JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi Senate voted on Wednesday to defund the abortion giant Planned Parenthood by preventing the organization from participating in its Medicaid program.

Sending the matter now to the House, in a 34-17, the Senate approved S.B. 2238, which reads, “Effective upon passage of this act, the Division of Medicaid, Office of the Governor, is prohibited from reimbursing Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) for family planning services.”

“The idea that we would take state tax dollars, which these are, and provide to an entity like Planned Parenthood, which is the number one abortion provider in the country, is just mind blowing,” said bill author Sen. Joey Fillingane. “I can’t believe that we would do it, and when I found out that we were in fact making some small reimbursements to Planned Parenthood in Mississippi, I just had to file a bill.”

There is only one Planned Parenthood location in Mississippi, and it does not perform abortions, but the majority of Senators agreed with Fillingane that the state should not be affiliated with the organization. The Hattieburg location had been receiving occasional reimbursement for birth control.

“You are the company you keep, and by Mississippi reimbursing Planned Parenthood through Medicaid, we are keeping that company,” Senate Medicaid Committee Chairman Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, told reporters.

Fillingane said that Planned Parenthood provides referrals to the Jackson abortion facility and others out of state, and so he believes it is all the same in aiding an organization that helps women obtain abortions. He said that there are a number of entities in the state that provide women’s health services that aren’t involved with abortion.

“There are many other non-Planned Parenthood clinics and agencies that can provide these other services that the critics want to talk about,” Fillingane said.

“So it’s not as though you’re denying any services to, you know, poor women or women that can’t afford these treatments. They can go to the local health departments and get the same type of service that they can get at this clinic,” he continued. “The only difference is The Mississippi Department of Health and the health clinics are not also providing abortions, and so the monies that we send to those agencies do not also subsidize abortions in the state or in this country.”

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves issued a press release about the vote, expressing his approval of the move.

“The taxpayers of the state of Mississippi do not want and should not be forced to spend money on Planned Parenthood,” he said. “This legislation ensures taxpayers’ dollars are funding services that support women’s health through family planning needs, reducing the teen pregnancy rate and lowering the infant mortality rate.”

“I am committed to making Mississippi the safest place in America for an unborn child,” Reeves declared.

As previously reported, Planned Parenthood was founded in 1921 by Sanger, and was originally known as the American Birth Control League. She later changed the name as some found it offensive.

“Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches,” she wrote in a 1920’s newsletter. “I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity, no less than capitalism.”

Sanger, who was a staunch advocate of eugenics, also wrote in “The Pivot of Civilization,” “Constructive eugenics … shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all—that the wealth of individuals and of states is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.”

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