What's the best way to prevent more babies being born with horrible deformities from the Zika virus? Preventing the pregnancy in exposed women in the first place. That means allowing Planned Parenthood, which helps prevent approximately 579,000 unintended pregnancies every year, to keep doing that job. But it's Planned Parenthood and it's an election year, so Republicans are specifically banning Zika prevention funding from being spent at Planned Parenthood. Because of that, Senate Democrats are not playing along.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), standing at a press conference alongside Planned Parenthood vice president Dawn Laguens, said women often have "no place else to go."
"So on that issue alone, I think it's pretty strong," Reid added, speaking of his justification for blocking the bill.
Republicans, though, are accusing Democrats of opposing the Zika funding bill simply to protect a "special interest."
"Special interests got to them, special interest groups snapped their fingers and the Democrats came running," Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate's No. 3 Republican, told reporters. "And as a consequence, there is not going to be funding for Zika."
Planned Parenthood is not a "special interest." It's a first-tier health care provider for millions of men and women, and in particular low-income women. Which makes it a first-line defender in a disease like this one. We've seen all the arguments before in the Republicans' jihad against Planned Parenthood—if the federal funds don't go to it, they'll just go to other providers, like community health clinics. And we'll see community health clinics, again, say that they aren't going to have the capacity to take on an influx of new patients. This means, as usual, there's one population that Republicans are punishing.
Peter Shin, a public health professor at George Washington University, nails it: "When they're taking money away from Planned Parenthood, they're basically taking it away from young, high-risk women." Young, high-risk women who now could be giving birth to fatally and tragically deformed babies.
So there's John Thune's special interest: Young, poor, high-risk women who are in no position to deal with having profoundly disabled children.