Mike Pence launched Republicans’ war on Planned Parenthood

By Sarah Kliffsarah@vox.com Updated Jan 27, 2017, 8:17am EST

It all started with vice-president Mike Pence, who will speak at today's March for Life.

As a member of Congress, Pence sponsored the first bill to defund Planned Parenthood in 2007 — and did so repeatedly through 2011, when it finally passed the House.

I happened to have interviewed Pence about his criticism of Planned Parenthood that year, and it was clearly an issue he was passionate about. He had been working to defund the organization for years at that point, even while his colleagues focused on other issues.

"If Planned Parenthood wants to be involved in providing counseling services and HIV testing, they ought not be in the business of providing abortions," Pence told me, sitting in his congressional office. "As long as they aspire to do that, I’ll be after them."

Pence’s previous record on Planned Parenthood suggests that defunding it could remain a priority for him if he became vice president. As Steve Ertelt, a writer at the anti-abortion website LifeNews, argues, "His selection would go a long way towards mollifying concerns some pro-life voters have had about Trump."

Pence started working to defund Planned Parenthood in 2007

Pence worked doggedly on the issue before it rose to national prominence. Before that, defunding Planned Parenthood wasn’t something Congress talked about much at all.

"What was apparent to me then was there was some unwritten agreement that we had arrived at, an unstated truce between pro-abortion and pro-life legislators," Pence told me in 2011. "When we introduced this, it was a completely different element in the equation."

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12189446/mike-pence-planned-parenthood