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Mike Pence launched Republicans’ war on Planned Parenthood
Sarah KliffJan 27, 2017 at 5:17 AM PST
Rally Held In Support Of Cutting Planned Parenthood Funding - DC
Republicans have targeted Planned Parenthood with laser-like focus for nearly a decade.
The House has repeatedly voted to defund the women's health group. Congress has convened multiple committees to investigate it. And at least 10 states with Republican governors have taken steps to defund Planned Parenthood locally.
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."
After his first attempt to defund Planned Parenthood failed — offered as an amendment to an appropriations bill in 2007 — he got to work setting the groundwork for future bills. He requested a Government Accountability Office report on how much money abortion clinics receive from the federal government to bolster his case.
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12189446/mike-pence-planned-parenthood