Anti-abortion writer Matt Walsh said in an interview that aired Tuesday on “Rising” that President Trump and GOP lawmakers missed their chance to defund Planned Parenthood when Republicans had control over both Congress and the presidency.
“Republicans had the White House, the Senate, and the House for two years,” Walsh, a journalist at the Daily Wire, told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week.
“They could have defunded Planned Parenthood completely, all $500 million [a year] they could have taken away, and they didn’t do it,” he continued.
“That’s not just on the president, that’s on Congress,” Walsh said. “But I don’t absolve the president of that either. I think that clearly for those two years they were not focused on that issue, and they should have been.”
“That should have been a day-one thing,” he said.
Federal funds cannot legally be used for abortion, but anti-abortion advocates argue that any money that goes to clinics providing abortions indirectly supports the procedure.
“They’re doing certain things that are good,” Walsh said, referring to Trump’s appointment of conservative judges who could rule against abortion.
He also praised Trump’s use of the “bully pulpit” in addressing abortion.
“What he said at the State of the Union for instance, the way he so directly addressed abortion, most Republican presidents would not do that, and haven’t done that at the State of the Union,” he said.
Trump last month introduced new rules stating that clinics aren’t eligible for Title X family planning funds unless they are physically and financially separate from abortion providers.
The move could cause Planned Parenthood to lose millions of dollars if the rules are upheld in court.
— Julia Manchester
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