Obama Threatens to Veto GOP Zika Funding Bill Because It Doesn’t Fund Planned Parenthood

President Obama is threatening to veto the Republican Zika virus funding bill because it doesn’t fund Planned Parenthood, which has attempted to develop the narrative that abortion and contraception – which it provides – will curtail the virus’ spread.

The Obama administration sought $1.9 billion allegedly to fight the mosquito-borne virus which Brazilian officials have linked to a rare birth defect known as microcephaly that can occur when pregnant women are infected.

“The virus is mostly seen as a threat to women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “It produces mild, if any, symptoms and is believed to be transmitted mainly by mosquito bites.”

Republicans agreed to a $1.1 billion funding plan that contains a provision that would block Planned Parenthood – the nation’s largest abortion business – from providing birth control to women allegedly at risk of being infected with the Zika virus. Democrats also said they cannot agree to the GOP Zika plan because it involves budget cuts from both Obamacare and unused funds for the Ebola virus.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called the GOP Zika funding plan “a narrowly partisan proposal that cuts off women’s access to birth control,” Reuters reports.

On Thursday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz called the $1.1 billion plan “totally inadequate.”

“We urge Republicans to stop turning this into a political football and actually get to work, come up with a proposal that’s going to serve the American people,” Schultz said.

The Huffington Post targeted the GOP’s Zika funding plan as one that “limits contraception and prevents Planned Parenthood from helping.”

According to the report:

The rapidly spreading Zika virus — which can be transmitted sexually and by mosquitos — is most dangerous for pregnant women. But Republicans in Congress on Thursday released a funding proposal limiting the distribution of contraceptives and preventing family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood from participating in the effort to help women in Zika-affected areas delay pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood and aborted fetal organ procurement company StemExpress have attempted to set up the narrative that so-called “reproductive healthcare” and research using the organs of aborted babies are essential to find a solution to the Zika virus.

How Zika Is Shaping the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Agenda: https://t.co/HOKXeUVNeb #ZikaVirus

— Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) May 2, 2016

“Zika has made a long-standing public health crisis impossible to ignore and demonstrates the critical need of government support for sexual and reproductive health care,” Chloe Cooney, director of global advocacy for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said. “The ability to decide if and when to have children is basic health care, but it’s a basic human right as well, and yet it’s not realized for so many women across the region, which this outbreak is making so crystal clear.”

Both Planned Parenthood and StemExpress have been the subjects of a specially convened congressional investigation that has determined likely violation of federal laws in the harvesting of the body parts of aborted babies for sale.

The Washington Post reports that StemExpress named Zika as one of the reasons why it requires fetal tissue procurement.

“Many researchers throughout the medical community have shared with StemExpress that their institutions are waiting for the Select Panel to complete its investigation before going forward with additional fetal tissue research specific to the Zika virus and potential treatments,” said the company, according to the Post.

Despite their expressed concern about the spread of Zika, Democrats in Congress rejected a bill recently that would end a redundant Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permit requirement to spray federally approved pesticides into bodies of water to combat the mosquito that carries the Zika virus.

However, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) explained that during the 1950s and 1960s, Brazil successfully eliminated the mosquito carrying the Zika virus through the use of DDT.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Brazil was able to stop the spread of Zika through “a very aggressive attempt” to eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries the virus and is “a very difficult mosquito to control and eliminate.”

“It will require a very aggressive, concerted effort,” he added.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told Breitbart News recently that, in fact, the government should wipe the virus out completely by lifting the ban on DDT.

“DDT was the most effective public health weapon of all time,” she explained, adding:

The ban on DDT was basically the decision of one man, William Ruckelshaus [the first head of the EPA], going against a mountain of evidence on safety and enormous health benefits. It was said that, “If they can ban DDT, they can ban anything.” And that’s how the EPA power grab started. Millions of African babies have died and are still dying of malaria because if it.

“Substitute pesticides are far more toxic and expensive,” Orient continues. “People are advised to use insect repellents such as DEET — which is absorbed through the skin, and safety in pregnancy is not established.”

Pioneer Energy president, Dr. Robert Zubrin, recently echoed the same idea at National Review: “The most effective pesticide is DDT. If the Zika catastrophe is to be prevented in time, we need to use it.”

He continued:

Rachel Carson … in her 1962 book, Silent Spring, made an eloquent case that DDT was endangering bird populations. This was false. In fact, by eliminating their insect parasites and infection agents, DDT was helping bird numbers to grow significantly. No matter. Using Carson’s book and even more wild writing by Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich (who in a 1969 Ramparts article predicted that pesticides would cause all life in the Earth’s oceans to die by 1979), a massive propaganda campaign was launched to ban DDT.

“Asking ‘why’ should be the main response to Zika,” Orient states. “Instead the advice seems to be: ‘Don’t travel, don’t have a baby, don’t let a mosquito bite you, stop climate change’ – and give the authorities billions of dollars for a crash vaccine development program.”