’Tis the season for reflection and shopping, as nationwide many of us think about the people who give our lives meaning and consider how we want to express our affection. And with all due respect to the man in the red suit, central to this time of year is the story of a woman, a baby, taxes and a lack of options.

At Christmas we remember a poor family, struggling to welcome a baby with infinite potential to bring joy to the world, making a trip to answer a summons to pay the government what it thought it was due. That brings us, ironically enough, to Planned Parenthood, which makes a good living convincing women not to embrace the life in their wombs -- too often at taxpayers’ expense.

With a December 21 stopgap funding bill coming up and a new Congress preparing to come to town while broadcasting their gift list to constituents, now is the perfect time to ask why anyone wants to push the hopeless mission of Planned Parenthood with more than half a billion in hard earned taxpayer dollars. Services that Planned Parenthood has long touted as the reason it should get such a huge chunk of taxpayer funding are perpetually declining. Over the last 10 years of the abortion chain’s own annual reporting, things like Pap tests, manual breast exams, and even contraception have declined precipitously while abortions have increased by 11 percent to more 320,000 each year.

Defunding Planned Parenthood and redirecting those funds to programs that help strained families is not only a moral imperative, it is possible and also the best way to help those in need.

When I and other pro-life leaders met recently with White House officials to discuss the continued emphasis on defunding Planned Parenthood by Americans nationwide, we talked about five specific ways in which Planned Parenthood gets funds both to support its business model and to market its deadly product. This week, we’re in meetings with members of Congress to share the same message. Even in a divided Congress, these are ways to address the constant stream of taxpayer resources to the nation’s number one abortion vendor.

We asked that the president and this administration protect the American taxpayers from funding Planned Parenthood, including vetoing any budget that does not include Hyde Amendment protections, which prohibit funding abortions with federal dollars except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger. Expanding abortion funding in any new budget must be a non-starter.

Pro-life leaders also urged the Trump administration to formalize as quickly as possible the Protect Life rule for Title X regulations as a starting point for financially and physically separating abortion vendors like Planned Parenthood from federal family planning dollars. Not only has Planned Parenthood profited through these sales to the tune of $50 million to $60 million annually, it has used the program as a marketing tool, pushing its abortion product on a captive audience.

Also discussed was continued appointments of judges who respect life in law, as the courts have been used by Planned Parenthood repeatedly to force its agenda, including taking states to court when officials try to defund abortion vendors in favor of life-saving medical programs.

Advocates for women and their pre-born infants called for an end to funding fetal tissue research with taxpayer dollars as that forces taxpayers to encourage abortion vendors like Planned Parenthood to earn additional monies by callously harvesting and profiting the broken bodies of aborted babies for research.

And pro-life advocates also asked the administration to sever the connection between sex education and abortion vendors through restrictions on federal grants where possible. Planned Parenthood should not be able to use sex education programs as its own personal marketing slush fund to instruct teens to buy its products and engage in behaviors Planned Parenthood endorses, and then selling abortions to those same students when the advice and products fail.

The issue is not whether taxpayers should spend money to help women and their children, born and preborn, but how best to get those resources away from abortion vendors and to federally qualified health centers and other places offering full service, life-saving care.

Nobody goes to Planned Parenthood for a flu shot. As the abortion behemoth cuts back on things like drug testing and cancer screenings and even the number of patient visits, we’ve seen one area of growth– abortions.

Planned Parenthood tells women that they really can’t multi-task, achieving at work and in their relationships, and also find balance in love and life. Its hopeless sales pitch leaves many hurting women behind after a life is ended for a fee.

At Christmas time, as we celebrate the world-changing power of a life begun in a humble setting, redirecting taxpayer monies to places that help all taxpayers (present and future) is the right move and one that recognizes the potential in every woman’s story.