A few pro-abortion Republican lawmakers could get in the way of plans to defund the nation’s largest abortion chain, Planned Parenthood.
The U.S. House passed a bill in May to defund the abortion group of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and repeal and replace Obamacare, but the U.S. Senate has yet to take action.
Politico reports a lot could hinge on U.S. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two Republicans who support the abortion chain. To pass, the bill would need 50 of the 52 votes from Senate Republicans, plus a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence, a pro-life Republican.
The news outlet speculated that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may consider taking the Planned Parenthood defunding section out of the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but other Senate leaders said that will not happen.
“We have a strong pro-life majority in the Senate, and so it’s going to be in there,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Politico.
Here’s more from the report:
Murkowski has repeatedly said she doesn’t think zeroing out Planned Parenthood’s funding should be part of the repeal bill. “I don’t think that it should even be part of the discussion about health care,” she said.
However, she has not gone as far as saying she would oppose a bill that includes it.
Collins has been more emphatic. She opposes cutting Planned Parenthood, but the federal funding is just one of several concerns she has with the Obamacare bill.
Every other Republican has supported eliminating funding in the past. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), perhaps the most vulnerable Republican up for reelection in 2018, said at an April town hall meeting that he wants to “protect” Planned Parenthood, but later said he opposes funding if the organization performs abortions.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
Both Murkowski and Collins have mixed voting records on pro-life issues, and both have supported the abortion group Planned Parenthood publicly and in the legislature, according to the National Right to Life Committee.
Some conservative Senate Republicans, while supportive of defunding Planned Parenthood, also have concerns about the bill, because they say it does not go far enough to fix the problems with Obamacare, according to the report.
The House version of the bill would eliminate more than $390 million (about 86 percent) of the annual federal funding to Planned Parenthood from all mandatory spending programs. The measure also would redirect funding to community health centers that outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities 20 to 1 and offer a wider array of health care services, but not abortions. The bill also would repeal Obamacare abortion subsidies.
The bill would close the largest pipeline for federal funding of Planned Parenthood, Medicaid, as well CHIP, Title V and Title X block grant programs.
Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report shows its taxpayer funding and abortion numbers are up, while its patient numbers, contraception and other health care services are down. In 2015, it performed 328,348 abortions on unborn babies, nearly 5,000 more than the previous year.
Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood leaders refused an offer for an increase in tax funding if they stopped doing abortions. CEO Cecile Richards called the offer “obscene and insulting,” making it very clear that abortions – not women’s health care – are essential to Planned Parenthood.
President Donald Trump promised to sign a bill that would defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
Efforts to defund the abortion chain gained more support in 2015 after the Center for Medical Progress began releasing undercover videos showing top Planned Parenthood officials possibly illegally selling aborted babies’ body parts.
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all 14:
- In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
- In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
- In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
- In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
- In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
- In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
- In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
- In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
- The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
- The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies. The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
- Unreleased Videos: Unreleased videos from CMP show Deb Vanderhei of Planned Parenthood caught on tape talking about how Planned Parenthood abortion business affiliates may “want to increase revenue [from selling baby parts] but we can’t stop them…” Another video has a woman talking about the “financial incentives” of selling aborted baby body parts.
- The 11th video: catches a Texas Planned Parenthood abortionist planning to sell the intact heads of aborted babies for research. Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing an illegal partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
- The 12th video in the series shows new footage of Jennefer Russo, medical director at Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, describing to undercover investigators how her abortion business tries to harvest intact aborted babies’ bodies for a local for-profit biotech company and changes the abortion procedure to do so.
- The 13th video: exposes a Planned Parenthood medical director admitting that babies born alive after abortion are sometimes killed.
- The 14th video: catches Planned Parenthood executives discussing gruesome abortion procedures and the sale of body parts from aborted babies for profit.
