September 18, 2015 12:32 PM UTC

Republicans Vote to Defund Planned Parenthood; Budget Deal at Risk

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Liberal group ProgressNow Colorado slams Coffman with the Planned Parenthood logo he used in an ad last year:

“Just a year ago, Mike Coffman was so desperate to run away his right-wing image that he misleadingly used Planned Parenthood’s logo in a campaign ad,” said ProgressNow Colorado executive director Amy Runyon-Harms. “Today, Coffman proved that his claims that he stands with women and their families were nothing more than a smokescreen to protect his political career.”

“The far right’s latest assault on women’s reproductive rights following the release of heavily-edited, consistently debunked videos is just the latest attempt by anti-abortion extremists to ban reproductive choice with no exceptions for the life of the mother, or cases of rape or incest,” said Runyon-Harms. “For too long, Mike Coffman has tried to play both sides of this issue in order to please his right-wing donors while scrambling to keep his competitive congressional seat. With today’s vote, Coffman proves to everyone that he doesn’t stand with women at all. He stands in the way.”

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Congressional Republicans have voted in favor of stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood, with Colorado’s delegation splitting their vote equally across party lines.

The House vote was not entirely unexpected, though it remains unclear how today’s vote will ultimately affect the federal budget. But first, the Washington Post reports on two anti-choice votes:

One bill passed Friday, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, would impose criminal penalties on medical personnel who fail to aid an infant born after an attempted abortion. The other, the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, imposes a one-year moratorium on federal funding for the group, which Republicans say will allow for a thorough investigation of its practices. Any funding, supporters said, would be redirected to clinics that do not offer abortions…

…Democrats pointed out that Planned Parenthood has long been prohibited from spending federal money on abortions, thanks to appropriations riders dating back to the 1970s. And in a floor debate Friday, they called the bill an attack on women’s health care and noted that other health-care providers would be unable to absorb all of Planned Parenthood’s hundreds of thousands of patients.

“This bill is dumb, it’s foolish, and it’s mean-spirited,” said Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.). “The bill is based upon lies and exaggerations. If you want to have a truthful debate, then let’s talk about the 400,000 Pap smears, the 500,000 breast exams, the 4.5 million STD and HIV tests that Planned Parenthood does each year.”

We’re all in favor of a “truthful debate,” though we’d rather not discuss Pap smears at length in this space. Instead, we’ll direct you to Politico and the ramifications of the larger federal budget deal:

Republican leaders who are eyeing a rarely-deployed, fast-track budget procedure as a way to defund Planned Parenthood and stave off a government shutdown appear to be in for a rude awakening.

The idea is aimed at placating conservatives by giving them a way to pass legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of its funding and decouple the issue from the entire federal budget. But conservatives are balking at the proposal to use the majority-vote reconciliation process, calling it a “ruse” that, in the end, would leave Planned Parenthood’s federal funding intact and amount to little more than a feel-good exercise.

In a nutshell, this has turned into one hell of a political clusterfuck for the Republican Party. Vulnerable incumbents such as Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora) are now on record seeking to defund Planned Parenthood entirely, and it looks like none of this will avert the second federal shutdown in three years.

Solid work, Boehner.