From the SFLA Blog

Austin City Council Cuts Police Budget and Reallocates Taxpayer Funding Toward Abortion Services

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SFLA Staff - 19 Aug 2020

The Austin Police Department had their budget cut after a unanimous vote by the City Council redirected a portion of the department’s funding toward subsidizing abortion. The police department has faced criticism for the death of an unarmed Black and Latino man back in April, as well as what the public perceives to be an unnecessary use of force against people involved in anti-police brutality protests. The Council agreed to cut $150 million from the Austin Police Department’s budget for 2021 to fund solutions they think will help eradicate racism, such as abortion.

$23 million of police funding will go toward “health and social services,” which Texas Right to Life has pointed out will include “abortion access.” $250,000 of the police budget will also use taxpayer dollars to pay for underprivileged women to have abortions. Unfortunately, this is not the first time the Austin City Council has presented women with few options other than abortion. 

While state law is supposed to prohibit local and state governments from forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions, the Council has found discrete ways to direct taxpayer money toward abortion. In 2019, the Council set aside $150,000 to cover women’s abortion-related expenses, such as the cost of travel to the clinic, lodging, and childcare services while a woman is having the procedure done. 

Instead of helping to alleviate a poor woman’s fears about being able to afford a baby, the promise of having the cost of abortion taken care of validates misconceptions about this being a woman’s only option. Over 70% of post-abortive women have reported they only had an abortion because they felt pressured by their partners, family members, or their financial circumstances. Abortion cannot resolve issues related to poverty, nor can it dispel racial tensions – the entire abortion industry was founded on racism and eugenics. 

Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider in the country. Sanger was an advocate of eugenics, and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York recently denounced Sanger after the affiliate faced accusations of systemic racism. But it’s clear that abortion businesses still abide by their racist origins. 

Surgical abortion providers have a large presence in minority neighborhoods. Shockingly, in New York City, more babies are killed by abortion than are born. 

“For every 1,000 black babies born alive, there are 1,100 aborted each year in [New York City],” said Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation in an interview with The Stream. “The black community is the only community where there are more induced deaths than births… yet so-called ‘civil rights leaders,’ including the NAACP, call this deliberate destruction ‘reproductive justice.’”

If the Austin City Council wants to bring the community together, then it needs to come up with solutions that do not involve taxpayer-funded abortions. 

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