While every member of West Virginia's congressional delegation has voted to defund Planned Parenthood, they would generally back down from that fight to avert a government shutdown next week.
Congress must pass a measure to fund the government by Oct. 1, but there is a substantial contingent of Republicans who have vowed not to pass any government spending measure that continues funding to Planned Parenthood.
At least 32 Republicans in the House have signed a letter vowing to oppose any measure that contains any federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Longstanding federal policy forbids the use of federal money for abortion.
Planned Parenthood gets about $450 million in federal funding annually, the vast majority of which comes through Medicaid, used by low-income patients to access health care services that the organization provides.
The House last week passed, largely along party lines, a bill that would defund the reproductive health organization. The bill, which follows a Senate vote last month, is part of the fallout of the edited undercover videos released this summer by an anti-abortion group that show Planned Parenthood officials talking about how the group provides fetal parts for medical research.
Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., voted to defund the organization, but thinks a government shutdown is not the right way to do it.
"This is probably not the best field of play to fight this over," Mike Hamilton, McKinley's chief of staff, said. "The congressman agrees that we need to defund it, the question we have here is on the strategy to do so."
Hamilton pointed to comments by the president of the National Right to Life Committee, in which she said a government shutdown could be counter-productive to the anti-abortion cause.
West Virginia is in the unique position of having a Democratic senator who calls himself "pro-life" and a Republican senator who generally calls herself "pro-choice," but both of them take the same stance on Planned Parenthood.
Sen. Joe Manchin was one of only two Democratic senators to vote in August to defund Planned Parenthood. That bill attracted a majority of senators, but was blocked by a Democratic filibuster.
Manchin would not defund the group, however, if it leads to a confrontation and possible government shutdown.
"He has voted and will continue to vote to defund Planned Parenthood, but his number one priority has to be to keep the government functioning," Jonathan Kott, a Manchin spokesman, said.
Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who calls herself "pro-choice" but generally votes for greater restrictions on abortion, also voted to defund Planned Parenthood. But Capito would support legislation to keep the government open even if it continues to fund Planned Parenthood.
"She has been very clear that she does not support a government shutdown," Ashley Berrang, a Capito spokeswoman, said.
Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., declined to say how he would vote on legislation that keeps the government open but also funds Planned Parenthood.
"There's so many variables in that, I just don't want to give you a firm 'yes' or 'no'," Mooney said Monday.
While President Barack Obama has vowed to veto legislation defunding Planned Parenthood, Mooney said that "it's hard to say for sure," what Obama would do if presented with such legislation.
There is only one Planned Parenthood location in West Virginia, in Vienna. It does not perform abortions and served about 960 patients last year, providing services such as contraception, HIV testing, routine physicals and cervical cancer screening.
Nationally, about 2.6 million patients are served by Planned Parenthood. If the organization was defunded, somewhere between 5 and 25 percent of those patients - as many as 650,000 people - would face reduced access to health care, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The office of Rep. Evan Jenkins, R-W.Va., did not respond to phone and email requests for comment.
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.