Speaker John Boehner and his House GOP leadership gathered the team for a closed door meeting on Thursday to talk about proposals being floated by several House Members to defund Planned Parenthood.
The effort comes in reaction to videos that have surfaced where Planned Parenthood is actively selling baby parts. Hearts, livers, limbs — they even slice open a baby’s head because they can get a good price for an “intact” brain.
This human tissue, we are told, is valuable for research. What is patently obvious is that human tissue can only come from one place — a human. Video of lab workers moving baby parts around in a petri dish like they are carrots in beef stew will literally turn your stomach.
That alarming reality is no match, however, for the power of polling.
Mr. Boehner reportedly presented polling data to House members that showed the Republicans would be blamed for any government shutdown resulting from a presidential veto of a spending bill that doesn’t include Planned Parenthood. The GOP would suffer as a result — or so says Mr. Boehner.
Politically, his assertion just isn’t true. The government shutdown two years ago was blamed (incorrectly) on the Republicans. The next election saw the GOP pick up 13 seats in the House and take a commanding control of the US Senate. Clearly, the shutdown didn’t translate into trouble at the ballot box.
Far more important is principle.
Mr. Boehner has been a vocal opponent of abortion all the way back to his days as a state legislator in Ohio. Now, however, with the best and strongest opportunity to stop the government from funding the biggest provider of abortions in America and their wholesale sell-off of baby parts, Boehner is instead depending on polling data to try and convince members to punt and put the issue off until some future undetermined time.
Where is the principle in that? What is more important, human life or a political poll?
Planned Parenthood has been roundly and justifiably criticized for putting money and profits into their abortion equation. House GOP leadership’s decision to put polling over the value of a helpless human baby is equally as bad.
Thankfully, a majority of House members ignored Mr. Boehner and voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
Mr. Boehner should be ashamed of himself.
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