No More Taxpayer Funding of Planned Parenthood

I read with interest a Jan. 22 letter in the Concord Monitor questioning what the funding of Planned Parenthood has to do with the economy ("What happened to that economic focus," Sunday Monitor, Jan. 22). The answer? Quite a bit, actually.

Any time taxpayer money is involved, it is a matter of the economy. The clear message has been that the majority of taxpayers do not want any of their money to go toward abortions – neither directly nor indirectly through overhead and administrative costs.

More to the point, in these difficult economic times when we have been forced to deeply cut budgets, the taxpayers should not be forced to fund any "nonprofit" organization that's capable of funding itself.

In 2009, Planned Parenthood reported a profit of $21.7 million. In 2010 it reported a profit of $5.6 million. It claims economic hardship has forced it to turn away patients in need of prescriptions, yet its CEO last year made three times the salary of our governor.

The organization also spent nearly $700,000 on public affairs, over $151,000 on lobbying legislators and almost $450,000 on "improving its branding." It even had enough money to transfer more than $200,000 over to its political action committee. I'd say unnecessary taxpayer funding is very much correlated to the economy.

State Rep. Pete Silva, R-Nashua

NH House Deputy Majority Leader