unborn babies. Repeatedly objecting that the money given to these organizations does not directly fund abortion is a misstatement of the argument against that funding. The same arguments have been made for 24 years now, so there is no excuse for any councilor to be spreading this disinformation.
But the objection is not factually true. The birth control the city council is funding does act as an abortifacient, and even Planned Parenthood admits it. Furthermore, the excuse that tax dollars do not directly pay for abortions is no longer valid. Not just because the "birth control" acts as an abortifacient, but because the city council voted to directly fund abortion last October. The excuse that the grants do not fund "abortion care" was always a smokescreen.
The worst excuse for this corporate welfare was made by a councilor who flippantly dismissed the fact that PP and AO do not need the money, while the truly local charities who were denied funds would be helped much more by grant money. This is a disservice to the community that entrusted the city council with tax dollars. Putting resources where they are actually needed absolutely is the responsibility of elected officials who vote to spend the tax dollars they forcibly confiscate from private citizens. The council should be spending money where it is most needed, not on wealthy corporations that do not need it.
It is long past time for this farce to end. The abuse of the council's authority has gone on far too long. If the council will not stop doing this (and they never will unless by some miracle we get a Republican majority on the city's legislative body) then the state legislature should step in and restrict local government's ability to fund abortion providers and "charities" that pay for abortions. With a Republican super-majority in both houses, there is no excuse not to do this.