It’s nearly the end of September and time once again for another congressional battle over a continuing resolution – or CR – a spending bill that funds the government for a short period of time. This time, the crux of the battle is over funding for Zika virus research and prevention.
Preliminary results published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found that of nearly 12,000 pregnant women from Columbia who were infected with the Zika virus, none gave birth to babies with microcephaly. While four cases of the brain defect were reported with mothers who did not have Zika symptoms and were not participating in the study, that number of cases is what would statistically be expected.
With more Zika cases popping up in the United States and Congress on its summer break, Senate Democrats are scrambling to ensure they are not blamed for their decision to choose Planned Parenthood and extraneous environmental regulations over public health.
Senate Democrats are leaving Washington, D.C. for their summer recess after blocking a GOP $1.1 billion measure that would have funded efforts to fight the Zika virus.
Florida U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney (R) writes in an op-ed at the Palm Beach Post that Democrats are blaming Republicans for the failure of the Zika funding bill in order to advance their radical pro-abortion and environmental agendas.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) is using the words of Pope Francis earlier this year about the outbreak of Zika in Latin America in order to urge Republicans to vote to include funding for abortion giant Planned Parenthood in a measure that supposedly would help combat the mosquito-borne virus.
“There is so much we don’t know,” Dr. Jeanne Sheffield, a Johns Hopkins Hospital expert in pregnancy and infectious disease, stressed during a Capitol Hill briefing about Zika. “We don’t know the true incidence among pregnant women.”
“You know we’re really at the beginning of understanding Zika in pregnancy,” Rear Adm. Anne Schuchat, M.D. emphasized in her testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Through its alliance with the Democrat Party and the pro-abortion mainstream media, Planned Parenthood has promoted the notion that its biggest money-makers — abortion and birth control — are the means to combat the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which is being linked to cases of a rare birth defect called microcephaly, primarily in Brazil.