The House Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood

The House voted along party lines to end fed­er­al fund­ing of Planned Par­ent­hood on Fri­day, as the par­tis­an battle con­tin­ues to es­cal­ate ahead of a pos­sible gov­ern­ment shut­down.

It is un­clear wheth­er the bill, which was ap­proved 241-187, will even be taken up by the Sen­ate, where it would al­most cer­tainly fail to get the hand­ful of Demo­crat­ic votes it would need to head to the White House and Pres­id­ent Obama’s veto pen. It’s also doubt­ful the bill will quiet con­ser­vat­ive law­makers’ calls for a fund­ing to be re­moved for Planned Par­ent­hood in a spend­ing bill that must pass by Sept. 30 to keep the gov­ern­ment run­ning, an is­sue di­vid­ing the Re­pub­lic­an Party and spark­ing the ques­tion of wheth­er this year will be a re­peat of 2013.

But what is clear is that Demo­crats are united in their con­fid­ence that they are on the win­ning side of the is­sue, and that when Novem­ber comes around next year, the chaos cre­ated with­in the Re­pub­lic­an Party—as well as the de­bate it­self—will have worked in their fa­vor.

“The pub­lic is with us,” said Rep. Di­ana De­Gette, co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus. “In some ways, it’s even more of a mys­tery why they would bring these bills up now, giv­en that the pub­lic is so solidly in sup­port of Planned Par­ent­hood.”

But GOP Rep. Martha Black­burn said the bill’s sup­port­ers were on the right side of his­tory.

“The dis­cus­sion today is not about videos or wo­men’s ac­cess to health care,” Black­burn said. “It is about our most ba­sic right—the right to life. It is also about do­ing what tax­pay­ers sent us to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to do. It is about con­tinu­ing the pro­cess to pro­tect our most vul­ner­able.”

The House also voted on a bill strength­en­ing an ex­ist­ing abor­tion bill on Fri­day, which passed along party lines as well.

The de­fund bill would have blocked all $450 mil­lion of fed­er­al fund­ing from go­ing to Planned Par­ent­hood. About $60 mil­lion is ap­pro­pri­ated through Title X fund­ing, and the rest comes from Medi­caid, Medi­care, and the Chil­dren’s Health In­sur­ance Pro­gram. On Tues­day, the Sen­ate will vote on Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham’s le­gis­la­tion ban­ning abor­tions after 20 weeks.

The con­tro­versy over Planned Par­ent­hood stems from the re­lease of a series of sting videos that Re­pub­lic­ans al­lege show the or­gan­iz­a­tion selling fetal tis­sue, which is il­leg­al. But Planned Par­ent­hood denies the al­leg­a­tions, say­ing it donates the tis­sue for med­ic­al re­search and is only re­im­bursed for over­head costs.

Sev­er­al House com­mit­tees have launched in­vest­ig­a­tions in­to the or­gan­iz­a­tion, and two of them have held hear­ings this month that ended in bit­ter par­tis­an de­bate. While Re­pub­lic­an lead­er­ship is do­ing all it can to avoid an­oth­er gov­ern­ment shut­down, point­ing to the in­vest­ig­a­tions, re­con­cili­ation, and the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion as ways to win the fight, con­ser­vat­ive mem­bers have been adam­ant that no fund­ing should be giv­en in a must-pass spend­ing bill.

But dur­ing Fri­day’s vote, Rep. Trent Franks, one of the most vo­cal op­pon­ents of Planned Par­ent­hood—who has signed onto a let­ter say­ing he will op­pose a spend­ing bill giv­ing the or­gan­iz­a­tion fund­ing—seemed to have softened his tone. He told re­port­ers he thinks us­ing the re­con­cili­ation pro­cess to de­fund Planned Par­ent­hood is “the right strategy,” al­though he would not say wheth­er he would vote for a spend­ing bill con­tain­ing fund­ing for the or­gan­iz­a­tion.

“I’ve sug­ges­ted that, I’ve en­cour­aged lead­er­ship in that dir­ec­tion. Time will tell. But they’re in an im­possible conun­drum, and I think they’re do­ing the best they can,” he said.

But Demo­crats don’t think Re­pub­lic­ans will get out of this so eas­ily.

“This is go­ing to keep go­ing. Over 30 Re­pub­lic­ans have signed a let­ter say­ing they don’t vote for a con­tinu­ing res­ol­u­tion that funds Planned Par­ent­hood,” De­Gette said.

And that’s not ne­ces­sar­ily go­ing to be such a bad thing for them in Novem­ber, some Demo­crats say.

“I think that wo­men in this coun­try can see through this, that this is an at­tack not just on an or­gan­iz­a­tion, but on wo­men’s right to be able to have the health care that they want, at the place that they want, from an or­gan­iz­a­tion that has been so in­cred­ibly help­ful to wo­men over the years,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who has been act­ive in de­fend­ing the or­gan­iz­a­tion. “The in­sult—I think that’s how wo­men feel, and ac­tu­ally the pub­lic.”

“I think it is,” she ad­ded when asked if she thought this is a win­ning is­sue for Demo­crats. “But I cer­tainly have not ap­proached it as a polit­ic­al is­sue. I be­lieve they have made a cal­cu­la­tion polit­ic­ally, that it’s good for them—what are they think­ing?”