Mitch Perry
There are few issues that divide the country like abortion rights, as the recent GOP offensive nationwide to defund Planned Parenthood demonstrates.
At Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate(s) in Southern California, every one of the 15 candidates running for president attacked the family planning organization, in the wake of the release of a series of edited undercover videos that purport to show the organization selling fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood denies the charge and says it only donates fetal tissue after abortions for medical research, legally and at the request of the patient. Planned Parenthood does receive reimbursements for the costs of preserving and transporting the tissue, which is explicitly allowed under federal law.
On Friday the GOP-led House is poised to vote on defunding Planned Parenthood, with some members of Congress threatening to shut down the federal government at the end of the month if the organization continues to receive funding to provide health services to millions of women across the United States.
The Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015, sponsored by Tennessee Republican Diane Black, would place an immediate one-year moratorium on all federal funding to the organization while Congress completes its investigations on whether the organization violated federal laws.
South Florida Democratic Congressman and Senate hopeful Patrick Murphy says defunding Planned Parenthood would severely limit women’s preventative health services, including lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and family planning.
“We cannot allow a handful of extremists to shut down the government – or shut down women’s access to vital health care services,” Murphy said in a statement released on Thursday. “The real victims of this latest attempt to restrict a woman’s Constitutional right to choose are the thousands of mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives across Florida who have nowhere else to turn for preventative care. I stand with Planned Parenthood, its patients, and a majority of Americans in condemning these continued radical assaults on women’s health care.”
Murphy is a cosponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that would help invalidate state laws that compromise women’s access to safe, legal abortions and harm women’s health.
