Exclusive: Cathy McMorris Rodgers Scrambles to Defend GOP Leadership’s Abortion Implosion

In an exclusive interview with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA) at the March for Life Thursday, the House Republican leader told Breitbart News Republicans were not unified on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

“We had hoped — our goal was to have it on the House floor today,” McMorris Rodgers said. “We still need to work on it some more. We are committed to — to getting it done. We’re passing the No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion bill as I speak right now, and we’ll continue to work on the Pain Capable bill.”

Asked if the group of Republican women led by Rep. Renee Ellmers (NC) would be getting on board with the Pain Capable bill – which would ban late-term abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy – McMorris Rodgers said, “We’re going to have to – it’s the legislative process. We’re going to have to keep working through the language to get us to a place where we are unified in the support for this bill and moving it forward.”

As Breitbart News previously reported, GOP House leadership decided to pull the Pain Capable bill on the eve of the March for Life when Ellmers and her colleagues objected to language in the bill regarding provisions for dealing with rape. These House Republicans said the bill would hurt the Party’s chances with women and millennials.

Asked if leadership was committed to the Pain Capable bill, McMorris Rodgers said, “yes.”

McMorris Rodgers is personally committed to the pro-life position and was a speaker at the March for Life on Thursday in Washington, D.C. where hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers marched at the national mall.

On Thursday, the House passed legislation that would block abortion coverage from Obamacare health plans. As the Washington Examiner reported, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act was “identical to a bill that cleared the Republican-run House last year but died in the then-Democratic controlled Senate.”

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) would make it illegal to use Obamacare subsidies to purchase health insurance plans that cover abortion services through the health exchanges.

Democrats said the measure was an “assault on women’s health.”