Is UMDNJ The New Planned Parenthood?
If you’ve been following the snooze lately, you might have heard that NJ’s own UMDNJ tried to force nurses with religious or moral objections into assisting with abortions, which seems to be a violation of Federal and State law. UMDNJ has countered by arguing that they are requiring their nurses to assist with “pre-” and “post-” care, which sounds like a case of testing semantics to me. Regardless of if their order for nurses to assist at any point violates the federal or state law, there seems to be another, much larger problem that is going unnoticed in the snooze; UMDNJ performs abortions.
Maybe that’s old news to you the reader, but it was news to me because, at least as far as I knew, federal law, specifically the Hyde Amendment, prohibits federal tax dollars from funding abortions. UMDNJ boasts on it’s website “Over the last five years, UMDNJ has attracted $628 million in federal research grants.” In other words, UMDNJ has received $628 million in federal dollars, and performs abortions. They may or may not have received funds directly for abortions, but it wasn’t so long ago that the US House Voted for strip funding from Planned Parenthood after similar concerns about abortions being performed there were brought to light.
It also seems important to note that NJ Governor Chris Christie, who seems to be openly pro-life, and “as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Christie led a federal takeover of UMDNJ in 2005 amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement and political corruption at the institution.” More recently, Governor Chris Christie gave an OK to merge UMDNJ, where abortions are performed and federal tax money is sent, with Rutgers, the State University of NJ, that also receives state, and probably federal money. The best I can hope is that, like me, Chris Christie will find it news that UMDNJ performs abortions, but unlike me, he’ll be able to do something about it. And, in the opinion of this Average No One, this issue should matter to you regardless of if you are pro-life or pro-choice because the issue is really about where your federal tax money is going, and if a federal law is being broken by spending your tax money on abortions.
Posted: November 14th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Abortion, Planned Parenthood, UMDNJ | Tags: Abortion, Planned Parenthood, UMDNJ | 3 Comments »