Planned Parenthood voluntarily opted out of the federal family planning grant program after the Trump administration enforced a rule that makes a clear distinction between abortion and birth control, so the abortion industry giant is now pressing state taxpayers into providing those funds instead.

Planned Parenthood walked out of the Title X federal family planning program when the Trump administration enforced its Protect Life Rule that bars the grant funds from being used to “perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.”

Democrat-led states such as New Jersey, however, have pressed their taxpayers into coughing up the funding Planned Parenthood left on the table.

In New Jersey, for example, Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy recently signed into law a measure that provides $9.5 million in taxpayer funds, most of it to Planned Parenthood, to make up for the abortion providers’ decision to give up the federal family planning funding.

Now, Maine and Connecticut taxpayers are facing the same ordeal, as Democrats are vowing to use state funds to come to the aid of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers after they refused to accept the terms of the rule and walked out of the family planning program.

“This story is so disgusting on so many levels,” Maine State Rep. Lawrence Lockman (R), told Breitbart News, about the state’s Democrat Speaker of the House Sara Gideon’s push for taxpayers to provide $3 million to abortion providers that gave up the federal funding.

Lockman, president of conservative nonprofit Maine First Project and now a candidate for State Senate, said Gideon and the Democrat majorities in the legislature have been “doing the bidding of Planned Parenthood since last year when they enacted a Medicaid abortion mandate.”

“It was signed into law by Democrat Gov. Janet Mills, forcing Maine taxpayers to pick up the tab for elective abortions through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason or no reason,” Lockman said. “The legislation also requires private insurance companies to provide abortion coverage.”

Remember this? We said we wouldn’t forget — and we didn’t. Neither have Mainers. Brace yourself, @SenSusanCollins. Accountability is coming Nov. 3rd. #WeDecide2020 https://t.co/Sn1yU5tL3h — Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) January 28, 2020

Gideon has since won Planned Parenthood’s endorsement over incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, a pro-abortion rights Republican.

Lockman said the race between Collins and Gideon “will be the most expensive political campaign in Maine history.”

“Now Gideon is sponsoring legislation to force Maine taxpayers to restore federal funding Planned Parenthood lost when the organization refused to abide by new federal rules,” he explained, adding:

Gideon’s push for Maine taxpayers to pony up $3 million to abortion providers, at a time when over a thousand seriously disabled and elderly Mainers languish on the notorious Medicaid waitlists, is disgusting. Under her leadership, the legislature has refused repeated requests to fully fund medical care for these individuals. Gideon would rather kill new Mainers in the womb than provide needed medical care for old Mainers. The only relief Gideon and her party have offered Mainers on waitlists is assisted suicide, passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Mills last year.

Earlier this week, we commemorated the 47th anniversary of #RoevWade and celebrated @PPact’s endorsement. I wanted to share more about what reproductive rights mean to me – and how much is at stake in 2020. https://t.co/ZfDKaSJ8sm — Sara Gideon (@SaraGideon) January 26, 2020

“There may not be a quid pro quo at work here, but it sure smells swampy,” Lockman asserted. “Gideon gets endorsed by the abortion industry, and quickly follows up with a bill to stuff the abortion providers’ pockets with Maine tax dollars.”

On Thursday, lawmakers pushed the bill, L.D. 1613, titled, An Act Regarding Women’s Health and Economic Security, at a press conference that featured a biological woman who identifies as a man who stated Planned Parenthood and Maine Family Planning saved her life.

“When I told my provider at Planned Parenthood that I preferred a different pronoun than the one that stood on my legal documents, she immediately changed it in the system, and asked me if I had considered hormone therapy,” the woman, who uses the name Sonny Shouse, said, according to the Maine Beacon. “I couldn’t help but cry.”

“Make no mistake, for many of these patients this is the only health care provider that they are seeing,” Gideon said at the press conference, according to the Associated Press.

Maine business owner Penny Morrell, testified in opposition to the legislation.

Morrell observed in her testimony, sent to Breitbart News, that Planned Parenthood’s decision to opt out of the federal Title X grant program “proved what pro-lifers suspected all along – that services intended for Title X funds and abortions done on the same premises could be mingled.”

Morrell said:

L.D. 1613, introduced as a Concept Draft bill last year, with wording released just days before the scheduled hearing today, will replace federal funds lost to PP and FP with state funds. Six in ten Americans oppose taxpayer funding for abortion. It is just plain wrong to sneak this bill in the last months of the 129th session and move it along in such a speedy way, giving people not much time to even notice, much less prepare testimony and ways to oppose it.

In Connecticut, Democrat Gov. Ned Lamont is proposing that state taxpayers fill Planned Parenthood’s coffers with $1.2 million and other abortion providers with $380,000 after they voluntarily abandoned the federal family planning program.

Planned Parenthood “scrambled and reached out to donors for help,” reported WTNH News.

“To keep the full range of reproductive options available and affordable,” said Lamont.

“Fundamentally, the Title X program is focused on meeting a public health need and that’s a need that all communities and all people should support,” said Amanda Skinner, president of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, referring to the Trump administration’s Protect Life Rule as a “gag rule.”

“There’s been an assault on health care coming out of Washington, D.C., over the last 3½ years at the White House, and there’s been a direct assault on women’s health care coming out of the Trump administration,” said Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Robert Duff (D), according to the Journal Inquirer.

“The Senate Democratic caucus wants to put our money where our mouth is, and ensure that we are continuing to protect women, we’re continuing to protect and advocate for good health care solutions for everyone, and that we’re not leaving the poorest of the poor out in the dark,” he said.

However, Peter Wolfgang, executive director of Family Institute of Connecticut, emphasized in a statement to Breitbart News that Planned Parenthood “voluntarily chose to give up federal funds rather than give up abortion.”

“It proves again that abortion is what they are really all about,” he added. “Connecticut taxpayers should not have to pay extra for Planned Parenthood’s love affair with death. We will oppose giving state taxpayers’ money to the abortion giant.”

Planned Parenthood’s annual report released in January states the organization performed 11,373 more abortions in the year 2017-2018 than the previous year, as it also took in $1.67 billion in revenue.