On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner privately made the case to fellow Republicans against risking a government shutdown to defund Planned Parenthood, and is slated to have fellow House GOP leaders, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Majority Whip Steve Scalise, and Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rogers, to meet with other congressmen to discuss alternatives.
Boehner reportedly told the weekly House Republican Caucus that a government shutdown would neither prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer dollars nor end its harvesting and sale of organs from aborted babies, though he professed to want to ultimately defund the abortion giant, end its organ trafficking, and according to Politico “called for allowing prosecution of doctors who kill babies who survive an abortion.”
However, killing survivors of attempted abortions is already illegal under the 2002 Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, and according to a February 2014 report from the Congressional Research Service, Medicaid (from which Planned Parenthood says 75% of its federal funding comes) “is funded in the annual appropriations acts” and therefore subject to Congressional approval.
How to attempt defunding Planned Parenthood has been a source of intense debate within the Republican Party, with Speaker Boehner a persistent foe of risking a government shutdown, while at least eighteen House Republicans have vowed not to vote for any government funding bill that includes money for the abortion giant. Presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Bobby Jindal have also aligned themselves with the pro-shutdown side of the debate.
