Neither Side Budges as Senate Blocks 20-Week Abortion Ban

The Sen­ate on Tues­day failed to ad­vance a bill that would ban abor­tions after 20 weeks of preg­nancy, yet an­oth­er in­dic­a­tion that neither party plans on budging when it comes to the war on abor­tion and Planned Par­ent­hood.

The bill, in­tro­duced by Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham earli­er this year, failed to over­come a Demo­crat­ic fili­buster in a 54-42 vote, with Demo­crat­ic Sens. Robert Ca­sey, Joe Manchin, and Joe Don­nelly, and Re­pub­lic­an Sens. Mark Kirk and Susan Collins, de­vi­at­ing from what was oth­er­wise a party-line vote.

While Demo­crats called the vote a waste of time as the Sen­ate hurtles to­ward a po­ten­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down over Planned Par­ent­hood fund­ing, Re­pub­lic­ans poin­ted to ban­ning late-term abor­tions as an is­sue that Amer­ic­ans gen­er­ally sup­port.

“Even if we dif­fer on the lar­ger abor­tion is­sue, can’t we at least agree that chil­dren at this late stage of de­vel­op­ment de­serve our pro­tec­tion? The Amer­ic­an people seem to think so,” said Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell in a floor speech on Tues­day.

Polls sup­port Mc­Con­nell; a 2013 Wash­ing­ton Post-ABC News poll showed 56 per­cent of Amer­ic­ans would like to shrink the abor­tion win­dow from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, and an­oth­er 10 per­cent wanted an even smal­ler win­dow or a com­plete ban on abor­tions. A meas­ure sim­il­ar to the Sen­ate bill passed the House in May.

The vote was held two days be­fore the ar­rival of Pope Fran­cis and amidst spec­u­la­tion over wheth­er he will weigh in on the abor­tion battle ra­ging on Cap­it­ol Hill. Mc­Con­nell fast-tracked two abor­tion bills on Monday that passed in the House last week, one of which de­funds Planned Par­ent­hood for a year, that could be voted on some­time on Thursday—the same day as the pope’s con­gres­sion­al ad­dress.

But Demo­crats say the vote—and per­haps its tim­ing—was only a mes­saging vehicle and was catered to con­ser­vat­ives who are de­mand­ing GOP lead­er­ship do whatever it takes to elim­in­ate fed­er­al fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood through a must-pass spend­ing bill, which would most likely lead to a gov­ern­ment shut­down re­min­is­cent of two years ago.

“Today in the face of a gov­ern­ment shut­down, they’ve de­cided to waste the gov­ern­ment’s time on a 20-week abor­tion ban. Every sen­at­or in this body knows this bill is go­ing nowhere. This at­tack is a waste of time,” said Minor­ity Lead­er Harry Re­id on the floor on Tues­day. “By hold­ing today’s vote, the Re­pub­lic­an lead­er is pan­der­ing to the right-wing ex­trem­ists in his party who are will­ing to take our gov­ern­ment host­age to try and score, for noth­ing bet­ter de­scrib­able, than polit­ic­al points.”

“Ul­ti­mately, I think we need to be spend­ing our time on avert­ing a shut­down, not re­hash­ing ar­gu­ments in which the out­come is pre­or­dained,” said Demo­crat­ic Sen. Chris Murphy. “I ul­ti­mately think that de­cisions about re­pro­duct­ive health should be left to wo­men and their fam­il­ies.” 

Collins said she voted against the bill be­cause it does not in­clude an ex­cep­tion for the phys­ic­al health of the moth­er, point­ing to state laws that in­clude such an ex­cep­tion.

The calls to de­fund Planned Par­ent­hood are a re­sponse to a series of sting videos that al­legedly show or­gan­iz­a­tion of­fi­cials il­leg­ally selling fetal tis­sue. Planned Par­ent­hood denies the al­leg­a­tion and says it donates the tis­sue for med­ic­al re­search and charges the over­head costs, which is leg­al.

Shortly after the vote in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee an­nounced it would in­vite Planned Par­ent­hood’s pres­id­ent, Cecile Richards, to a hear­ing sched­uled Sept. 29, the day be­fore a spend­ing bill is due to keep the gov­ern­ment open. Planned Par­ent­hood had not yet been in­vited to hear­ings con­duc­ted by House com­mit­tees in­to the or­gan­iz­a­tion’s activ­ity.

Over­sight Com­mit­tee Demo­crats said they ob­jec­ted to the Re­pub­lic­ans’ plan to in­vite only Planned Par­ent­hood to testi­fy and said that if the Re­pub­lic­ans went for­ward with it, they would in­vite Dav­id Daleiden, the head of the Cen­ter for Med­ic­al Pro­gress, to testi­fy as well. The Cen­ter for Med­ic­al Pro­gress filmed and re­leased the videos, which Demo­crats say are de­cept­ively ed­ited to sup­port the al­leg­a­tions against Planned Par­ent­hood.

“We strongly op­pose this biased, one-sided at­tack against Planned Par­ent­hood that dis­reg­ards the ques­tion­able activ­it­ies of Mr. Daleiden merely to help the House Free­dom Caucus shut down the gov­ern­ment and po­ten­tially oust Speak­er [John] Boehner—all while jeop­ard­iz­ing health­care ser­vices for mil­lions of wo­men across the coun­try,” the Demo­crats wrote in a let­ter to Over­sight Chair­man Jason Chaf­fetz on Monday.