Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg recently made headlines when she donated $1 million to Planned Parenthood.
Now, pro-life groups across the country are voicing their disappointment in the tech billionaire’s decision to support the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Girls aborted by Planned Parenthood “will never get the chance to, in Sheryl’s words, ‘lean in,’” said Mallory Quigley, communications director for the pro-life advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List, referring to Sandberg’s 2013 best-selling book.
Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director and founder of And Then There Were None, a nonprofit that helps abortion clinic employees leave the abortion industry, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal, “Women deserve better than Planned Parenthood and deserve centers that care for the whole woman, not just part—like minimal ‘care’ and short list of services that Planned Parenthood provides.”
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards publicly thanked Sandberg in a statement, saying, “On behalf of the more than 2 million patients who come to Planned Parenthood each year, we are so grateful to Sheryl Sandberg for her long-standing, and now increased, support for our patients’ health care.”
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Richards went on to address those who wish to defund Planned Parenthood, saying that shutting down Planned Parenthood “would create a national health disaster for women.”
A longtime donor to Planned Parenthood, Sandberg said she opposes President Donald Trump’s restoration of the Mexico City policy, describing it in her Facebook post as “a policy that could have terrible consequences for women and families around the world.”
The Mexico City policy bans taxpayer dollars from going to international organizations that provide or promote abortions.
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Some pro-life organizations focused on the taxpayer dollars currently funding Planned Parenthood.
Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, an education and defense fund that organizes the march annually, highlighted Planned Parenthood’s budget, saying in a statement provided to The Daily Signal that “Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual reports show that the abortion giant already receives over $353 million in private support annually, in addition to the over $500 million they receive in taxpayer dollars.”
Eric J. Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, a nonprofit dedicated to pro-life activism, wrote in an email to The Daily Signal that while Sandberg’s donation was “disappointing,” she at least had a “choice in the matter.”
“What about the millions of pro-life Americans who do not want their tax dollars propping up the nation’s largest abortion chain?” Scheidler asked.
According to the 2014-2015 annual report, Planned Parenthood receives $553.7 million in government health services grants and reimbursements.
Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, a nonprofit that is devoted to ending abortion through the education and empowerment of today’s youth, referenced Planned Parenthood’s large private donor base as a reason to question the organization’s taxpayer funding.
Hawkins wrote in a statement provided to The Daily Signal:
If Planned Parenthood has friends in high places, and it seems they do all over Hollywood and in other industries, then it shouldn’t be a problem for them to act like any other nonprofit and raise money themselves to support their abortion business.
“The bottom line is that taxpayers should not be forced to fund a billion-dollar, scandal-ridden business,” Hawkins continued.
