Students for Life launches national tour with truck filled with 328,348 socks representing aborted babies

SFLA President Kristan Hawkins appears in a screen capture of a video about the #SockIt2PP Truck Tour. | YouTube/studentsforlife

Students for Life of America (SFLA) has launched a national tour with a truck filled with 328,348 socks, representing the number of babies aborted by Planned Parenthood each year.

In a press release, SFLA announced that the #SockIt2PP Truck Tour will be visiting dozens of states and more than 90 college campuses this fall, in an effort to expose the violence of abortion.

The pro-life group will be holding a press conference to urge Congressional leaders to defund the abortion giant Planned Parenthood, which receives more than $500 million in taxpayer dollars each year.

"Planned Parenthood has lied to the American public, committed fraud with taxpayer dollars, and has been proven to sell the body parts of baby's they abort for profit," said SFLA President Kristan Hawkins.

"Yet, Congress continually fails to defund Planned Parenthood. The pro-life generation is sick of being told to wait until another election season has passed. We are expecting Congress to uphold their promises and stop subsidizing America's largest abortion vendor," she continued.

The group is planning to send the socks to Congress, and will be holding rallies in front of the offices of key Senators, including Joe Manchin, Bob Casey, Mitch McConnell, and Joe Donnelly, to urge them to take action against Planned Parenthood.

In April, SFLA delivered 100 baskets of socks to House Speaker Paul Ryan's office, in the hopes that he would prioritize defunding Planned Parenthood during budget negotiations.

A reconciliation bill that would have defunded the abortion provider failed in the Senate earlier this year after several Republican senators voted against the legislation.

Senator John McCain, who frequently votes pro-life and has voted to defund Planned Parenthood in the past, joined two probation Republicans to defeat the bill.

The Senate is expected to vote on another legislation that would repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood next week, but some Republican senators have already indicated their opposition to the bill.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said that he would vote against the measure because he says it does not fully repeal Obamacare. McCain remains uncommitted to the legislation, while Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are also expected to oppose the bill, as they had before.

President Donald Trump had vowed to sign a legislation that would defund Planned Parenthood, but the new effort is likely to fail as Republicans can only afford two "no" votes and still be able to break a tie with pro-life Vice President Mike Pence.

Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood officials have rejected an offer for an increase in funding if the organization stops performing abortions.