A tense battle to defund Planned Parenthood is being waged in Congress in the wake of the release of highly edited videos by the conservative pro-life group The Center for American Progress (CAP).
The New England Journal Of Medicine thoroughly debunked those allegations by CAP as false earlier this month, and a congressional appointed investigation by an private research company concluded that “‘manipulation’ of the videos by abortion opponents make those recordings unreliable for any official inquiry.” However, that has not stopped congressional Republicans from waging war against Planned Parenthood, even going so far as to threaten a government shutdown this week over the faux controversy.
After months of controversy, however, it seems that the American people do not want a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood, and the organization is as popular as it ever was.
A new Quinnipiac University National poll released yesterday shows that Americans oppose shutting down the federal government in the dispute over funding for Planned Parenthood by a margin of 69 – 23 percent, including 56 – 36 percent among Republicans.
The poll also found that a slightly smaller portion of voters, 52 – 41 percent, oppose cutting off federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Perhaps more telling is a brand new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that shows Planned Parenthood “registering a positive rating of 47 percent compared to a negative rating of 31 percent. That’s virtually unchanged from the last time our pollsters asked about the group in July, even though a majority (65 percent) of Americans now say that they have heard about the videos, which pictured Planned Parenthood employees discussing the use of tissue from aborted fetuses.”
You can see the list of individuals and organizations polled, by popularity, as reported by NBC News, and you might note that with a net rating of +16 Planned Parenthood beats out Donald Trump’s -33 by a margin of over 2 to 1:
- Planned Parenthood (47 percent positive, 31 percent negative, net +16)
- Joe Biden (40 percent positive, 28 percent negative, net +12)
- Bernie Sanders (32 percent positive, 22 percent negative, net +10)
- Ben Carson (29 percent positive, 21 percent negative, net +8)
- Carly Fiorina (27 percent positive, 20 percent negative, net +7)
- Barack Obama (46 percent positive, 40 percent negative, net +6)
- The Democratic Party (41 percent positive, 35 percent negative, net +6)
- The Black Lives Matter movement (32 percent positive, 29 percent negative, net +3)
- Hillary Clinton (39 percent positive, 47 percent negative, net -8)
- Jeb Bush (24 percent positive, 39 percent negative, net -15)
- The Republican Party (29 percent positive, 45 percent negative, net -16)
- Donald Trump (25 percent positive, 58 percent negative, net -33)
As NBC News concludes, it’s no small wonder that politicians – like John Boehner, for one – “dismissed conservatives’ push to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood funding, these poll numbers are instructive, too.”
Not only do six in 10 Americans oppose eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood, even those who SUPPORT defunding the group are not on board with a shutdown. Just nine percent of respondents who said they would like to see federal funding for the group slashed say that they would favor a shutdown to achieve that goal, while 11 percent said they would oppose such a move.
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