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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 31, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) recently sent a letter to federal senators and representatives urging them to defund Planned Parenthood and stop taxpayer money from funding services such as abortions and transgender procedures that “gravely violate human dignity.”

Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Bishop Robert Barron and Toledo, Ohio, Bishop Daniel Thomas, the chairmen of the USCCB’s marriage and pro-life committees, respectively, wrote the letter last Thursday to “affirm our support for stopping taxpayer funding of the abortion and ‘gender transition’ industries.”

The letter was sent following the announcement that the Trump administration plans to freeze millions of taxpayer dollars from subsidizing abortion services via the federal Title X program.

The bishops addressed the senators on the same day hundreds of pro-life advocates went to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to cut the “funding of the abortion industry in the budget reconciliation process,” the prelates said.

“Necessary, long-standing, and historically bipartisan policies like the Hyde Amendment help prevent public funding for elective abortions themselves,” the bishops said, citing the decades-old rule that forbids federal funding of most abortions.

“Yet Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S. at over 390,000 preborn children killed per year (about 40% of the total), still receives nearly $700 million annually — about a third of its revenue — from taxpayers,” they noted.

The letter further argued that federal funds to Planned Parenthood must be cut not just to limit abortion but also the gender ideology the organization promotes.  

Planned Parenthood is “the nation’s ‘second-largest provider of hormone therapy’ for patients attempting ‘gender transition,’” the bishops said. 

“The off-label use of hormones and puberty blockers has proven to be a lucrative billion-dollar business in an ever-growing market,” they wrote. “Planned Parenthood offers ‘gender transition’ services at nearly 450 clinics across the nation, surpassing the number of its locations that perform abortions.”

Planned Parenthood itself has admitted that most of these patients leave their first visit with a hormone prescription, the bishops noted.

“As the rate of these destructive services has dramatically increased, so too has government funding,” the bishops said. They asked Congress to put the money toward supporting families in need rather than helping harmful services be carried out.

“As you consider how to best steward taxpayer resources in the weeks ahead, we call upon you to stop funding abortion and ‘gender transition’ industries that gravely violate human dignity. Instead, we urge you to prioritize the needs of struggling families so they can flourish,” the bishops said.