GAO audit explores use of taxpayer funds by family planning groups

Hearst Newspapers/The San Antonio Express: "Anti-abortion lawmakers in Congress have determined that federal taxpayers poured at least $967 million into family planning organizations such as Planned Parenthood over the last eight years — money they said potentially freed the health-service enterprises to use other donations to perform abortions. Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, who led an effort by 31 Republican lawmakers to obtain the audit by Congress' watchdog Government Accountability Office, said he hopes to use the findings to generate momentum for his proposed legislation to require states and the federal government to provide annual public reports on taxpayer funds that are appropriated to 'abortion providers.'" A member of Olson's staff said highlighting how federal funds are routed to family planning organizations "was designed to give taxpayers a better picture of the alleged 'shift' that anti-abortion activists claim takes place within many private nonprofit organizations that receive federal funds and provide abortion services." But a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas said the organization "was providing crucial medical services to residents of a city with the highest number of uninsured residents of any city in the nation" (Powell, 6/16).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.