As the final weeks of the GOP-controlled Congress draw to a close, pro-life voters look on with great disappointment at the Republican politicians who failed to follow through on their most crucial promise: to defund Planned Parenthood. In about a month, Democrats will take over the House of Representatives and any hope of stripping the abortion giant of federal funding will pass away.
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With precious little time left in the lame-duck session, GOP congressional leaders have chosen to ignore the persistent urgings of pro-life leaders. Just last week, leaders from Live Action, Students for Life America, the Susan B. Anthony List, Heritage Foundation and the March for Life sat down with White House officials to remind them of the paramount campaign promise that catapulted this administration to victory.
Their instructions for President Donald Trump were clear: veto any budget proposal that includes funding for Planned Parenthood.
In separate letters sent to the president, Live Action President Lila Rose and Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins pleaded with Trump not to let millions of pro-life Americans down by compromising on what is for many the number-one reason they voted Republican.
While Trump has threatened to veto a proposal that compromises on his agenda, House Republicans have made it clear that they will not cede ground when it comes to Planned Parenthood, according to Politico. Alice Miranda Ollstein notes that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz “briefly tried — and failed — to rally support for one last bid to push through Planned Parenthood cuts, Obamacare repeal and other conservative priorities,” but most of his Republican colleagues dismissed these concerns amid fears of a government shutdown over Trump’s border wall.
“They had two years to defund Planned Parenthood, and they failed,” Kristan Hawkins, whose organization Students for Life has campaigned for and helped fund pro-life GOP candidates, said, according to Politico. “It’s a huge frustration. We worked so hard to elect supposedly these pro-life Republican officials, and we expected results.”
In light of GOP politicians’ expressed fears of a government shutdown, Conservative Review’s Chris Pandolfo offers some pro-life perspective:
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s top provider of abortions, literally rips apart babies in the womb and sells their body parts for profit. American taxpayers are subsidizing that evil right now through the U.S. Congress. And pro-life conservatives are expected to tolerate and fund that abominable organization because shutting down 17 percent of the federal government’s operations might be politically risky?
Pandolfo argues that the only way to ensure Planned Parenthood loses funding is to shut down the government “indefinitely” until this happens.
“The Democrats and two openly pro-abortion Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowksi, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, must be forced to choose between surrendering on this policy or keeping the federal government shut down indefinitely, and they must be forced to go to voters with their choice,” he writes. “Short of having that fight, there is nothing Republicans can do without a majority in the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to enact conservative policy.”