The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

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April 15, 2011

Manchin wants ban on abortion funding secured

By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter

Consistent with his lifelong pro-life sentiment, freshman Sen. Joe Manchin moved Thursday to install what he calls  safeguards to keep federal dollars under Title X from being diverted into financing abortions.

But an anti-abortion group that has consistently endorsed Manchin in elections, West Virginians for Life, scorned his proposal as “irrelevant” and “a cover,” saying the former governor isn’t really interested in stopping taxpayer-funded abortions.

Manchin said he offered the so-called “Title X Transparency and Verification Act” as a means of raising public scrutiny of family planning funding and guaranteeing money spent under the program is reported to the public.

“As a lifelong abortion opponent, I want to ensure that all West Virginians and all Americans can easily access and independently verify information that not one single federal taxpayer dollar is used to fund abortions in this country,” the West Virginia Democrat said.

“I believe there needs to be a strict firewall around the vital services that Title X funds provide — such as cancer screenings and family planning — so that those federal funds are never, ever used for a single abortion, except in the case of rape, incest and life of the mother.”

In Morgantown, West Virginians for Life’s communications director, Mary Anne Buchanan, said the Manchin proposal wouldn’t do anything.

“The bill that Sen. Manchin wants to put forth really is irrelevant,” she said.

“It’s just a cover. We really feel that he doesn’t want to defund Planned Parenthood. He just put this up as his means of saying, ‘I want to do something to take care of this problem when really it’s not going to help at all.’ Planned Parenthood are the abortion giant in this country. One-third of their revenue comes from abortions. They perform about 27 percent of all the abortions in this country. One out of every eight people who walks into a Planned Parenthood clinic comes out with an abortion.”

Title X grants surfaced 41 years ago and are used to finance breast exams, cervical cancer and screenings, and to treat sexual diseases. Each year, such grants total some $317 million.

Concerns over the use of money to pay for abortions reportedly triggered much of the recent budget standoff in Washington.

Under Title X regulations, any abortion services must be kept separate from those financed by the program, and this is to be verified by independent audits.

Manchin, however, said his bill is needed because audit findings aren’t readily available.

His measure obligates the Department of Health and Human Services to post independent audits online for any agencies getting Title X money.

Nearly 25 percent of Title X funding, or some $70 million, is shipped to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which performed some 330,000 abortions in 2010.

Two years ago, Buchanan said Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions.

“If you look at the data, as the years have gone by, money has increased to Planned Parenthood, and number of abortions has increased accordingly,” she added.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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