Pro-life advocates were heartened by an important victory for life in Ohio, with a federal court ruling that the state can deny Planned Parenthood free taxpayer money if it chooses.

Here's what LiveAction had to report about it:

Earlier this month, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling and upheld a 2016 Ohio law that rerouted approximately $1.3 million in state funding from abortion facilities (like Planned Parenthood) to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). As Live Action News previously reported, “… Planned Parenthood… successfully managed to get an injunction blocking the law, with U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett ruling that stripping the abortion giant of its taxpayer funding would cause ‘irreparable injury.'” The Sixth Circuit disagreed, with Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing, “Private organizations do not have a constitutional right to obtain governmental funding to support their activities. The state… has no obligation to pay for a woman’s abortion. Case after case establishes that a government may refuse to subsidize abortion services.” Now, Ohio has followed through with its original plan and has defunded Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations in the state. The Associated Press reports that the Ohio Department of Health “notified recipients and contractors Thursday that it will end that funding within a month to comply with the law, unless the court delays the effect of its ruling as Planned Parenthood requested.”

If the rich people of Planned Parenthood want to pay for abortions now, they can hit up their celebrity backers for the cash, the taxpayers don't have to shell out.

Which is rightly the way it ought to be. It's astonishing to think how long it's gone on that Planned Parenthood could be mining taxpayer dollars at the same time it was profiting from the sale of baby parts from aborted children's bodies. The grim message of that proves that the bodies are real enough in comparison to what abortion advocates claim to be 'blobs of tissue' and those bodies have become commodities exchangeable for valuable money. The whole sickening scenario effectively says: 'we like your parts, o aborted babies, we just don't want you. We don't want you alive to enjoy them.'

And as numerous pro-life undercover groups have demonstrated, it's big business.

Planned Parenthood would have you like it's mainly a grassroots group of ordinary women wearing pink t-shirts and marching in the streets. But besides financing itself on what's effectively the sale (billed as 'expenses') of baby parts, it's also a big celebrity fundraiser draw, with Hollywood's finest wearing their pins on their gowns and holding glitzy fundraisers with them. Harvey Weinstein, of course, donated tons of money to Planned Parenthood, effectively concealing his sordid casting-couch activities through political correctness.

These people have millions. And yet the insane idea of forking over taxpayer money to them to bankroll their sick baby-killing profession that no respectable doctor wants to get involved with - continues. They've drawn it for so long they've decided they're entitled to it.

Fortunately, one of the federal district courts said no. They may appeal it, but the court's reasoning is airtight and there's a conservative, albeit apparently wimpy and evasive, Supreme Court to take it to next. That doesn't put them out of picture for federal funds, though LiveAction reports that they stand to lose $60 million if all states act as Ohio did. They can still get what they want through the legislatures, and that of course would require getting the consent of the voters. With the reality of their racket coming out, good luck with that one, word is getting around.

Ohio has always been a cutting-edge state, and now it's led the way. To paraphrase one of the most famous Ohioans: One small step for life, one giant leap for mankind...

Image credit: Jay Baker at Washington DC/Maryland GovPics, via Flickr // CC BY SA 2.0