MONDAY, AUGUST 3 This week of war—on women, on black Americans, on
circus-goers—kicked off with the war on women, as today the US Senate voted on whether or not to deny government funding to the nonprofit reproductive health organization Planned Parenthood, following the release of videos showing Planned Parenthood reps crassly discussing the (legal) facts of fetal tissue donation. Immediately before today’s vote, Senator Elizabeth Warren excoriated the push to gut PP. “I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the United States Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women’s health-care centers,” said Warren during her seven-minute address. “The Republican scheme to defund Planned Parenthood is not some sort of surprised response to a highly edited video. Nope, the Republican vote to defund Planned Parenthood is just one more piece of a deliberate, methodical, orchestrated right-wing attack on women’s rights.” Happy finale: The measure failed. “The Senate voted 53–46, falling seven votes short of the 60 needed to pass the bill,” reported NBC.
