Pro-Life groups blasted the GOP for failing –once again – to defund Planned Parenthood. Favored by groups like the American Life League, Family Research Council, and Susan B. Anthony List, and many others, the Graham-Cassidy Bill to replace Obamacare and defund planned parenthood was a strong step in the right direction on multiple important fronts.
However, because of RINO republicans like John McCain, Susan Collins, and misguided guardian of “principle,” Senator Rand Paul, Planned Parenthood will remain fully funded by the federal government. Falsely framing his decision to vote “No” as a stand for “principle,” Paul doesn’t seem to have the mind to grasp that incremental improvements, and opportunism are legitimate and effective tools for pushing grand legislative visions forward. Rand’s repeated, and childish, insistence that any legislation short of ‘absolute pure libertarian perfection’ is not worth supporting or advancing whatsoever means that Paul himself remains the largest barrier to restoring the Founder’s vision of the Constitution, and small government.
On Tuesday, the Senate Republicans failed to gather the required numbers of votes needed to undo the health care reform by the President Obama using the reconciliation process, which would require a simple majority. Those measures also included the language to redirect the $500 million which the Planned Parenthood receives each year from taxpayers to provide the women’s health centers that do not perform abortion. The death of the measure, and the third such attempt since President Trump’s appointment at the office, also ensured that hundreds of millions taxpayer dollars would continue to flow to the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Pro-life groups say that the GOP’s failure to defund the Planned Parenthood represented a betrayal of its promises made during the electoral campaigns. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, spent millions of dollars to elect the Republicans in the 2014 and 2016 elections, called that the failure to wrangle the necessary votes “completely unacceptable.”
In a statement she said, “The failure to pass this reconciliation bill means abortion giant Planned Parenthood remains funded by the taxpayers under a Republican Congress and President. This is completely unacceptable.”
Planned Parenthood celebrated this failure of passing another of the healthcare reform, vowing to perform even more abortions than ever before, and expanding its abortion and political advocacy operation. In a triumphant press release, Planned Parenthood announced, “more than 8,000 people will walk through Planned Parenthood’s doors, still able to access the basic, preventive health care they rely on.”
American Life League’s President Judie Brown said that she was not at all surprised by “Planned Parenthood’s celebration of the defeat” of the legislation. Democrats have blocked the legislation to divert the abortion provider’s funding from the taxpayer’s money to women’s health centers in 2015 among all the release of undercover videos which exposed the organ harvesting practices. Brown urged the pro-life lawmakers to put in renewed efforts in their fight. He said, “We must work harder than ever to defund these bloodthirsty advocates of death by abortion.”
Dannenfelser called on the Republicans to stop the funding for the Planned Parenthood at once as a separate initiative than that of Obamacare. “We call on Congress and the president to include the urgent priority of re-directing Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding to comprehensive health care providers in the FY18 reconciliation bill,” she said.
The window for passing a reconciliation budget bill closes on October 1st.
