In August 3, the Senate, by a 53-to-46 margin, failed to obtain the 60 votes needed to proceed on S. 1881, to prohibit Federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive, maternal, and child health services, including abortions. The organization operates about 700 clinics that treat 2.7 million patients a year. The organization says that abortions account for approximately 3 percent of its services.

Planned Parenthood has been a focus of the abortion debate for some time but recently came under new scrutiny after the release of secretly taped and edited videos showing a Planned Parenthood executive appearing to discuss selling the parts of aborted fetuses. The Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group that released the videos, says the tapes prove that Planned Parenthood is breaking Federal law.

In fact, in a nearly unanimous vote, Congress, in 1993, approved the legalization of fetal tissue research, including in cases when the samples were obtained from legal abortion procedures. The vote followed a determination by experts at the National Institutes of Health that studying biological material obtained from legal abortions should be considered acceptable.

Planned Parenthood does not deny that they have received payments for the transfer of fetal tissue, but asserts that the exchange is in line with Federal law, which allows “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage.”

Senator Joni Ernst (IA-R), the sponsor of S. 1881, said the videos “hit at the moral fabric of our society.” Supporters of Planned Parenthood responded that the group’s clinics are the sole source of health care for thousands of women and that defunding them will take away a critical source of medical attention.

The debate now shifts to a must-pass measure to keep the government open past September 30. Any attempt to omit Planned Parenthood funding from the bill is likely to provoke another government shutdown, something the Republican leadership would like to avoid.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House John Boehner (OHR) stated that a number of committees are launching investigations into the abortion practices of Planned Parenthood. Opponents of the organization are calling for FBI and the Justice Department investigations as well.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that the President “would veto any legislation that tried to advance wholesale defunding for Planned Parenthood.”

For more abortion coverage, see the March 2014 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Abortion Protests,” the April 2009 issue of International Debates on “International Family Planning,” and the December 2006 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban.”