Thousands of people have made donations to Planned Parenthood in the name of Vice President-elect Mike Pence, an opponent of abortion, so that he will receive an official award from women's health care provider, the group said Tuesday.
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The idea of donating in Pence's name spread on social media as a form of protest after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency last week in what came as a surprise to many.
A number of celebrities have publicized the donation campaign in Pence's name, with posts on social media including Emmy Award-winning comedian Amy Schumer and actresses Ashley Hinshaw, Jaime Perry and Amber Tamblyn.
They said their donations to Planned Parenthood included the address of Pence's office in Indiana so he would get the official acknowledgement that Planned Parenthood mails to donors.
At least 20,000 people who have donated money since the U.S. election on Nov. 8 named Pence as a donor, out of 160,000 people overall, a Planned Parenthood spokesman told Reuters Tuesday.
Planned Parenthood has also reported an overall surge in donations and demand for long-acting contraceptives since Trump's election. Both Trump and Pence, his running mate, have pledged to curtail women's rights to abortion.
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Trump said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Roe v Wade legalizing abortion should be overturned and that he would appoint an anti-abortion justice to the nation's highest court.
Trump also said women who had abortions should be punished but later said it was doctors who perform abortions who should be punished.
Pence, whose home state of Indiana has restrictive laws regulating access to abortion, has pushed for Congress to defund the nonprofit Planned Parenthood which sometimes performs the operation.
As Indiana’s governor, Pence signed a law this year, later blocked by a federal judge, which would have banned abortions and criminalized the collection of fetal tissue for research, as well as requiring fetal tissue be buried or cremated and made women look at their fetal ultrasounds before getting an abortion.
Planned Parenthood, which has more than 650 health centers nationwide, relies on public funding for about 40 percent of its funding. Private donations comprise about one quarter of its revenue, it said in its 2016 annual report.