(RepublicanInformer.com)- Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed $20 million in anti-abortion budget line items aimed to promote expecting moms and adoption programs, calling pro-life pregnancy centers “fake health clinics.”
Democrat Whitmer signed a $76 billion state budget through 2023 into law Wednesday, focusing on investments in the economy, employment, public health, and public safety.
She vetoed $20 million in pro-life money set aside by Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature.
Her vetoes included $10 million for a marketing initiative advocating adoption over abortion, $3 million for “childbirth and alternatives to abortion,” and $100,000 for the legal defense of a prohibition on gender reassignment procedures or treatments in state prisons.
Bobby Leddy, the governor’s spokesperson, said women and skilled medical practitioners should make health care decisions, not politicians. The spox said that while politicians in other states rush to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, Michigan must respect a woman’s medical decision-making with her trusted doctor.
Leddy said the governor could not support a law that gives millions of government funds to bogus health clinics that actively hide information from women about their health, bodies, and reproductive rights.
He alleged they employ misleading advertising to target young and low-income women seeking abortion treatment, portraying themselves as complete, licensed health care clinics that give all alternatives, then lying to them about medical realities.
Republican state Rep. Thomas Albert, who leads the House Appropriations Committee, said Whitmer’s vetoes denying pro-life money “supports just one option for women in a crisis pregnancy – abortion.”
Albert said it’s astounding that the governor and her far-left followers are so radical that assisting pregnant women in contemplating adoption is a bridge too far.
He said that the budget should have been better. This financing wasn’t about abortion; it was about aiding women in need and maintaining life, and he’s unhappy the governor vetoed it.
After the Supreme Court judgment in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortion remained lawful in Michigan due to a judge’s injunction in a Planned Parenthood case challenging a 1931 state statute barring abortion unless it is “essential to protect” life.
