The Executive Council is expected to vote Wednesday, November 8, on a series of family planning contracts. Three of them are with known abortion providers: Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, the Joan Lovering Health Center, and the Equality Center.
ACTION ITEM: Call your Executive Councilor (contact information here), and tell him you do not want your tax dollars going to abortion providers, even for non-abortion services.
Find your Council district at this link. Wednesday’s meeting is open to the public, at 10 a.m. in the Council chambers on the second floor of the State House in Concord.
Any public money going to an abortion provider helps pay the overhead for a business where abortion takes place: phone, utilities, support staff. Public grants and contracts free up other resources within the business for use in direct abortion.
If abortion is a matter of choice, YOUR choice should be respected, too: no tax dollars to abortion providers.
BACKGROUND:
- Since 2011, the Council has approved most “family planning” contracts with abortion providers, the exceptions being denials of PP bids in 2011 and 2015.
- Councilor Joseph Kenney has been a swing vote in the past.
- Councilor Russell Prescott voted in June of this year to approve contracts for HIV/AIDS prevention programs, with PPNNE and the Equality Center receiving tax dollars.
- Councilors Andru Volinsky and Chris Pappas are consistent supporters of abortion providers.
- Councilor David Wheeler has been a steadfast defender of the right of taxpayers not to be involved in the abortion industry.
- In its bid for this week’s contract, which would give $500,000 to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, PPNNE reveals that it spent $2 million on “public policy” work in 2016. That is certainly not clinical care. PPNNE is now warning Council members that contract denial will affect services to patients. Apparently, denial of the contract will not affect public policy expenditures.