The debate surrounding funding for Planned Parenthood in Congress could lead the federal government towards another shutdown.
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“So, as Republican leaders begin a week of show votes on an unconstitutional, risky bill to restrict women’s health and rights, and on defunding Planned Parenthood and taking away critical health care services millions of people rely on each year, I’m calling on them once again to finally learn their lesson, drop the politics, and join Democrats to work on another bipartisan budget”.
Ahead of the vote, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, drew a line between Democrats’ pro-choice views and the bill his party was trying to pass.
That plan was immediately rejected by the chamber’s top Democrat. “And that means a clean funding bill now so that we aren’t wasting time“. The 20-week ban vote, Politico says, was a “largely symbolic” move to try to appease very angry ultra-conservatives and keep them from shutting down the government.
She added that the “truest test to date of Democrats’ allegiances” will occur when the Senate votes on her recently passed legislation to divest Planned Parenthood clinics that perform abortions of federal funding for one year.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the vote will create a “real hard time squeeze”. “It’s really a shame we’re on the verge of another unnecessary crisis”.
The organization has been under fire for weeks after secretly-taped videos produced by an anti-abortion group recorded Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of fetal tissue harvested from abortions. But, amid all the differing opinions, there are facts about Planned Parenthood, what it does, and how it spends its money, that are just that – facts.
He said he did not know whether the House of Representatives would embrace such a bill, however.
That process would allow Republicans to halt grant funds for Planned Parenthood and also eliminate funding the organization receives by treating low-income patients who rely on Medicaid.
McConnell’s spending measure would give the Obama administration much of what it asked for, while while saying no to a request to revive the Export-Import Bank. That measure wouldn’t address government funding.
“I’m not happy that we have been forced into pursuing a C.R. instead of the normal appropriations process”, he said on Tuesday.
Senate Democrats blocked an attempt by Republicans to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, an outcome that was all but certain as the prospect of a government shutdown looms. Cruz has been a wildcard in the spending debate since 2013 when he played a major role in forcing a government shutdown in order to defund Obamacare. “Overwhelmingly the people rejected the shutdown of the government”.
“If they (Republicans) want to raise teenage girls’ babies, go for it I guess”.
House of Delegates Speaker Tim Armstead announced Tuesday he sent a letter to the state Department of Health and Human Resources asking the agency to detail all state funding it has provided to Planned Parenthood.
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Republicans also view the measure as the next big front in the abortion wars more than a decade after Congress banned partial-birth abortions.
