WASHINGTON - Heading into the fall elections, the political impasse has intensified over money to fight the Zika virus that took the life of a newborn girl in Harris County last week.

An emotional debate that grew deeply personal when lawmakers broke for their summer recess last month has settled into a protracted stalemate over provisions that appear to have little to do with the public health crisis spreading in southern states like Texas and Florida.

The key sticking points? The Confederate flag, water quality and Planned Parenthood, the women's health network that long has raised partisan hackles in Congress.

The tight focus on Planned Parenthood, in particular, illustrates how powerful constituencies on both sides of the divide over abortion and contraceptives have helped grind Congress to a virtual halt in fighting the mosquito-borne and sexually-transmitted disease, which has infected more than 1,800 people in the United States, including nearly 100 in the Lone Star State.

Amid partisan bickering in a volatile presidential election, both Democrats and Republicans are demanding the other side back down in what has become a high-stakes poker game potentially involving the lives of millions of Americans.

The central point of contention is whether a $1.1 billion package to address the health crisis purposely targeted Planned Parenthood by limiting new federal block grants to public health centers and hospitals. The restrictions written into the bill effectively disqualify private health care agencies such as Planned Parenthood, a major provider of birth control for low-income women.

The $95 million in grants at issue represents less than 10 percent of the Zika package.

Dems filibuster bill

After Republicans added the restrictions in June - stripping language barring the Confederate flag in federal cemeteries, as well - Democratic support for the Zika package evaporated. A Senate filibuster prompted Republicans to accuse the Democrats of blocking money for Zika.

Texas Republican John Cornyn, the Senate majority whip and one of the GOP's leaders in the Zika debate, repeatedly has dismissed Democratic concerns over the Rebel flag and Planned Parenthood as distractions.

"They blocked it for fanciful and imagined reasons," Cornyn said in a Senate floor speech after the Democratic filibuster doomed the Zika funding bill - at least until Congress returns after Labor Day.

Cornyn, speaking next to a placard showing a Zika victim with a distorted head, accused the Democrats of being "sore losers" for objecting to a final House-Senate compromise largely negotiated by Republicans. "There is no mention of Planned Parenthood in this conference report," he said, referring to the final Zika bill. "I would challenge anybody to find Planned Parenthood even once."

Democrats argue that it was not necessary to draft Planned Parenthood into the bill by name. The private organization, which services about 85,000 Texans a year, clearly was dealt out of any new Zika funding, they said, as was ProFamilias, a major affiliate in Puerto Rico, where the virus has been spreading rapidly.

Democrats point to a comment by Oklahoma U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, a senior GOP appropriator who called any new funding for Planned Parenthood a "red line." To Democrats, that signaled the issue's centrality in the GOP's base of social conservatives who oppose abortion and have made Planned Parenthood a frequent legislative target.

The Obama administration, which threatened a veto of the GOP's Zika bill, accused Republicans of letting their most conservative members turn the crisis into an ideological battleground.

Republicans, in turn, have accused Democrats of catering to a core constituency of abortion rights advocates, represented by Planned Parenthood. Dawn Laguens, the group's executive vice president, spoke alongside Democratic Senate leaders Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer at a post-filibuster press conference on June 30.

Sitting on Zika money

The Zika virus, linked to a rare birth defect known as microcephaly, is seen by Laguens primarily as a threat to women who are pregnant or trying to have children. "It really boggles the mind to hear that any qualified family planning provider could be excluded by the Republican leadership at this time of great, great need," she said.

Cornyn has countered that the Zika legislation does not block Planned Parenthood from being reimbursed for services it provides to its Medicaid patients, a major source of funding from the organization's practice among low-income women.

In response, Laguens noted that many of the hot-weather locales where Zika is expected to hit hardest are in Republican states like Texas, which passed up the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

The Planned Parenthood squabble follows months of negotiations over the price tag for the government's Zika effort, and how it should be paid. President Barack Obama originally sought $1.9 billion in emergency funding in February.

Senate leaders eventually agreed to a $1.1 billion bipartisan measure largely devoted to mosquito control and vaccine development. House Republicans, however, demanded offsetting spending cuts, requiring the administration to dip into funds that had been earmarked for Ebola.

Then came the block grant restrictions affecting Planned Parenthood, along with the removal of a ban on Confederate flags in national cemeteries, which the House approved in May.

Complicating the politics of the Zika funding was a GOP plan to ease Clean Water Act protections to permit pesticide spraying for mosquitoes near waterways, which Cornyn described as a common-sense measure.

With lawmakers on summer recess, and the gridlock at a standstill, the partisan sniping has escalated with an eye on the November elections. Republicans, making their case for Democratic intransigence, have been pressing Obama to move more quickly to use nearly $600 million that the administration reprogrammed last April from other health efforts, including Ebola.

The entire Republican Texas congressional delegation joined in a letter to Obama last week accusing the administration of sitting on money "already available" to fight Zika.

99 Zika cases in Texas

The administration has warned that without congressional action its ability to shift funds around is reaching its limits, and that existing funds will be exhausted by the end of September. Specifically, administration figures said that development of a potential vaccine for the virus could be delayed if Congress does not provide any more money soon.

Adding to the sense of urgency has been a long, hot summer. There have been 99 Zika cases in Texas, 30 of them in Harris County. All are travel related, like that of the newborn girl in Harris County whose death a few weeks ago was revealed by public health officials Tuesday. It was the first infant death in the U.S. involving the mosquito-borne virus.

"The irony here is that the states that are at greatest risk are those states that are overwhelmingly represented in Congress by Republicans," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, suggesting that Republicans "have a lot of explaining to do."

Republicans say it is the Democrats who must do the explaining.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, dismissed the possibility of passing a "clean" Zika bill without any outside policy riders.

"This is divided government," he told WKYT Kentucky Newsmakers as the recess began. "Both Democrats and Republicans have sway, have power to influence things. And the Democrats, because of some really minor objections to some of their core supporters like the Planned Parenthood group, decided to kill a bill that had a huge impact on the Zika crisis."