Abortion Has Held Up the Budget Before, But the Stakes Are Higher This Time

A shut­down looms. Again.

Con­gress has only five days left to pass a budget be­fore the end of the fisc­al year, and fed­er­al fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood is cre­at­ing an obstacle on the floor. On Tues­day, Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell in­tro­duced a tem­por­ary meas­ure for gov­ern­ment fund­ing, with de­tails to de­fund Planned Par­ent­hood. This is ex­pec­ted to be voted on Thursday.

This wouldn’t be the first gov­ern­ment shut­down or fund­ing gap, and it wouldn’t be the first time that abor­tion has played a role. There have been 18 pre­vi­ous fund­ing gaps, at least sev­en of which in­volved con­cerns over wheth­er gov­ern­ment pro­grams—most prom­in­ently Medi­caid—could fund abor­tions.

In 1977, there were three con­sec­ut­ive fund­ing gaps ran­ging from eight to 12 days, all re­gard­ing Medi­care po­ten­tially cov­er­ing abor­tions. These fund­ing gaps were in­form­ally dubbed Abor­tion Shut­down Part I, II, and III. A res­ol­u­tion was fi­nally reached when the le­gis­lature in­cluded that Medi­caid could pay for abor­tions where a moth­er’s health was con­cerned.

But things are dif­fer­ent this time around with Planned Par­ent­hood in the crosshairs.

Be­fore 1980, fed­er­al agen­cies could still op­er­ate dur­ing fund­ing gaps, no mat­ter what was hap­pen­ing in Con­gress. So while Con­gress and the White House ar­gued, gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees still went to work.

But in 1980, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ben­jamin Civiletti is­sued an opin­ion or­der­ing the heads of agen­cies to sus­pend “op­er­a­tions un­til the en­act­ment of an ap­pro­pri­ation,” mak­ing shut­downs a much more high-stakes risk. There­fore, sev­er­al “shut­downs” that oc­curred from 1980 to 1995 were con­duc­ted over fed­er­al hol­i­days or week­ends in or­der to com­ply with that or­der and keep the gov­ern­ment open.

The next shift came in in 1995, when law­makers began push­ing for shut­downs for lar­ger ideo­lo­gic­al reas­on­ings, bring­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to a full halt. That came back in­to play in 2013, dur­ing a fight over the Af­ford­able Care Act, and could hap­pen again with­in a week.

If Con­gress doesn’t come to a budget agree­ment by Sept. 30, this will be the first Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity to bot­tle­neck a budget bill due to re­pro­duct­ive rights. The last time Con­gress and the White House feuded over abor­tion fund­ing, the Pres­id­ent was a Demo­crat, and the House and the Sen­ate both had Demo­crat­ic ma­jor­ity.

Oth­er is­sues that led to shut­downs and fund­ing gaps in­clude Con­gres­sion­al tiffs over pub­lic works, de­fense, edu­ca­tion, for­eign as­sist­ance, and the en­vir­on­ment.

Con­gress has lots to do amid a his­tor­ic vis­it and ad­dress from Pope Fran­cis. The tim­ing of the Planned Par­ent­hood de­bate is a bit iron­ic, giv­en Fran­cis’s vis­it: While the Cath­ol­ic Church is against abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion, the pontiff re­cently an­nounced a “ju­bilee year” dur­ing which wo­men may re­pent and be for­giv­en for ter­min­at­ing preg­nan­cies.

The Wash­ing­ton Post has a full list of gov­ern­ment shut­downs and fund­ing gaps by date here, as well as a roundup of how they star­ted and ended.