All six Republican members of Alabama’s House delegation voted in favor Friday of two anti-abortion bills, including a one-year moratorium on funding to Planned Parenthood.
Advertisement
Planned Parenthood gets around $450 million yearly in federal payments, mostly Medicaid reimbursements for handling low-income patients, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The measure stands little chance of enactment, since Senate Democrats have enough votes to block it and for good measure the White House has promised a veto. The bill would add criminal penalties of fines or imprisonment for a health care practitioner violating the Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002.
Although President Barack Obama has pledged to veto both bills if they’re presented to him, Friday’s vote gives abortion foes in Congress a way to publicly decry the family planning organization in a fashion that won’t lead to a government shutdown.
Eric Ferrero, a spokesman for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said before the vote that the opponents in Congress were using the video controversy to advance their agenda against abortion.
A significant majority of Republicans would support Boehner if he were to press for a temporary bill disentangled from the dispute over Planned Parenthood.
In a video released in July, actors posed as buyers and sat down with Planned Parenthood doctor Deborah Nucatola, who discussed selling hearts, lungs, livers and muscles from aborted fetuses. As Black herself stated about her bill, “What’s more, Planned Parenthood can get the money back if they fully commit to women’s healthcare and stop performing abortions”. The group behind them says they show Planned Parenthood breaking laws regulating fetal tissue donation for the goal of medical research – specifically, profiting off the tissue and altering procedures to obtain intact parts – which Planned Parenthood denies.
The Planned Parenthood issue has been partly fueled by the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
Passing a short-term spending bill, along with Franks’s separate measure, is a better path that will leave Republicans on high ground, he said.
During the floor debate, Republicans argued the two bills had nothing to with a potential shutdown and were focused instead on stopping any federal support for an organization they said engaged in illegal and immoral activity.
In August Alabama, New Hampshire, and Louisiana each voted to strip Planned Parenthood of funding from their state budgets.
“We ought to be very clear that planned parenthood has served to provide health care necessary health care for millions of women”, Clinton responded late Thursday.
Advertisement
Sen. Ted Cruz speaks during a rally opposing federal funding for Planned Parenthood in front of the U.S. Capitol July 28.
