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Don't Lose the War Over Defunding Planned Parenthood

On September 17, the Conservative Action Project (CAP) put out a "Memo for the Movement." On the letterhead, CAP signals it is "designed to facilitate conservative leaders working together on behalf of common goals."

The title of the Memo? "Oppose Any Bill Funding Planned Parenthood."

With less than two weeks before the end of the fiscal year without the passage of a single appropriations bill, CAP is calling on Members of Congress to actively oppose any legislation that provides funding for Planned Parenthood. In short, they are incontrovertibly calling for a government shutdown. A shutdown that will bury their own conservative leaders in a quagmire of political refuse.

Let's be clear here. Defunding Planned Parenthood must happen. The recent videos exhibit a vile and untempered disregard for humanity. They reveal an organization so calloused they don't even have the capacity to recognize the difference between a life and the value of a dollar.

And because it must be done, it must be fully and completely accomplished. It must be done well and strategically, with full consideration of the current context.

A recent vote in the Senate to move to discussing defunding Planned Parenthood garnered 53 votes - minus Sen. Graham (absent) and Sen. McConnell (procedural). Those 55 votes are still well short of the necessary 60 to even get to a vote on the bill. Let alone the looming veto of a President who asks God to bless Planned Parenthood.

Any appropriations bill, or continuing resolution, intended to defund Planned Parenthood must explicitly do so, as Planned Parenthood receives funding like any other non-governmental organization - through agency grants, federal reimbursements, etc. Such a bill requires 60 votes to close out debate. When it doesn't get them, the government shuts down.

The shutdown will then be draped on the heads of the conservative party which knowingly pursued an impossible course of action.

This cannot be more clear. Yet, this is the hill that has been chosen for the willing and unwilling politician to die on - those very conservative leaders being purportedly brought together. They would have their leaders bloodied and bruised in a battle that may ultimately lose them the war.

And when the mission fails, these leaders will be called weak. They'll be called establishment. They will be pointed toward the door.

What choice do the conservative leaders have? Like Russian soldiers in Stalingrad, they can either fall before the arsenal of the enemy, or be destroyed by the friends at their back.

And those who did not fight on this hill will be mercilessly thrashed as spineless and not of the party.

All the while, Planned Parenthood becomes more and more entrenched.

Such tactics smack of arrogance and pride. They are myopic to the extreme.

Never before has the pro-life movement had such a political ground swell as that caused by the recent videos. Yet, over half the country has never seen them. A majority don't even know that Planned Parenthood does abortions. And there is a continuing apathy in those that do.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans support protecting the unborn child when it can feel pain. So, let's start there. And ask the question, how far is too far. Mr. Senator, at what point will you protect a life? Mr. President, will you really allow suffering this kind of suffering?

It raises the question, why would a fetus feel pain in an abortion? And gives the answer that the abortion tears that baby limb from limb.

It shows the face of a child who has a 1 in 4 chance of surviving if it were born today (at 20 weeks).

And it asks, where is your humanity?

If you want to defund Planned Parenthood, expose it for what it does. The truth of abortion will be its own downfall. Just don't waste this momentum on a suicide mission. There may never be an opportunity like this again. Use it well. Use it to win.

C.F. Brake is a young attorney working to change the culture for the sake of our young men and women. Follow the blog on Twitter (@cf_brake) or e-mail C.F. Brake at cfbrakeblog@gmail.com.

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