House votes to cut funding to Planned Parenthood News
House votes to cut funding to Planned Parenthood

[JURIST] The US House of Representatives [official website] on Friday approved [official results] the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015 [materials], a bill that would cut all federal funding to women’s healthcare provider Planned Parenthood [official website]. The vote followed over a month of intense scrutiny against Planned Parenthood over videos released by an anti-abortion group purportedly showing violations of federal laws that prohibit the sale of fetal tissue and restrict certain abortion procedures. The same day the House also passed [official results] the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act [materials], which would make it a federal crime to harvest body parts from an aborted fetus that is technically still alive. However, the bills, which were both passed almost completely along party lines, are unlikely to become law, as it is expected that the Democrats in the Senate will filibuster the measure and President Barack Obama [official website] would most likely veto both bills. It is therefore expected that the measures will not help curb fears of a government shutdown on October 1, as Republicans will most likely attempt to attach the measures to a government spending bill that must pass in order to keep the government open.

Abortion related issues have been a heated topic of discussion for the past several years in the US. In August Planned Parenthood filed a complaint [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, alleging that Alabama Governor Robert Bentley’s termination of Medicaid provider agreements for the facility violates a federal law that requires Medicaid beneficiaries to have a choice in provider for family planning. Also in August the Alaska Superior Court struck down [JURIST report] a state law it says would have unfairly burdened low-income individuals by limiting Medicaid funding for abortions. Also last month the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee lifted [JURIST report] a temporary restraining order that limited the state in enforcing new abortion laws regarding licensing standards for clinics. In July Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law [JURIST report] the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, limiting the ability of a woman to seek an abortion more than 20 weeks into her pregnancy. In June the US Supreme Court granted a motion to stay [JURIST report], allowing more than half of Texas’ 18 abortion clinics to stay open by temporarily blocking a law that would place stringent requirements on clinics requiring the majority of them to close.