Why shut down the government over Planned Parenthood?

“I’m not talking about republicans, I’m talking about Americans who look at these videos from Planned Parenthood and are just sickened by it”, said Representative Chris Stewart, ( R ) Ut. The Senate has not yet acted on the issue. It, too, faces likely Senate defeat and an Obama veto threat.

The federal government could be headed for a shutdown at the end of the month, over funding for Planned Parenthood.

If it sounds as if the House, facing a looming shutdown deadline, wasted a day of work passing two anti-abortion bills that will inevitably fail, that’s because it did. Note, the vote largely fell along partisan lines, but not completely – three Republicans voted with the Democratic minority, while two Dems voted with the majority. Pundits widely saw her remarks-when she spoked about a series of undercover videos a pro-life group recorded of Planned Parenthood employees discussing the intentional preservation of aborted fetal tissue for medical research-as a break-out moment for Ms. Fiorina, who has lagged in the polls despite recent gains.

“This time they’ve manufactured a witch hunt based on heavily edited videos that were clearly meant to mislead the public and the Congress”, Schakowsky said. “Aborting live babies for profit – why would anybody want to spend tax dollars for that?” Longstanding Federal policy already prohibits the use of Federal funds for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of a woman would be endangered. H.R. 3504 strengthens penalties for health providers who violate the 2002 Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. Ted Cruz both advocating for the measure. Dannenfelser has been very clear that she opposes rape exceptions in abortion bans, which she has called “abominable”, “regrettable” and ” intellectually dishonest”, but will urge lawmakers to support a bill that has to contain such exceptions for political reasons.

Now Boehner is faced with the prospect of cutting a deal with House Democrats to keep the government open.

Hillary Clinton said Republican efforts to yank federal funding for Planned Parenthood would not stop abortions, but would deny millions of poor women health-care services, including cancer screenings.

Some conservatives in Boehner’s party said Friday’s votes weren’t enough to bring them on board, particularly because President Barack Obama has said he would veto both abortion measures if they reached his desk.

Solicitor General Lee Rudofsky contended that the Medicaid program offers “similar services” through other health care providers and that the video footage filmed by an anti-abortion group provided adequate reasoning to cut off funding.

“In fact, there were over 4 million visits to Planned Parenthood clinics past year , and over 90 percent of this was basic women’s health care, and not abortions”.

That’s around one-third of the $1.3 billion yearly budget for the organization, which has almost 700 clinics.

Conservatives’ determination to block Planned Parenthood’s money has been partly fueled by the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination.