Abortion foes say the videos show Planned Parenthood has violated federal prohibitions against profiting from fetal tissue sales or changing some abortion procedures to maximize the harvesting of fetuses’ organs.
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A functional, operational government is in jeopardy right now because Republicans, led by a conservative faction in the House, are pushing their leaders to link federal spending with a push to defund Planned Parenthood. Democrats moved to block the measure alongside two Republicans, pulling in a 54-42 vote that fell short of the 60 vote cloture threshold needed to proceed.
Nationally: The best estimate the Congressional Budget Office has of how many patients would be affected is as high as one-quarter of Planned Parenthood’s 2.6 million patients, working out to about 650,000 people.
He said he did not know whether the House of Representatives would embrace such a bill, however.
Planned Parenthood and the possible shutdown was, not surprisingly, the focus of Senate Democrats’ closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday.
After Thursday’s vote, the Republican leader will then likely ask the Senate to approve a straight-forward stopgap funding bill, as soon as Saturday, without the Planned Parenthood provision, sources said. He also has said that efforts to halt Planned Parenthood’s money won’t succeed unless Obama is replaced by a Republican president in next year’s elections.
The latest Economist/YouGov poll finds Americans narrowly oppose defunding Planned Parenthood.
“We applaud today’s vote by the U.S. Senate opposing a ban on abortions after 20 weeks”.
Congress must pass new funding legislation by October 1 to avoid a government shutdown.
The idea is that the House would have no option other than to pass the measure or spark a shutdown that the great majority of Republicans fear could harm the party. “Everything. They’re willing to try to close the government”.
Republicans have been targeting Planned Parenthood funding since an anti-abortion group released undercover videos critics claim show Planned Parenthood executives discussing the illegal sale of aborted fetuses for medical research.
The stopgap measure announced Tuesday would redirect about $235 million from Planned Parenthood, the women’s reproductive health organization, to community health centers.
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Planned Parenthood has apologized for comments in the videos but says it has broken no laws. John Thune – the No. 3 ranking Senate Republican – responded with just one word: “Hopefully”. “Walking around that last time was about the most depressing thing I’ve been through in my 22 years of being at NIH”, Dr. Collins said. In a statement yesterday, Murray said, “As Republican leaders have said themselves, there is no education in the second kick of a mule – which is why it’s so disappointing that we are once again staring down a government shutdown over Republican political pandering”. As Politico points out, Senator Lindsey Graham had been trying to get the bill to a floor vote for some time, introducing a 20 week-ban bill earlier this year just weeks after a federal appeals court ruled that 20-week abortion bans are unconstitutional.
