The House of Representatives voted today to block funding for Planned Parenthood, the organization that provides affordable gynecological care to countless American women -- especially the poor and uninsured -- but also sometimes performs perfectly legal abortions and Rep. Mike Pence doesn't like that.
This is another conservative agenda item that will go nowhere once it leaves the House, and it's hard to see why House Republicans are wasting their time on it when there are so many pressing, actually important issues. Except that, it's really not so hard to see. These sorts of fights are the ones that the Republican base wants them to take on, and the base will be happy and rewarded. Democrats don't perform symbolic gestures nearly as often, and maybe that's because progressives want actual progress, not empty, meaninglessness changes.
But, I can also see Republicans being punished for overreaching here. The number of women who've had some sort of connection to Planned Parenthood is probably really high, and Planned Parenthood has a lot of resources. Moreover, pro-choice activists probably haven't been as motivated as anti-choice activists until lately, when there were so many blatant assaults on reproductive freedom. We'll see how people react, but I suspect it's negatively.
