Senate votes to defund Planned Parenthood

The amendment, which is a part of a legislative effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act – President Barack Obama’s signature health care law – will nearly certainly be vetoed when the bill ends up in the Oval Office.

The U.S. Senate voted 52-48 Thursday against providing funding for Planned Parenthood, less than a week after a deadly attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The bill itself won’t become law; the president has already threatened to veto it. But Republicans are voting on it anyway to make statements about policy issues ranging from abortion to gun control to health care. Obamacare will still be the law of the land, and Republicans will be on the record as supporting legal loopholes that empower mass murderers. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of Republicans. “We’re wasting our time here today”.

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The Senate bill would all but erase the health care overhaul by dismantling some of its key pillars, such as requirements that most people obtain coverage and larger employers offer it to workers. It also would end an expansion of the federal-state Medicaid health program for the poor, though Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican, has said the legislation would provide a two-year transition to enable people to find alternative coverage.

Do away with the taxes imposed to cover the law’s costs, including levies on the income of higher-earning people, medical devices, and tanning salons. But they are expected to do that on Obamacare and Planned Parenthood legislation on Thursday, using a rare procedure known as “budget reconciliation” that requires only a majority vote.

Republicans fault the health care law for rising insurance premiums and deductibles and a diminished choice of insurers in some markets. That would drive up premiums, prompting healthy policyholders to drop coverage, causing still more rate increases, the government contends. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas threatened in October to oppose the legislation if it didn’t go further than a similar House-passed version. The fact that bills like this make their way to the Senate at all, that a hearty group of elected officials deem them worthy of a vote, validates these positions within public discourse.

Now is not the time to pull support (funding and otherwise) for Planned Parenthood.

According to Planned Parenthood’s annual report, 42% of its services go toward STD testing and treatment, 34% is contraception care, and 20% is cancer treatment and other women’s health needs.