From NBC's Kelly O'Donnell
As the debate raged in Washington over a budget to keep the government from shutting down, the issue of abortion funding was consistently in the spotlight.
Ultimately, Democrats succeeded in retaining funding for women's health organizations that also provide abortions (like Planned Parenthood), but they were not able to eliminate a controversial 'rider' related to abortions in D.C.
A senior Democratic aide says that on Thursday night at the White House, President Barack Obama told House Speaker John Boehner that the White House would include the D.C. abortion language that was in a Republican House-passed one week extension bill. That provision bans the District of Columbia from using its own local tax money to pay for abortion services.
The aide says he witnessed the president say to Speaker Boehner in the Oval Office, "John, I will give you D.C. I'm not happy about it."
But when Boehner later asked for the elimination of funds for Title X -- spending for women's health and family planning organizations that also provide abortion services, the aide said the president flatly refused.
The president replied, "Nope. Zero."
Boehner continued to push to discuss the funds, the aide recalled.
The President repeated: "Nope. Zero."
"'John, this is it,'" the aide described the president as saying. "'This is it, John."
There was a long pause as no one spoke in the Oval Office spoke.
The Planned Parenthood issue was resolved that Thursday night.


If our pro-choice representatives were intellectually honest, they would recognize that one can't adhere to the Hyde amendment (no tax dollars for abortion) while giving tax dollars to an organization that provides both women's health services and abortion (violence against both men and women). Would you like to spend tax dollars to build high speed rail in California by hiring French and German businesses who cooperated with Hitler to transport Jews by train to their deaths at Auschwitz? Can the good aspects of a company be separated from the evil? I recognize there are circumstances when abortion is tragically necessary, but inconvenience isn't one of them.
What is the argument against abortion when we have parents torturously killing their toddler children who look to them as their sole protectors? As research shows, the 'safest state in the nation for unborn children' has THE HIGHEST CHILD ABUSE AND DEATH RATE. As a mother and teacher, I would much rather let these people choose to not have a child than kill them once they are here or make them suffer for years on end at the hands of people who supposedly loved them enough to not have an abortion. WE LOVE YOU PLANNED PARENTHOOD. The provider of women's health care for every college aged woman who's aged off her parents insurance plan. Women are alive and healthy today thanks to this organization.
I will vote for anyone who stood strong against this attack.
Do Senate leaders Reid and Schumer (aka Saruman and Worm Tongue) stay up all night trying to figure out how to create a crisi every two months just so they can milk the American Public using partisan politics instead of creating policies and law good for all Americans in general? Wasn't it Rahm Emanuel who promted this insanity? Afterall, didn't he say "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you could not do before."?
When Sauron Speaks he blames hobbits!