WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted 51-50 Thursday to turn back an Obama administration rule that banned discrimination against organizations like Planned Parenthood in distributing Title X funds for contraception and family planning services, clearing the way for President Trump to sign the measure.
"This is a sad day for the U.S. Senate," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) during the floor debate on the measure. "Once again, instead of working on the many pressing issues at hand, Republicans continuing their tired, dangerous obsession with attacking women's health ... This is shameful; this is wrong; it cannot stand."
The measure, , revokes a regulation finalized last December that prohibits states from discriminating among the agencies awarded Title X money based on the services those agencies provide, including abortion services. The measure passed the House in February by a vote of 230-188.
As with other federal funds, Title X funds are already prohibited from being used to pay for abortions; the Obama-era rule did not affect that status. in fiscal 2016.
On Thursday morning, the Senate voted 50-50 on whether to call the resolution for a vote; Senate Republicans then had to get Vice-President Mike Pence to come to the Capitol to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of allowing the resolution to proceed. The vice-president broke the tie again on the final vote. The vote was mostly along party lines, although two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, voted with the Democrats against the resolution.
No Republicans were present during the 5-hour floor debate -- a fact with which some Democrats made hay. "The Republicans apparently have no interest in talking about ... a rule that assures women have no access to the family planning provider of their choice," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). "Instead they have demonstrated an unmitigated desire to cut women's access to healthcare in order to win, apparently, political points. But their absence today shows the politics of this issue, and most importantly, the people of America, are not on their side."
Blumenthal noted that Title X "delivers important family planning and preventive health services to the people of this nation ... we're talking about Pap tests, breast exams, birth control, and HIV testing to more than 4 million low-income women and men at nearly 4,000 health centers across the country. For 40% of these women, their visit to a family planning health center is the only healthcare they receive annually."
Several Democratic senators stressed that Title X-funds birth control, making the bill counterproductive if the goal is to reduce abortions. "If you want to reduce the number of abortions in America -- to make them 'safe, legal, and rare,' as they say -- then provide access to family planning," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted that in some areas of his state, "these clinics are the only family planning and preventive care services available. Sometimes they're the only healthcare services available at all."
After the final vote was taken, several Republicans spoke about the resolution; they said it was a states' rights issue. "This rule attempted to empower federal bureaucrats in Washington and silence our states ... States should be able to make their own decisions about the best eligible Title X subgrantees," said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). "A number of states have acted in recent years to prioritize Title X subgrants to more comprehensive providers where women can receive greater preventive and primary care than at providers like Planned Parenthood."
"Why was this rule implemented in the first place? Because the Obama administration wanted to do everything it could to secure federal funding streams for Planned Parenthood before they turned over the keys to the Trump administration," she continued. "With our vote today, we prevented that from happening."
"States like mine said we wanted to do family planning in our state ... but we didn't want to provide federal funds to the single largest provider of abortion in the country," said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). "That was a reasonable decision... to protect the lives of women in our states and protect the lives of children in the future."
Both Ernst and Lankford pointed out that the resolution does not prevent states from awarding Title X funds to Planned Parenthood, or reduce the total amount of Title X funding available. "Although I don't believe Planned Parenthood ... is deserving of taxpayer dollars, this legislation doesn't prevent Planned Parenthood or any other specific entity from receiving Title X funds," she said.
"If states like Washington or Massachusetts want to distribute Title X funds to Planned Parenthood, this legislation won't prevent them from doing so, nor does it reduce funds for Title X family planning programs ... Rather, overturning the rule merely empowers states over a 'Washington knows best' mentality and assures that states have the ability to best identify Title X subgrantees."
This vote marked the second time in recent weeks that Planned Parenthood funding surfaced as an issue on Capitol Hill. The American Health Care Act, which was withdrawn from the House floor last Friday before a vote could be taken, included a provision to pull the organization's Medicaid funding for a year.