As time winds down toward the end of the fiscal year and a potential government shutdown, leadership is continuing to look for a way to mollify the hardliners who are demanding Planned Parenthood defunding, the hardliners are showing no inclination to back down, and the "moderates" are brewing up bad compromises. It's just
another typical day of failed Republican leadership.
To mollify conservatives, the House and Senate are set to vote on stand-alone antiabortion bills that would allow lawmakers to weigh in on the divisive issue without risking a high-stakes showdown over government funding.
The House is expected to vote this week on a bill, sponsored by Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), that would defund Planned Parenthood and another, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), that would offer legal protection to an infant who survives a failed abortion.
The Senate, meanwhile, could take up a measure that passed the House in May that would criminalize abortions performed after the 20th week of pregnancy. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has announced his intention to vote on that bill, although it is unlikely to get the 60 Senate votes needed to proceed toward passage.
The votes are supposed to both give the extremists something to vote on to prove how much they hate health care for women and to demonstrate that their efforts will fail in the Senate. Like that will work. Those extremists are already signaling that this isn't going to be nearly enough. They want
nothing less than Planned Parenthood defunding. TMP contacted a number of them on Monday, and "was unable to find any members who had changed their stance on opposing any spending bills that included Planned Parenthood funding now that leadership had put forward votes on separate bills." They're getting all the encouragement they need from the extreme anti-abortion issue groups who insist that they have to force President Obama to veto a defunding bill to do . . . something. Oh, "to make clear why he believes our government has no higher priority than guaranteeing that the abortion industry continue the piecemeal sale of the unborn without losing a drop of their federal revenue stream," according to the president of the Susan B. Anthony List.
Here's your regularly scheduled intermission to point out once again that—even in the edited and debunked "raw" video footage from Center for Medical Progress—Planned Parenthood did not sell baby parts, did not to admit to selling baby parts, and neither said nor did anything to suggest illegal activity. Three House committees and six states have concluded the same—Planned Parenthood has done nothing illegal. Which of course makes absolutely no difference to Republicans. The allegations were just their excuse to reengage this war.
And because you knew it had to happen, a "moderate" Republican has come up with a crappy compromise. Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) says they should only defund the affiliates that "sell" (the New York Times' incorrect word choice) fetal tissue. Despite the fact that what they are doing is facilitating tissue donation for research and they are not profiting from it, and that IT'S ALL LEGAL! And kind of important to medical research, too. Needless to say, this is a worthless compromise which all Democrats—even the spineless ones—should ignore. Like all Dent's fellow Republicans will.