The War on Women is alive and well for 2016, centered on Planned Parenthood

The New York Times takes a deep dive into the politics behind the Planned Parenthood attacks in Congress in the past year, and how that plays into next year. It's been clear that while defunding is taking a backburner, that doesn't mean the end of the fight. Republicans might have decided to skip having a government shutdown fight over it, but that's just a pause in the action. In fact, as the Times article illuminates, the anti-choice community gave up that fight precisely to keep the rhetorical war on Planned Parenthood flaming through this election year.

They're setting it up with a guaranteed loss: they will vote next week on the reconciliation bill that both defunds Planned Parenthood and repeals Obamacare, which President Obama will veto and  they don't have the votes to override that veto. That will give them what they want right now even more than destroying the organization—being able to campaign in 2016 to destroy Planned Parenthood.

Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee, wrote in an email: "We won't be able to remove federal funds from Planned Parenthood while this president is still in office. But we do have a pathway when(!) a pro-life president is elected." […]

[C]ongressional Republicans say the effort will show they can pass such conservative priorities over Democrats' opposition—and get them signed into law once a Republican president is elected. They hope Mr. Obama’s veto will elevate the issues of Planned Parenthood and abortion rights more broadly in the 2016 election debate as the parties contend for control of the White House and the Senate. Yet for several vulnerable Senate Republicans from Democratic-leaning states, the less their party says about the issues, the better. […]

If next week's House vote is Republicans' last try for legislation against Planned Parenthood—for now—there will still be hearings in several committees through 2016 that will keep alive the questions over how fetal tissue from abortions is handled. A little more than half of roughly 700 Planned Parenthood centers perform abortions, and a few of those, in three West Coast states, have arrangements to provide tissue from fetuses or fetal placenta to researchers.

The main event is an investigation by a special House committee that Republicans have named the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives and Democrats call the Special Republican Committee to Attack Women's Health.

Never mind that none of the states which has investigated the fetal tissue donation program—or the House Judiciary Committee which also investigated—has found any wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. That won't stop this colossal waste of time and tax payer dollars anymore than it stopped the Benghazi Committee. It's not about the facts. It's about the politics, as it has been for the forced birthers all along.

In fact, they need to keep Planned Parenthood alive—and federal Medicaid dollars going to it—so they have something to keep campaigning against. The task for Democrats will be to turn that campaign against them and really motivate the millions upon millions of people Planned Parenthood has served over the decades to get to the damned polls.