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22 February 2011
A Double Edged Sword
10 February 2011
Use Your Phone For Good Today!
Dear Cherie,
Tomorrow, Thursday, February 10th, we encourage you to call your congressman and senators and urge them to withhold all federal funding of Planned Parenthood. FWI and other pro-life groups are trying to flood congressional offices on that day to urge Congress to cut off all taxpayer funding of this abortion provider and advocate.
You may have seen the most recent undercover video, which is the latest of a string of outrageous examples of how irresponsible this organization is. The video shows a Planned Parenthood employee suggesting ways that an actor posing as a pimp could secure abortions for what he explained were child prostitutes, who, he implied, were in this country illegally.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the U.S., performing more than 300,000 abortions annually. It has a budget of around a billion dollars a year, and federal grants and contracts provide about a third of that amount, more than $363 million of our tax dollars. While these funds theoretically do not directly support their abortion activities, they certainly help support the overall organization.
If you feel, as we do, that no federal tax dollars should go to any organization that advocates and provides abortion, then you need to make your views known to your congressman and senators. As you know, we face a major federal budget crisis in the U.S., and the current out-of-control federal spending levels are simply unsustainable. Planned Parenthood funding is one of those things that can and should be cut to deal with this crisis. This may be our best chance ever to defund this organization that has been responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn children.
Please help save the lives of unborn children by calling your congressman and senators. You can be connected to their offices by calling the Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121. (The switchboard is manned 24 hours a day, and most offices have voice mail systems available after business hours.) You can give the staffer who answers a very simple message: do whatever you can to cut off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Be sure and give them your name and address so they know you are a constituent. We also suggest that you tell the staffer that you would like to be informed about how the congressman or senator votes on this issue.
If we get the number of calls we expect on Thursday, it may be difficult to get through to these offices. If that is the case, we suggest contacting the district or state offices of your congressman and senators and ask that the same message be conveyed to them. You can find the number of the office nearest to you in the “U.S. Government” section of your phone book.
Please help even more by forwarding this on to everyone else you think would also call on Thursday. Planned Parenthood has more than 5 million members in the U.S., and they and other pro-abortion groups are pulling out all the stops to try to protect their federal funding. Polls show that a majority of Americans now oppose abortion, but the political reality is that unless we let our elected representatives know that we do not want any tax dollars going to any group that promotes and provides abortions, Planned Parenthood will keep getting your tax dollars.
Thank you for your help. If enough of us call we will certainly have a major impact on Congress, and we have a good chance to cut off this unacceptable use of our tax dollars.
Thank you for whatever you can do to help.
Sincerely,
Sharon Slater
President