A Government Shutdown Would Likely Be a Disaster for the Pro-Life Cause

During a government shutdown, most federal funding for Planned Parenthood would continue to flow because mandatory spending (programs like Obamacare and Medicaid) is not affected by a continuing resolution to fund the rest of the government. One hundred percent of federal funding for elective abortions covered by Obamacare would continue as would more than 75 percent of all other government funding to Planned Parenthood during a government shutdown. 

Advocates of a shutdown strategy acknowledge that a shutdown itself wouldn’t halt funding to Planned Parenthood. Their argument is that a shutdown would eventually pressure enough filibustering Senate Democrats and President Obama to agree to strip Planned Parenthood of all its funding. Erick Erickson writes in a blog post titled “Shut Down The Government. Now.”:

In 2013, the same argument was made about Obamacare—that a shutdown over an effort to defund it would at least require the media to cover the trainwreck of a law. But the exact opposite happened.

The healthcare.gov website that the government spent hundreds of millions of dollars building over the course of three years didn’t even work. Millions of Americans were losing their health care plans that the president promised they could keep. Yet these stories received scant attention during the shutdown. Instead, the media focused on stories about children missing their cancer treatments at the National Institutes of Health. It was only after the government reopened that the press began to seriously cover the Obamacare debacle. Is there any reason to believe things would be different this time?

In all likelihood, a shutdown would not only fail to defund Planned Parenthood, it could do serious harm to more important efforts to protect the lives of unborn children. It would immediately change the debate from a discussion of Planned Parenthood’s victims to problems caused by a government shutdown. If a shutdown ends up handing the presidency to Hillary Clinton, that would foreclose the possibility of banning late-term abortion and taxpayer-funded abortion under Obamacare for at least four more years. If a Democratic president gets to replace either Kennedy or Scalia on the Supreme Court, a bloc of five solidly liberal justices could invalidate modest restrictions on abortion and the Hyde amendment, which bans direct federal funding of almost all abortions under Medicaid and saves tens of thousands of lives each year.

Of course, there’s no way to know whether or not a shutdown would decisively hand the presidency to the Democrats. Republicans were able to score a big victory in the 2014 mid-term elections, just a year after the Obamacare shutdown. But a unique set of circumstances—the implementation of Obamacare, the rise of ISIS, the Ebola scare, and the absence of Democratic voters who only show up in presidential years—were responsible for that victory. Events could conspire to save Republicans again, but that’s highly unlikely.

So, putting aside consideration of any other issue, a shutdown could be a disaster for the cause of saving the lives of unborn children. And yet, a shutdown may happen anyway.

Every budget battle since Republicans took over the House in 2011 has been contentious. And in the wake of the undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood, the fight over government funding, which expires September 30, was bound to be tied up in a fight over funding for Planned Parenthood.

The staunchest conservatives in Congress were never going to support any budget compromise. But most deals have needed a large number of Republicans to pass. Will anything close to a majority of Republicans be able to support a government funding bill that does nothing to address the horror revealed by this undercover investigation? It’s hard to see that happening too.

Even John McCain, who opposed the 2013 shutdown over Obamacare, seemed to suggest he’d be willing to see a shutdown through to stop funding to Planned Parenthood. “I don’t like a government shutdown,” he said. “But this is a clear case of totally improper use of taxpayers’ dollars. I have an obligation to the taxpayers of Arizona.”

“If [Democrats] want to stand before the American people and say that they support this practice of dismembering unborn children, then that’s their privilege,” McCain added.

It’s not clear what compromise Republicans could live with in good conscience. Obama has threatened to veto any bill that defunds Planned Parenthood on a “wholesale basis.” Does that leave the door open to defunding Planned Parenthood programs actually funded by the continuing resolution? Congressman Kevin Yoder of Kansas has introduced a bill to close the loophole that allows Planned Parenthood to make money from trafficking human organs. That would cut off a source of revenue to Planned Parenthood, and President Obama may feel compelled to sign it. But is it enough for Republicans to vote for a budget that averts a shutdown?

People may come to different conclusions about what the right course of action is. Some might think we need to abolish the filibuster to actually put a bill defunding Planned Parenthood on President Obama’s desk. Others might conclude that abolishing the filibuster would do grave damage to the pro-life cause, and many other causes, in the long run. But Republicans would be ill-advised to attack one another over making different prudential judgments. After all, just about every conservative in America—and every Republican running for president—has, for prudential reasons, supported legislation that included funding for Planned Parenthood.

In 2011, Republicans tried to defund the organization but failed (although they did stop direct taxpayer-funding of abortion in the District of Columbia). “Nobody’s more pro-life than me. Nobody,” former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said as the budget deadline loomed. “But as much as I want to see Planned Parenthood defunded, as much as I want to see NPR lose their funding, the reality is the president and the Senate are never gonna go along with that. So win the deal you can win and live to fight another day.”

In 2013, Senate conservatives like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul backed legislation that funded everything in government—including Planned Parenthood—except for Obamacare. “I’m willing to fund everything in government including a lot of things I don’t like in order to avoid having to fund Obamacare,” Utah senator Mike Lee told me at the time. I specifically asked Lee about the “defund Obamacare” bill’s inclusion of Planned Parenthood funding. “Sometimes you have to be willing to make difficult compromises in order to achieve the greater good. In this circumstance, I’d be willing to do it,” Lee said.

Americans sickened by the Planned Parenthood videos have a duty to stand on principle and fight cowards within the Republican party who have all too often betrayed or abandoned the most vulnerable human beings in our society. They also have a duty to be wise and prudent, to not let their shock and anger cloud their judgment, and to do more good than harm.