WASHINGTON, D.C., February 21, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The government spending bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in the wee hours Saturday morning packed several pro-life punches: it not only bars all Planned Parenthood affiliates from receiving government funds, but also retakes several major pro-life battlegrounds lost during the Obama administration.
H.R. 1, known as the Continuing Resolution, which has now been sent to the Senate for a vote, re-establishes the Mexico City Policy, which bars foreign aid funds from going to international organizations that perform or promote abortion. President Obama had struck down the policy by Executive Order three days after his inauguration in January 2009.
The bill also eliminates funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which American investigations have concluded is complicit in China’s coercive population control policy. After the Bush administration investigated UNFPA-assisted Chinese regions, where forced abortion and sterilization was found to have occurred, Bush gutted funding to the UN agency.
However, the Obama administration restored $50 million in annual aid to the UNFPA with no comment about the China allegations, and has ignored further investigations by the Population Research Institute confirming the UNFPA’s continued complicity in the maltreatment of Chinese citizens.
The most prominent pro-life changes in H.R. 1 – its defunding of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and removal of Title X “family planning” funds – threw pro-abortion opposition into high gear over the weekend.
In a video released immediately after Friday’s vote on the amendment defunding PPFA, President Cecile Richards called the bill “the most devastating legislative assault on women’s health in America’s history.” “The extremists in the HOR who gained power in the last election showed their true faces to the American people,” said Richards. “It’s funding that saves lives, and they killed it.”
Richards urged viewers “to take action today, tomorrow, and the next day, as long as it takes.” On Sunday, the abortion organization wrote on its Facebook site that it had gathered over 357,000 signatures on its petition to Congress within two days.
Backers of the bill, which would also gut funding for President Obama’s abortion-expanding health care reform law, are preparing for a showdown over the must-pass legislation. The battle could grind government operations to a halt if a resolution is not reached by March 4. The Congressional recess this week leaves lawmakers with only days before either a temporary budget bill is passed, or the government runs out of money.
President Obama has already promised to veto the bill in its current form, and Senate Democrats, who control the upper chamber, have also closed ranks against the deep cuts contained in the Continuing Resolution.
“Now that House Republicans have gotten this vote out of their system, I hope they will drop the threats of shutting down the government and work with the Senate on responsible cuts that allow our nation’s economic recovery to continue,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, according to ABC News.