Tweet
The Senate easily stopped a bill yesterday to defund Planned Parenthood. The rider was offered as a “correction” to the 2011 appropriations bill, which passed and was signed by the President yesterday. As a face-saving piece of the deal, the Senate ensured a vote on the rider, which almost led to a government shutdown last week.
Five Republicans – Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins – voted with every Senate Democrat against the correction. In another correction given a vote in the Senate, Democrats defeated an effort to repeal the health care law on a straight party line vote, with all Democrats opposing and all Republicans supporting.
This ultimately turned into a fairly harmless vote for Democrats, as they showed that defunding Planned Parenthood doesn’t have close to majority support in the Senate. They also forced Republicans on the record about the popular family planning organization, eliciting a vote that could resonate with female voters down the road. And it ended up being a point of unity, with even Bob Casey and Ben Nelson joining in the defense of Planned Parenthood.
The final appropriations deal will spread pain to many sectors, but Planned Parenthood will not be one of the victims.
In a related story, I thought I’d mention the DC Abortion Fund. As you know, one of the more harmful riders in the appropriations deal blocked the District of Columbia from using their own Medicaid system, even when funded with local dollars, to provide abortion services. The funding shut down Wednesday night at midnight, and 28 women scheduled for appointments the next day were told they could not use DC Medicaid as payment. The DC Abortion Fund raises money for patients like this who would otherwise be unable to make choices about their own reproductive future on their own. As of last night, DCAF had raised over $14,000 to help defray the cost for these 28 patients, who otherwise would have had to scramble to find the money for a legal medical procedure overnight. All 28 of them were able to see their doctor.
It’s shameful that some patients need to hold fundraisers for their care, but it’s good to see people pitching in.
15 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
Services are already being stripped out, when no funds are available for absolutely necessary abortions.
Thanks for the DC update; needs a lot of attention/outrage/help.
I was a little confused about this issue… since I saw on another post here at FDL, that funding had still been stripped from Planned Parenthood.
Thank you for the clarification!
Even if Plan Parenthood isn’t singled out by name, Title X still suffered a cut under the budget deal. Plus, the GOP now has two on-record votes to use against Democrats up for reelection in 2012.
All part of shifting the Oreton Window to the right. Make a massive rightward move, shift a little the other way to throw a few crumbs to real people.
If you’re satisfied with crumbs, you’ll starve to death.
I have a question…..
Rachel Maddow devoted a section of her show last night to the erosion of reproductive rights since Alito was sworn in to the supreme court. Since then, several states have made it virtually or literally impossible for women to get abortions in direct violation of the a woman’s constitutionally-protected right to choose given to us by Roe v. Wade. Yet, no one has challenged these obviously-unconstitutional laws because we’re reasonably certain that, with our current supreme court, this would result in the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision. In essence, this means that Roe v. Wade has been silently overturned anyways in many places.
So here’s my question. Is it worse to take this issue to the supreme court and have them overturn Roe v. Wade, or to allow states to take away abortion rights illegally without challenging them? Overturning Roe v. Wade would be monstrous, but most Americans currently have the mistaken idea that abortion is still available and legal in all states: having the supreme court publically change that would certainly shock most Americans into realizing they’re losing a lot of rights……
(don’t screech at me please, not advocating one position or the other. Just posing the question and wondering how you all feel)
I see what you’re saying but have no opinion on first blush. It strikes me as a question of political efficacy. I’d suggest a lot of carefully crafted surveying before forming any conclusions.
Jobs PP, NARAL, etc. should be doing if they weren’t in the veal pen.
So, who are the Democrats that voted to deny DC the right to fund abortions with its own money?
Obviously, the President signed that into law, himself. Who else voted for it? I read on the House side than Nancy Pelosi voted against it.
I agree with eCAHN that NARAL & PP are mostly in the Veal Pen, but they both do *discuss* what you bring up. It comes up often in the fund raising, fwiw. I agree that more info should be put out there in some sort of effective marketing campaign, but unsure if it will be.
Some younger women seem rather too complacent and/or ignorant about these issues, and generating significant and vocal support amongst younger women – who are directly affected by this – does not seem to be done much or effectively enough from what I know.
It would certainly make sense for the general populace to be educated to the issues which you highlight. The gutting of Roe v. Wade has been a huge wedge issue for years, as is well-known. Alito, of course, would love to see all women with bare feet bound, pregnant, and in the kitchen with their mouths taped shut. Why conservative women go along with such sh*t has long eluded me, but for some, it has to do with the brainwashing that some churches – esp the Doug Coe C Street Fellowship churches – do.
I think it also bears repeating here that less than 3% of PP’s budget is spent on abortions. The other 97% is spent on women’s health issues, reproductive issues and care, and even some education about good child care. PP also does a look on education about sexually transmitted diseases and family planning, including how to avoid becoming pregnant in the first place.
PP is quite unnecessarily demonized as this giant “abortion mill,” when, quite simply, it’s not. And PP does its best to assist women to have the correct info about sexuality and family plannin so that they don’t feel the need to get an abortion in the first place.
Like a number of other conservative issues, cutting funding to PP is yet another way to “vote against your own interests.” If conservatives don’t like abortion (which is their right), then they should be very in favor of PP, which provides an outlet for women (and men) to learn how to avoid getting pregnant in the first place. Like: duh.
Doesn’t anyone see the irony in the photo accompanying this post?
I’m glad that there is government funding for PP, and relieved that it will continue BUT….. Get out of my pants? Guess what….
omg, whatever happened to ‘we need sixty votes!’ to do anything in the Senate???
They can only use it “against” Democrats if Democrats continue to use the lame position they’ve used in the past instead of forthrightly defending a medical procedure that while they may never personally have, that can and does save women’s lives.
Somebody help me out. I haven’t followed Scott Brown’s career as a Senator closely, but occasionally I see his name as not following the rest of the goopers. Is he really kind of an independent mind or are these votes the leadership gives him to survive in a blue state?
the correction did need 60 votes.