Following the Senate’s failure to advance legislation to defund Planned Parenthood, largely along party lines, 53-46, the pro-life community reacted by vowing to press on with legislation that would defund the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Rep. Diane Black (R-TN), author of a House measure – The Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015 – said, “With this vote, we saw just how truly intertwined today’s Democratic party is with the big abortion industry.”
“Forty-five Senators decided to ignore the ugly truth of what is happening behind closed doors at Planned Parenthood clinics and to pretend that the videos we have all seen with our own eyes simply do not exist,” Black said in a press statement. “In doing so, they defeated – for now – a good and decent bill that would have prioritized women’s health care while safeguarding the most innocent and vulnerable among us. This vote was a triumph of politics over principle and deceit over truth.”
Black also thanked Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for crossing party lines to vote with Republicans in support of the measure.
“The fight to defund Planned Parenthood is far from over,” she added. “I will continue to demand a vote on passage of my legislation. … We will not give up and we will not stand down.”
“Planned Parenthood betrays women and children every single day and today the U.S. Senate did the same this evening,” said Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins. “And while the U.S. Senate made an embarrassment of not only their own governing body but of our nation as a whole and the values that Americans hold so dear by failing to defund Planned Parenthood, pro-lifers have been taken for another spin by the Republican leaders in Congress.”
Hawkins, who heads the largest youth pro-life organization in the nation, criticized GOP leaders for their failure to commit to the values their party says it embraces.
“The supposed party of pro-lifers control the legislative body of government yet could not manage to attach the defunding bill to must-pass legislation in the Senate, ensuring that it would not need 60 votes but a more manageable majority,” she continued. “The GOP majority allowed this defeat to happen.”
Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action said, “The public outcry against Planned Parenthood continues to grow as we learn about the atrocities within the abortion giant’s facilities.”
Rose continued:
I have to believe that those Senators who voted against defunding Planned Parenthood must have never actually viewed the videos released by Center for Medical Progress, where multiple high-level Planned Parenthood executives have been caught on tape negotiating prices for the bodies of aborted preborn children while they cavalierly talk about “crushing” certain body parts to preserve “five-star” organs for sale. This, just the latest in years of mounting evidence against Planned Parenthood. We call on elected officials to cut close-knit ties with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry lobby.
Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser observed that pro-lifers are committed to make defunding Planned Parenthood a major issue in the 2016 presidential election.
“When the Senate last voted to defund Planned Parenthood, only 42 voted for it. Since that 2011 effort, things have only gotten worse for the nation’s largest abortion provider,” she said. “The Center for Medical Progress has released less than half of its damning evidence of brutality and callousness at Planned Parenthood and, as more videos are made public, outrage will surely grow.”
“Our legislative strategy continues to be twofold,” Dannenfelser stated, adding:
We will support all aggressive efforts this fall to get taxpayers out of Planned Parenthood’s profit-driven, abortion-centered enterprise. The Senate must also press on with a vote on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would save lives by literally taking some children off of the table for vivisection after five months.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins observed that the undercover videos are opening the eyes of even those who have generally been supportive of Planned Parenthood.
“Even those who have advocated for Planned Parenthood in the past, such as Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), have had enough,” Perkins said. “You don’t have to be pro-life to be horrified by undercover videos suggesting Planned Parenthood manipulated the abortion procedure to yield the most marketable baby parts–increasing the risk to women.”
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