Pro-life Americans have a rare opportunity this year to halt the flow of their hard-earned tax dollars to businesses that sell abortion. If ever there was a time to take matters into our own hands, this is it.

Congress has been involved in the budget process for some time now, and things will kick into higher gear when the House and Senate return to D.C. after Easter. Both chambers have passed a budget resolution and next up is the reconciliation process, a tool that makes it easier to pass legislation in the Senate by requiring just a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote threshold required for most bills.

Reconciliation is possible in the 119^th Congress because Republicans hold majorities in both chambers for the first time since 2017. And of course, we have a pro-life Republican in the White House.

Medicaid was established in 1965 to provide federal funds to states that wanted to help poor residents pay for certain medical procedures. The Hyde Amendment, adopted by Congress in 1976 and renewed every year since, severely limits a state’s ability to use Medicaid to pay for abortions. But as organizations that perform abortion and receive Medicaid funding are well aware, clever budgeting is all that’s needed to use tax dollars to help facilitate the killing of the unborn.

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What we want Congress to do through reconciliation is to stop providing Medicaid funding to any business, organization or medical practice that performs abortion as part of its menu of services. We’re looking at you, Planned Parenthood.

Last month, Priests for Life was part of Lobby Day, which sent hundreds of pro-life activists to the D.C. offices of House and Senate members. Executive Director Janet Morana and I visited with more than a dozen House members or their legislative staffs.

Now we have asked our supporters to go one step farther and visit the home state and district offices of their US Reps and Senators – both Republicans and Democrats. We want people to meet with those who already strongly agree with us and those who strongly disagree.  Every lawmaker needs to see the evidence of what every poll indicates: Americans do not want to pay for abortions.

(Click here to find the district offices for House members and senators).

The power and impact of visiting district offices on a matter of national importance can’t be overstated. Even though you usually don’t get to meet directly with your House member or senator, their staffers are charged with passing along your message. The people working in the D.C. office will hear about it, and it will reinforce everything that pro-life groups, both via letters and D.C. visits, have communicated. In fact, when someone visits their House member or senator, that one person is thought to represent 99 other people!

Thanks to President Trump – and the financial mess left behind by his predecessor – Americans have less tolerance than ever for wasteful spending. Providing hundreds of millions of dollars every year to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortion cartel, is the definition of wasteful. Let’s stop funding the abortion giant and everyone else who takes taxpayer dollars in one hand while ending innocent human lives with the other.

We don’t know what Congress will look like after the 2026 midterms. So we must take advantage of this opportunity right now. We have a 53-47 Republican majority, which means a defunding bill does not need the support of either of the two pro-abortion Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to pass. (If you live in those states, visit their offices anyway!)

This is our moment. We can’t let this opportunity slip through our grasp. Every American who believes in the sanctity of life has a chance to make a real difference for the unborn and their mothers.

For more details, visit the action arm of Priests for Life  ProLife Vote.

LifeNews.com Note:  Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life and the national pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.

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