by Catholic Action League
of Boston
For the fourth time since September of 2021, the New Hampshire Executive Council has refused to authorize state funding for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and for two other Granite State abortion perpetrators.
Massachusetts and New Hampshire are the last two states in the Union to retain an elected, colonial era Governor’s Council, or Executive Council, with the power to approve or reject appointments, pardons and state contracts.
On July 27th, the Executive Council voted 4 to 1 to withhold so-called family planning monies from Planned Parenthood, Lovering Health Center and Equality Health Center.
The contracts for the three clinics, which advertise elective abortions, totaled over one million dollars, with more than $300,000 designated for Planned Parenthood.
The vote divided along partisan lines, with Republicans Ted Gatsos, Joe Kenney, Janet Stevens and David Wheeler opposing tax subsidies for the abortuaries, and Democrat Cinde Warmington supporting them.
Gatsos, Kenney and Stevens voted to approve funding for four other facilities which distribute contraceptives and make referrals for abortions. Only David Wheeler voted against all family planning contracts.
Supported by Governor Chris Sununu ̶ a nominal Catholic ̶ his Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette, and Attorney General John Formella, the three clinics claimed that the intended tax dollars would only be used for contraceptives, STD testing and cancer screenings, and would not be used to perform abortions.
The Council disagreed. David Wheeler stated that the “facilities that wanted this money did not meet the statutory requirements of proving that there would be no mingling of the funds with the abortion business that they are in.”
Joe Biden, however, has come to the aid of the abortion clinics.
In January of 2022, the Biden administration awarded Planned Parenthood of Northern New England a $500,000 Title X Family Planning grant. In March, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra traveled to New Hampshire and personally toured Planned Parenthood to express his support.
On March 30th, the HHS announced $256 million in family planning grants nationwide for the rest of FY2022, including $502,000 for Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire.
The Catholic Action League called the Executive Council vote “an incremental, but significant victory in the struggle to defend the sanctity of innocent human life in the Granite State.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle made the following comment: “Any day that taxpayers are liberated from the yoke of subsidizing Planned Parenthood is a good day for life, freedom and moral sanity. It certainly required courage for the four councilors to defy the leader of their own party ̶ Governor Sununu ̶ and they are to be commended for that.”
“Nonetheless, the vote underscores both the strength and weaknesses of Republican opposition to abortion. Morally, legally, historically and practically, contraception is the foundation stone, the building block, of abortion. You cannot underpin the former without, inevitably, elevating the latter.”
“Only David Wheeler did, entirely, the right thing.”
“Much of the responsibility for this moral schizophrenia rests with a Catholic Church which is too timid to defend its own teaching and with Catholics in the pro-life movement who are unwilling to discuss contraception for fear of alienating their evangelical allies. The Evangelicals may surprise them.”
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