A misguided effort by anti-abortion members of Congress to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood would be disastrous for Washington state.
I experienced a déjà vu moment this week while tracking the latest effort in Congress to strip all federal funding from Planned Parenthood’s preventive health services.
The anti-abortion faction of the U.S. Senate sounded so similar to anti-abortion legislators I once covered as a news reporter in Texas. Both are attacking Planned Parenthood’s support for abortion rights by removing the money its clinics rely on to provide family-planning care. They overlook the Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976, which already prevents federal dollars from covering abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.