GOP effort to defund Planned Parenthood fails in the Senate


On Monday, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican effort to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood with a mostly party-line vote of 53-46, seven votes shy of the 60 needed to advance.
The measure, sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), was in response to videos secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists that show officials from Planned Parenthood talking about providing medical researchers with tissue from aborted fetuses. Conservatives say that the organization is doing this illegally for profit, while Planned Parenthood denies the allegations and says the videos are edited. Conservatives in the House and Senate are already saying that in the fall, they will oppose any 2016 spending bills that include federal funding for Planned Parenthood, The Associated Press reports.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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