The Senate is Voting on Planned Parenthood Funding Today (but there is NO war on women!)

(and, sadly, appallingly, this latest assault on women's rights comes from a woman)

The Senate is Voting on Planned Parenthood Funding Today


A Senate bill to defund Planned Parenthood is expected to come to a vote today.




Sponsored by Republican Senator Joni Ernst (IA), Senate Bill 1881 would prohibit all Federal funding of Planned Parenthood or “any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, successors, or clinics.” The Senate will need 60 votes to advance the bill, which is being proposed following the release of highly edited video footage by anti-abortion group the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).

The CMP’s misleading videos claim that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue. Though this claim has been thoroughly proven as false, and the National Abortion Federation has since filed a lawsuit against the Center for Medical Progress, Republicans in the Senate are still using these recent events as reason to push anti-abortion legislation.

Planned Parenthood serves almost five million women, men, and young people each year and provides basic health care like contraception, well-woman exams, cancer screenings, abortion care, and comprehensive sex and reproductive health education – and for many of their patients, the shuttering of their clinics means the end of affordable, accessible care.

“When you say, ‘Let’s defund Planned Parenthood’ …what you are saying is that women, primarily in low-income communities, and many women of color, won’t have access to a wide range of essential health services,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said on the floor Thursday, “because of an ideological desire to control what choices are made between a woman and her doctor.”

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/08/03/the-senate-is-voting-on-planned-parenthood-funding-today/