Planned Parenthood officials and their supporters say the organization's ability to withstand repeated attacks is a sign of its resilience. | Scott Olson/Getty Images Health Care GOP lawmakers’ reality: They won’t cut Planned Parenthood That's infuriated anti-abortion groups, who plan to take their fight to state legislatures and the courts.

Congressional Republicans are giving up on years of promises to cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood as Democrats prepare to take control of the House, a major setback for the conservative movement after controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House for the past two years.

The futility of the congressional efforts was clear as the lame-duck session of Congress convened this week and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) briefly tried — and failed — to rally support for one last bid to push through Planned Parenthood cuts, Obamacare repeal and other conservative priorities. But most Republicans, already rattled by the possibility of a shutdown next week triggered by President Donald Trump’s border wall demands, dismissed his bid.


That's infuriated anti-abortion groups, who plan to take their fight to state legislatures and the courts.

“They had two years to defund Planned Parenthood, and they failed,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America. “It’s a huge frustration. We worked so hard to elect supposedly these pro-life Republican officials, and we expected results.”

House Republicans who’ve repeatedly voted to defund Planned Parenthood — a priority since Vice President Mike Pence served in the chamber — say there is no point using their remaining days in power passing a bill that’s sure to die in the upper chamber. Next year, the dynamic will be reversed, with conservative bills that might get traction in the Senate sure to collapse in the Democratic-led House.

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Cruz intends to keep pushing cuts to Planned Parenthood’s funding in the next Congress, a spokesperson said. But most conservatives and anti-abortion groups are looking elsewhere. Groups including Susan B. Anthony List, the Heritage Foundation and Students for Life in America met Wednesday at the White House with Strategic Communications Adviser Mercedes Schlapp and other officials to urge them to flex their administrative powers and take a hard line with Congress.

“We told the White House, ‘Don’t sign any budget that funds Planned Parenthood,’” Hawkins said. “‘We need you to uphold your campaign promises and force Congress to uphold theirs.’”

Other abortion foes told POLITICO they're wary of such hardball tactics and instead favor chipping away at Planned Parenthood through state laws, federal regulation and the courts. A representative at another organization present at the White House meeting cautioned that “a shutdown strategy doesn’t work” and called instead for "a longer term vision for incremental progress.”

Advocates say the biggest blow to Planned Parenthood in decades may come as soon as the Trump administration finalizes a proposed rule that would cut off the organization's access to hundreds of millions of dollars in Title X family planning grants. Those final rules are expected in December or January, though they will likely trigger legal challenges.

Voters in Alabama and West Virginia also passed constitutional amendments that threaten to strip Planned Parenthood of all state taxpayer funding and would criminalize all abortions should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade. The measures could serve as a model for some other conservative-led states.

The Supreme Court may additionally take up cases testing whether states can block Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from their Medicaid programs — a development that would serve as the first major abortion test for the court’s new conservative majority.

For decades, no federal dollars have gone to fund abortions, but there have been many legal battles over whether providers like Planned Parenthood that offer a wide range of health services in addition to abortion are entitled to some amount of public health care funding. Justices have twice this year declined to act on petitions from Kansas and Louisiana to cut the family planning network from receiving state Medicaid dollars, but with Brett Kavanaugh now confirmed as the ninth justice, he may provide the needed fourth vote to agree to accept one of the cases.

Planned Parenthood officials and their supporters say the organization's ability to withstand repeated attacks is a sign of its resilience — and maintain the midterm elections were a mandate in favor of their agenda going forward.

"Voters in the last election made clear what we at Planned Parenthood already know to be true: politicians have no place in the exam room, and voters want more health care access, not less," said Leana Wen, the new president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement to POLITICO.

The organization's confidence today is a marked contrast to the fear it felt following the 2016 election, when officials braced for what they thought was an inevitable loss of funding after Republicans captured the House, Senate and White House.

But while the House repeatedly passed measures stripping Planned Parenthood of its federal funding over the past two years, the efforts died one after another in Senate. Planned Parenthood supporters Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) proved an effective block within the Republican caucus, and when Democrat Doug Jones (D-Ala.) captured Alabama's special election, passage became impossible.

The closest Congress came to sending a defunding provision to President Donald Trump was the so-called skinny repeal of the Affordable Care Act that failed by a single vote in the Senate.

"People who are frustrated need to be frustrated with the Senate," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the House Appropriations panel that oversees discretionary health spending. "I wish we could wave a magic wand, but the Constitution is pretty clear that you need the House and Senate on board.”

Next year, the dynamic on the Hill will flip — with a cadre of progressive Democrats exerting influence in the House while Republicans tighten their grip on the Senate with a fortified majority likely to support efforts to cut Planned Parenthood’s funding.

The prospect of divided government has left some anti-abortion groups bitter, believing it was the GOP's failure to fulfill promises to its base that contributed to voter apathy and midterm losses.

“There would have been a much more motivated electorate if Republicans even gave the appearance of fighting more,” said Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs of the anti-abortion organization March for Life. “Instead, they seemed to be very good at negotiating with themselves and defeating themselves.”

