At the last minute, GOP Congress decides not to vote on 20-week abortion ban

Republican leadership late Wednesday evening had to completely drop its plans to pass a bill that bans abortions after 20 weeks, and is reverting to old legislation that prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions.

The evening switch comes after a revolt from a large swath of female members of Congress, who were concerned about language that said rape victims would not be able to get abortions unless they reported the incident to authorities.

The new legislation doesn’t stand a chance to become law, but House Republican leadership wants to have some sort of pro-life bill on the floor Thursday when the anti-abortion March for Life comes to Washington.

This is embarrassing for the GOP, for sure, but before you go cheering for the female GOP contingent, led by Reps. Rene Ellmers and Jackie Walorski, that revolted, consider how narrow their objection was: that the rape exception wasn’t quite broad enough. And perhaps more importantly, they were (likely rightly) concerned that a debate about abortion and rape wasn’t exactly what the party needed right now.”The first vote we take, or the second vote, or the fifth vote, shouldn’t be on an issue where we know that millennials—social issues just aren’t as important [to them],” Ellmers explained to the National Journal.

And consider the bill they’ve swapped it instead: Described as a “more innocuous” anti-abortion measure in the Washington Post, it’s the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” that the House has passed before that would ban insurance coverage for abortion for millions of Americans. Basically extending the Hyde Amendment that already unjustly denies folks access to abortion under Medicaid to the rest of the private and public insurance markets, its effects are not “innocuous” for the many people in this country for whom the $500+ out-of-pocket cost for an abortion is real financial hardship.

Everything about this is a great embodiment of the state of abortion politics 42 years after Roe vs. Wade: Denying abortion to rape victims is just barely considered bad politics. But low-income women? A-okay. And of course, neither bill will actually become law, so this is entirely meaningless political theater whose sole purpose is to show that the GOP cares about maintaining the support of the extremists coming to DC today for the March for Life, who want to see abortion outlawed for everyone — and birth control, too.

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