What a Surprise!!!
August 3, 2015
Senate Republicans fell seven votes short Monday of passing legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding, in the wake of undercover videos highlighting the group’s participation in providing aborted fetal organs to human tissue companies.
Just one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, joined Democrats to defeat the legislation down a mostly party-line vote, which needed 60 votes to pass but garnered only 53.
Republicans managed to gain the votes of Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two Republican women who support abortion rights, with two Democrats: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana.
The legislation would have blocked about 700 Planned Parenthood clinics around the country from receiving Title 10 family planning funds or Medicaid dollars, even though those dollars can’t be used for abortions. Instead, the funds would have been made available to federal community health centers, which are banned from offering abortions at all.
