Boehner: Ending abortion 'one of our most fundamental goals this year'

In a special message to the annual anti-abortion protest March for Life, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) vowed that ending abortion would be one of the top priorities of Republicans this year.

"Defending life, of course, is about much more than voting the right way or saying the right things," he said. "It’s about promoting a culture of life. It’s about understanding that abortion is a defining human rights issue of our time. Because human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on Earth has the right to treat it as such."

"With all that’s at stake, it is becoming more and more important for us to share this truth with our young people, to encourage them to lock arms, speak out for life, and help make abortion a relic of the past," Boehner continued. "Let that be one of our most fundamental goals this year."

Boehner said the Republican-led House would again seek to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which sparked controversy in 2011 because of how it defined rape. The bill was approved by the House but died in the Senate.

During the March for Life, the Republican National Committee also passed a resolution to defund Planned Parenthood. The resolution sought to ameliorate some of the outrage that proposals to defund Planned Parenthood have created in the past by calling for the money to be diverted to organizations that specialize in cancer screening for women.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act earlier this month, which would prohibit Planned Parenthood or any other abortion provider from receiving funding through Title X of the Public Health Service Act.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below: