Two US Senators, Sasse and Lankford, drafted a piece in the Washington Examiner today in front of the March For Life. It’s good to see that as the conservative movement tears itself apart, we all agree on this one issue. Sasse and Lankford recount the fight over Planned Parenthood this year, and restate their commitment to protecting life:
Even Americans outside the pro-life community began to ask whether taxpayers should be forced to contribute to private organizations that engage in this type of behavior. The videos hit a nerve. We responded with a bill to redirect Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding to the thousands of women’s healthcare services at community health centers across the nation.
Unfortunately, on Aug. 3, 2015, the final tally showed that while we had a majority of support from Republican and Democratic senators, we came up five votes short of the required three-fifths (60 out of 100) needed to open debate in the Senate.
Although the bill couldn’t withstand Democratic opposition, it was an encouraging reminder of how far the pro-life movement has come. Back in 2011, another vote to remove funding from Planned Parenthood was brought to the floor amid a contentious budget fight. That vote fell a whopping 18 votes shy (42–58) of the required 60-vote threshold. That means that since 2011, the Senate has seen a 13-vote swing — 13 more votes in favor of protecting of all life.
This winter, we were successful in passing a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and put the issue on President Obama’s desk; we did this through a process known as budget reconciliation, which is one of the handful of bills that can move through the Senate with only a simple majority of 51 votes. We grieve that the president chose to veto this legislation and protect the abortion lobby at the expense of millions of vulnerable unborn children.
Despite these losses, we demonstrated that, with an authentically pro-life president in the White House, this Senate could remove federal funding from Planned Parenthood or any other organization that profits from the death of unborn children.
AAN Staff
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