You probably heard over the last couple of days that Vice President Mike Pence cast a tiebreaking vote on a bill related to the funding of Planned Parenthood. That's true. He did. But if all you saw was some headlines and people's comments on social media, you might have been left with the impression that the bill ended federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
I wish I could tell you that was true, and it may still happen. But that is not what this bill did:
The Obama administration finalized the rule just a few weeks before President Donald Trump was inaugurated. It would bar states from denying federal family planning funds to organizations like Planned Parenthood that also perform abortions.
The rule said that a state cannot deny funding to clinics for reasons unrelated to their ability to provide basic family planning services. Although abortion is a legal medical procedure, federal dollars cannot be used to pay for it, except in restricted circumstances.
The Republican-led Congress is now trying to reverse the rule using the Congressional Review Act, which lets lawmakers undo regulations enacted in the last months of the Obama administration with a majority vote. The House passed its version of the measure in February.
The measure is certainly welcome in that it returns to the states the discretion to deny Planned Parenthood funding on the basis of it performing abortions. This was not a piece of legislation Obama signed, but rather an administrative rule he pushed through in the final weeks of his administration. The Congressional Review Act gives Congress the discretion to invalidate such rules by legislation.
I don't entirely understand why Trump couldn't just reverse the order himself, but any way it gets done is fine with me.
What this doesn't deal with, however, is the flow of federal funds to Planned Parenthood. It's true that the Hyde Amendment prohibits the federal government from directly funding abortion. But Democrats and other defenders of Planned Parenthood have always gotten around that by allocating funds for other so-called family planning services, and allowing beneficiaries of the funding to choose Planned Parenthood as the provider of the service. That's a clean and easy way for Washington to make sure Planned Parenthood gets its money without ever actually sending the butchers a check, and while claiming it has nothing to do with abortion.
Of course, money is fungible. An abortion provider that benefits financially from the funding of other services it provides is in a stronger position to provide abortions, so it's a dodge to say Congress doesn't fund abortion. Of course it does. As long as federal money is flowing to Planned Parenthood in any way, Congress is funding abortion.
The real change we need is a law that prohibits the use of federal funds to obtain any service whatsoever from Planned Parenthood. That would really be cutting off the head of the beast. At least today's action gives states more discretion to direct their dollars elsewhere.
But the truth is that we won't really end abortion in this country until people's hearts no longer harbor the desire to kill their children, regardless of the circumstances in which they were conceived or will be born and raised. When human life is valued more than convenience or money, then and only then will the problem be solved. I'm all for restricting access to abortion funding, and I'm all for legal protections for the unborn. But I am sad to say I realize these measures will only go so far.
