As a potential government shutdown looms on the horizon, one of the most highly discussed budget issues is whether or not Planned Parenthood should continue to receive taxpayer funding.

If a new funding deal is not passed soon, the federal government is scheduled to shut down on December 7th. While the passing of former President George H.W. Bush is prompting President Trump to consider a two-week extension to current funding, a government shutdown before Christmas is currently a very real possibility.

Because the new funding deal is not set in stone, pro-life leaders and advocates are flooding Washington, D.C., in an effort to push for pro-life goals. Representatives of organizations like Live Action, Students for Life of America, March for Life and others have been meeting with White House officials in an effort to promote this pro-life platform.

The most prominent of these pro-life goals is ending taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood before Democrats take over the House of Representatives. Meetings with White House officials are serving as a reminder to President Trump that he promised to defund Planned Parenthood while he was on the campaign trail.

Lila Rose, president of Live Action, wrote a letter to President Trump to further remind him of this promise. “One of your most important campaign pledges was to defund Planned Parenthood of the over $500 million it gets from taxpayers annually,” she wrote. “Planned Parenthood takes the lives of 900 innocent preborn children every day… They are the biggest abortion corporation in the nation.”

Students for Life of America (SFLA) agreed with Rose. SFLA President Kristan Hawkins wrote:

The vast majority of American women will never step into a Planned Parenthood facility in a given year… The health services they try to claim a monopoly on are better performed by Federally Qualified Health Centers.

SFLA is also insisting that Trump “refuse to sign any budget that doesn’t defund Planned Parenthood where possible.”

According to the latest annual report from Planned Parenthood, the abortion giant is receiving roughly $543.7 million in taxpayer funding annually. This same report also revealed that the organization performed 321,384 abortions from 2016-2017.

Photo credit: American Life League via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0