How many laws can you break and still keep federal funding?

If you’re Planned Parenthood, which receives $350 million from taxpayers as part of its $1 billion annual revenues, the answer is: Nobody knows.

Certainly not Congress. The House on July 24 voted 247 to 183 to reject a bill by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) to discontinue federal funding for the group.

This resounding congressional support comes despite the “sting” operation that caught Planned Parenthood counselors ignoring laws requiring them to report statutory rape of minors and urging the minors instead to lie to protect the man involved. Or the tapes that revealed PP solicitors responding enthusiastically to callers purporting to give money specifically to kill black babies.

Or the drama now unfolding in South Dakota, where Planned Parenthood is thumbing its nose at a state law requiring them to fully inform women before brandishing the scalpel at the Sioux Falls clinic.

Enacted in 2005, the law mandates that women are told that “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” The law also requires that possible mental and physical consequences be mentioned, and options such as crisis pregnancy centers.

To ensure compliance, the state Health Department crafted this language as a guide:

“The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being; the term “Human Being” means, for the purpose of this and following disclosures, ‘an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens during its embryonic and fetal ages.’”

But Planned Parenthood’s client form replaces “human being” with “living organism,” undercutting the law’s intent:

“South Dakota requires that you be informed that, as a matter of biology, the abortion will terminate a developing, living organism (an ‘embryo’ or ‘fetus’) of the human species (‘Homo sapiens’) that, in the absence of abnormality, has a complete, separate genetic makeup that is unique to that embryo or fetus.”

Harold Cassidy, attorney for the Alpha Center and other pro-life groups, points out this creepy discrepancy in a July 28 letter to South Dakota’s Secretary of Health:

“The Statute requires a straight forward statement that is easily understood by a lay person, that the abortion terminates the life of a human being. The precise language was carefully selected by the Legislature. The language used by Planned Parenthood not only fails to use the clear and proper language, but Planned Parenthood’s language is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading and very confusing.” Continued...