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Time to end corporate welfare for Planned Parenthood

By Scott Tibbs, May 9, 2014

The following is an open letter to the Bloomington City Council.

----Original Message Follows----
From: Scott Tibbs [mailto:tibbs1973@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 6:59 PM
To: mayert@bloomington.in.gov; ruffa@bloomington.in.gov; sandbers@bloomington.in.gov; sturbauc@bloomington.in.gov; grangerd@bloomington.in.gov; spechlem@bloomington.in.gov; rollod@bloomington.in.gov; neherd@bloomington.in.gov; volans@bloomington.in.gov
Subject: Time to end corporate welfare for Planned Parenthood

Councilors,

Once again, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky is asking you for a grant from the Jack Hopkins social services funding program, and once again I am imploring you to reject their application for corporate welfare. This annual farce needs to end, and this is the year to end it.

The Hopkins program is supposed to be a "one time" investment for a specific project or program, but since PPINK has come to you year after year asking you to give them other people's money, the idea that this is a "one time" situation is a laughable farce. PPINK even admits on Page 2 of its application that this is for operational funds. It is one thing to force us to subsidize true one time investments (though office furniture and computers hardly represent a pressing social service program) but forcing us to subsidize PPINK's operating budget is a bridge too far.

In the most recent fiscal report on its website, PPINK reports taking in $14,397,299 and spending $14,343,147. The budget surplus is not as huge as it has been in past years (making your repeated handouts to them even more absurd) but given how wealthy PPINK has been historically, it is not fiscally prudent to give them yet another handout.

Simply put, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky does not need another handout from city government. There is more than enough money floating around between the national organization and all affiliates that the limited funding in the Hopkins program can go to deserving organizations.

Of course, the most offensive part about being forced to fund Planned Parenthood for thousands of your constituents is not that PPINK does not need the money, but that PPINK performs abortions at its South Walnut facility every Thursday. It is wholly inappropriate for city government to force taxpayers to subsidize an organization that performs an act we find morally abominable, regardless of whether the money goes to "abortion services."

It is time to stop disrespecting your constituents - to say nothing of the truly needy organizations who are denied funding - by abusing the Hopkins social services fund to issue a political endorsement for pro-abortion politics. Please deny PPINK's funding request, and use the money entrusted to you by taxpayers in a more fiscally responsible and less morally abhorrent manner.