Parenthood

Nebraska Governor Vetoes Bill to Provide Prenatal Care, Uses Planned Parenthood Scare to Try to Maintain Veto

Once again we will get to see which anti-choice Republicans hate more, Planned Parenthood or abortions.

When “pro-life” Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman admitted that healthy babies aren’t nearly as important to him as ensuring that undocumented women don’t get any sort of doctor’s care on the taxpayer’s dime, much of the unicameral legislature decided to join together to overrule him. The legislature, led by anti-choice Republican Mike Flood, voted this session to return funding for prenatal care to the budget — dollars that go even to pregnant illegal immigrants.

Heineman threatened a veto, but the unicameral knew it had enough votes to override, making the bill unstoppable.

But now, Heineman may have come up with the one way to peel off override votes — threaten them with the specter of Planned Parenthood.

Via The Omaha World Herald:

[T]he pro-life governor’s veto message included a new and potentially explosive new charge: that some of the prenatal funds could find their way to a leading pro-choice organization, Planned Parenthood.

“I oppose providing taxpayer benefits to illegal immigrants,” Heineman said in a press release. “I oppose providing taxpayer funding to vendors that perform or promote abortions.”

There’s only one little problem with Heineman’s strategy. Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide prenatal care in any of its Nebraska clinics. But we’ll see if just the invoking the scary “Planned Parenthood” demon is enough to sway state legislators sway, regardless of how meaningless the threat is.