Top Romney adviser Ed Gillespie defended the candidate’s promise to cut federal funding of Planned Parenthood if elected president on Fox News Sunday. “It’s not fair to say that not having federal funding for Planned Parenthood is defunding Planned Parenthood,” Gillespie said.
Gillespie was responding to host Chris Wallace’s reminder that Planned Parenthood performs crucial health services for women like cancer screenings as well as abortions. As we saw with the controversy from the Susan G. Komen foundation, Planned Parenthood gets the “lion’s share” of their funding from “private sector contributions” and “that’s not going to discontinue,” Gillespie argued. Gillespie reiterated that the reason Romney wants to cut government funding to the organization is over abortion.
In January 2011, the New York Times reported that Planned Parenthood receives over one-third of its budget from federal, state, and local government.
