Senate Republicans’ latest ploy to choke off all federal funding to Planned Parenthood failed, as expected, on Monday afternoon in a 53-46 procedural vote. The measure fell short of the 60 votes needed to move it forward.
It shouldn’t have been anywhere near that close.
But the perennial conservative effort to cripple the nation’s largest family-planning organization got a boost last month from a string of grainy, edited undercover videos released by an anti-abortion group, and purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the illegal sale of fetal tissue.
Of course, despite the group’s efforts to misrepresent the executives’ comments, the complete videos in fact show that there is neither illegality nor profit in what Planned Parenthood does. As one representative explained on tape repeatedly (and as at least two state investigations have confirmed), the organization follows federal law in allowing women to donate fetal tissue for research, and in charging small amounts to cover the costs of storage and shipment.
For decades, fetal tissue has been a critical tool for university and government scientists studying diseases including diabetes, muscular dystrophy and H.I.V. The National Institutes of Health give out $76 million in grant money annually for such research.
Alas, it’s no surprise that straightforward facts like these are dismissed when it comes to abortion. It’s also no surprise that Republican presidential contenders have clambered over one another to denounce Planned Parenthood, though they surely know that abortions account for a tiny fraction of Planned Parenthood’s operations, and even those aren’t paid for by federal funds, which are prohibited by law from being used for abortions, except in rare cases.
So eliminating Planned Parenthood’s funding would only hinder its ability to provide health services to millions of lower-income women, including life-saving screening for cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases and, of course, birth control, which prevents about 1 million unwanted pregnancies, and thus an estimated 345,000 abortions, each year.