“On abortion, I will always advocate for life,” says the headline of a 2022 op-ed by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in USA Today.

In this case, always, meaning “at all times and on all occasions,” only lasted until the congressman was compelled to prove it. In a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) this week, Lawler, as well as Reps. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), reportedly pressured leadership to drop the idea of defunding Planned Parenthood via reconciliation.

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Lawler takes the popular, though morally and logically absurd, position that abortion is wrong (with exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is at risk) but that the law shouldn’t stop others from terminating a human life. He opposes a “national ban,” which is a convenient position to take, knowing that New York state will never limit procedure.

It should be stressed that there are no abortion “bans” in the United States. Not one. Yes, some states now have limitations on abortion, but even the doomed national bill written by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) a few years back limited the termination of a fetus after the 15th week, or into the second trimester. We should stop using the abortion lobby’s misleading and anesthetized language.

In any event, Lawler maintains that Washington should also stay out of the abortion issue and let states handle it — and there’s certainly a case to be made for that position. But then, he surely also believes that the federal government shouldn’t be handing $700 million to $750 million in taxpayer funds to the nation’s biggest national abortion mill every year, either.

And Planned Parenthood is an abortion mill. Its defenders like to point out that only about 3% of services are abortions. What they fail to mention is that those “services” likely account for about 30% of its $1.3 billion in yearly revenue. Planned Parenthood is responsible for about 40% of the nation’s abortions. A study from the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute found that 97% of Planned Parenthood’s “pregnancy resolution services” ended in an abortion rather than adoption.

And much of this operation is funded through Medicaid reimbursements and other grants meant to help the poor. Congress is already fighting over reforms of Medicaid, the welfare program that has seen dramatic mission creep over the years. The “deep cuts” that Congress is having trouble passing, incidentally, would merely reduce the growth of Medicaid from 4.5% to 3% every year.

Kiggans has also claimed to be “100%, unapologetically pro-life,” though she prevaricates whenever anyone tries to pin her down on what that means. In a 2022 interview, she boasted about her record of “preventing taxpayer-funded abortions.” Opposing the defunding of Planned Parenthood is in direct conflict with that contention.  

Now, I understand that Lawler and Kiggans are in purple districts and fear voter backlash. Remember when virtually every major outlet, pollster, and political expert in the country told us that abortion would become a massive liability for Republicans, putting them in danger of losing a generation of voters? Democrats, whose position on abortion is that there should be zero limitation until birth, shoehorned the issue into the 2024 presidential race at every opportunity. It didn’t work. My own television was inundated with attack ads aimed at Kiggans in 2024, and virtually every one of them falsely accused her of supporting a complete national ban on abortion. Yet, she slightly expanded her win total in a competitive district from 2022. Indeed, virtually every poll on the topic finds that Americans don’t want government funding for abortions.

Lawler contends that it is “fundamentally, obviously, from the standpoint of providing healthcare to women, you know, I’m not for taking away people’s healthcare.” If these three House members believe that the federal government should be subsidizing women’s health, they could write a bill diverting Planned Parenthood funds to organizations that aren’t in the business of ending lives.

A RED PILL ON PRO-LIFE OPTIMISM

Then again, if House members are unable to explain to their constituents why it’s wrong for the government to fund not only abortions but the harvesting of organs from healthy fetuses, they don’t belong in Congress. We know this barbaric practice exists because Planned Parenthood was exposed by a series of videos by the Center for Medical Progress. Despite the full-court press by big media to gaslight their audiences, Planned Parenthood admitted as much when it stopped selling the organs and began giving them away. On moral grounds, it makes no difference. Nor on fiscal grounds, really, because money is fungible, and Planned Parenthood’s organ harvesting is still subsidized by taxpayers.

As a political matter, however, there’s a larger problem here. If House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) can’t convince or pressure three backbenchers, two of whom claim to be champions of life, into backing a budget item that Republicans have been promising to deliver voters since the Reagan era, what good is he?