WASHINGTON — Defunding Planned Parenthood suffered a setback March 24, after Republican leadership withdrew the American Health Care Act (AHCA) from a floor vote in the House of Representatives.

Pro-life leaders now are looking to the next opportunity to defund the nation’s most active abortion organization —with one mechanism already advancing, courtesy of the March 30 vote by the Senate to repeal the Obama administration’s executive order that prohibits states from withholding Title X federal funding from Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions.

While the Susan B. Anthony List and National Right to Life endorsed the AHCA because it directed funding away from Planned Parenthood toward community health centers, the bill failed to find initial support from the House Freedom Caucus, the House’s most conservative lawmakers. As concessions were made to make the AHCA palatable to that caucus, more centrist Republicans in the House began to abandon the bill over concerns that deep Medicaid cuts would severely hurt low-income Americans’ access to health care.

President Trump, during his campaign, committed himself to defunding Planned Parenthood. And he blamed the Freedom Caucus after the ACHA’s failure, tweeting that they had helped “save Planned Parenthood and Ocare” and that “we must fight them” in the midterm elections. The president and House Speaker Paul Ryan have pledged to bring up health care reform again.

But the pro-life movement has not been discouraged by the failure of the AHCA and continues to encourage congressional Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood quickly, with or without health care reform.

Disqualifying Planned Parenthood for federal dollars over its role as the nation’s largest abortion provider has been a longtime goal of the pro-life movement. The effort received new life in 2015, when the Center for Medical Progress released a series of undercover videos on the abortion industry that transfixed Americans and dominated news cycles.

In response to the videos, a House Select Committee formed to investigate Planned Parenthood, and on Dec. 30, it recommended “that Planned Parenthood lose all federal funding, including reimbursements for Medicaid services.”

The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) on March 29 released a new video, in which an abortionist discusses the difficulties of keeping body parts intact during an abortion.

“I think that the public and the public’s elected representatives need to be reminded of the truly barbaric nature of Planned Parenthood’s late-term abortion business,” Daleiden, project lead for CMP, told EWTN News Nightly With Lauren Ashburn on Wednesday.

Daleiden, who pledged that more videos would be forthcoming, now faces 15 felony counts in California, along with his co-investigator, Sandra Merritt, over their undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry.

 

Drive to Defund

Planned Parenthood’s federal funding accounted for 43% of its budget in 2015 and comes primarily in the form of reimbursements for the non-abortion services it provides from Medicaid. The AHCA would have enacted a one-year moratorium on Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood.

Despite the bill’s failure, Mallory Quigley, spokeswoman for the Susan B. Anthony List, told the Register: “If the vote had only been on Planned Parenthood, we absolutely would have had the votes.”

“The health care bill was controversial, not Planned Parenthood defunding,” she said.

While Medicaid reimbursements account for the majority of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, according to a spokesman, another source of funding comes from Title X of the Public Health Safety Act, which provides contraception and other services to low-income individuals.

After the release of Daleiden’s videos, several states had sought to deprive Planned Parenthood of Title X funds, but were prevented from doing so by a December 2016 HHS regulation. Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to overturn the Obama era rule and allow states to decide whether to prevent Title X funds going to Planned Parenthood. The measure now goes to the White House, where it will likely be signed.

While the CMP videos propelled the nationwide interest in defunding Planned Parenthood, Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs at the March for Life, told the Register that their effect cannot be taken for granted. The pro-life community was unsurprised by the videos, he said, but “the real impact was on those who don’t live and breathe the movement.”

“Unfortunately, the farther we get away from those videos, we’re running up against Planned Parenthood” and the money they spend on lobbying, said McClusky.

“I do think time is of the essence.”

 

Reconciliation Dilemma

Paul Ryan has stated his support for using reconciliation as the means to defund Planned Parenthood. But the House of Representatives goes into recess after April 6, giving Republicans a brief time in which to pass controversial legislation, like defunding Planned Parenthood, over the objections of Democrats before they go into recess and the next budget cycle begins. They are also limited in how they can pass those laws.

“Because of the political situation, and the votes being what they are in the Senate, we’re limited by the procedural options through which we can get defunding accomplished,” said Quigley.

The Senate cannot muster 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster of defunding Planned Parenthood, so Republicans have pursued a strategy of passing laws through a legislative process called reconciliation.

Reconciliation allows for the speedy movement of legislation that addresses mandatory taxation and spending, or the debt limit, by requiring only a 51-vote simple majority to end debate and pass a bill. Debate over reconciliation bills is limited to 20 hours on the Senate floor, and Senate rules prohibit any unrelated amendments being added.

Matthew Green, an associate fellow at The Catholic University of America’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, told the Register that “The key to a reconciliation bill is that, under the Senate rules, it can’t be filibustered.”

There are limitations to the process, though. In a normal year, the Senate typically can only consider one reconciliation bill, unless Congress were to pass a second budget resolution. And health care and tax reform are other priorities competing for Republican attention in the coming year.

“Ryan has promised to find a bill to restructure or eliminate Obamacare. But you can’t do that and then separately do Planned Parenthood defunding,” said Green, because that would be two reconciliation bills.

“It means a tough choice for Republicans in the House.”

 

Holding Feet to the Fire

Green told the Register that the challenge for Republicans now is “how you square the positions you’ve taken as a minority party with the powers you have as a majority party.”

Green explained that when a party does not have control of Congress, it is easier to make strong policy claims that appeal to their voters.

“But when you actually could do it, members of Congress start to get nervous,” he said, “because they begin to hear from constituents that disagree with that position.”

The March for Life’s McClusky said that Republicans voted to defund Planned Parenthood in 2015 and should be able to do it again.

“It has been a promise of both the Republican Congress as well as the president,” he said. “It should happen soon, and if it doesn’t happen, if Republicans let their voters down, there will be a mixture of anger and apathy.”

SBA List’s Quigley told the Register they want the Republican Party to defund Planned Parenthood “before they leave for spring break.”

In order to do that, said Quigley, “We need to get the movement as engaged as possible in the next month, and staying vocal over this critical time is the most important thing.”

 

Register correspondent Nicholas Wolfram Smith writes from Rochester, New York.