Mike Johnson, Who Monitors Son’s Porn Intake, Says Trump Will ‘Absolutely’ Defund ‘Big Abortion’

Johnson further claimed there are “over 2,700 pregnancy resource centers,” or CPCs, that are “helping more and more women choose life.” He continued, “I’m so grateful that SBA and the [anti-abortion organization] Charlotte Lozier Institute have been so instrumental in raising awareness about these important centers, which provide comprehensive care for the vulnerable. And, you know what, they outnumber big abortion providers 15-to-1, so that’s something we can celebrate.” 

As a refresher, CPCs are the disinformation-peddling facilities that exist solely to prey on people seeking abortion, usually by posing as abortion clinics and lying to these individuals to convince them to not have abortions. In the process, they effectively mine people’s private medical data and sometimes stalk and harass them for weeks to pressure them against abortion. Watchdog organizations warn that CPCs, many of which fall under the umbrella of one larger anti-abortion organization known as Heartbeat International, “play a central role in surveillance of pregnant people in such a vigilante system” and are “the ultimate movement building tool of the anti-abortion movement.” Since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, CPCs have received hundreds of millions more in state funding in states that ban abortion, like Texas and Florida. (Texas allocated $5 million for crisis pregnancy centers in 2005; by 2024, that number ballooned to $140 million, and the legislature just advanced a budget bill to increase that to $210 million for the next fiscal year.) Johnson has now made clear that he’s determined to redirect funding for reproductive health organizations like Planned Parenthood in order to give even more to these anti-abortion propaganda centers. 

Johnson’s speech comes just a month after the Trump administration froze over $65 million in Title X grants for Planned Parenthood affiliates and other reproductive care providers across the country, claiming these organizations promote “DEI” and should be punished for serving undocumented immigrant patients. HuffPost reports that in the month since this Title X funding was slashed, at least six out of 600 Planned Parenthood health centers across the country have been forced to close.

Low-income and rural patients, especially, rely on Title X-funded clinics—not just for lifesaving sexual and reproductive health care, but for the full range of health care in general. About 60% of Title X patients say their Title X clinic is their only source of health care. As Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill-Johnson has stressed, withholding Title X grants inevitably threatens lives: “We know what happens when health care providers cannot use Title X funding: People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation’s STI crisis worsens,” she said in a statement last month about frozen Title X grants. 

On top of all of this, the conservative Supreme Court is slated to rule on a key case brought forth by South Carolina to determine if states can exclude Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs. If the Supreme Court sides with South Carolina—which is also joined by the Trump administration in its case—this could cost Planned Parenthood nearly all federal funding. 

“Nineteen million Planned Parenthood supporters in all 50 states are prepared to fight like hell to stop this egregious attack on their health care and make clear yet again that patients—not the government—should be in control of their own medical decisions,” McGill-Johnson told HuffPost of Johnson’s speech. “‘Defunding’ Planned Parenthood would be catastrophic to communities, put countless lives at risk and wreak havoc on our public health system.”

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