Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush declared to
Newsmax TV on Wednesday that he would defund Planned Parenthood by executive action because his Catholic faith "informs my belief that life is a gift from God."
"I will — and it can be done by executive action," Bush, who served two terms as Florida's governor, told "Newsmax Now" hosts J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman. "President [Ronald] Reagan used his authority to do it, and it was contested in the courts and he won."
Bush said that Reagan's victory — ultimately decided by the Supreme Court in 1991, two years after he left office — set "the precedent" for stripping Planned Parenthood of its federal funding and that he would do so through line-item budget vetoes.
"This defunding can be done the way I did it in Tallahassee," he said.
"There's ways to support women's health issues without supporting an organization that participates in about a third of all the abortions that take place in this country."
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Bush converted to Catholicism in 1995. His faith plays a critical role in all of his decisions, particularly when it comes to protecting "the most vulnerable in our society.
"My faith informs everything about me, about my life," he told Newsmax. "I am comforted by my faith — that it gives me a serenity to make decisions.
"I pray before I have to make decisions. It's usually important. It informs my belief that life is a gift from God, that we're all here for a purpose that is divinely inspired and that we should protect life from beginning to end.
"It is an important part of my life — and as governor of the state of Florida once again I had a chance to act on it, not just talk about it," he said. "I did it on behalf of the most vulnerable in our society, on behalf of the unborn, on behalf of frail elders.
"It's something that's really important to me."