WASHINGTON — Seeking to avert a government shutdown, Republican leaders are hoping to contain conservatives’ demands for a politically risky showdown with President Barack Obama by striking a quick blow against abortion and Planned Parenthood.

In a nearly party-line 241-187 vote on Friday, the House passed a bill blocking Planned Parenthood’s federal funds. The vote underscored how abortion has resurfaced as a white-hot political issue.

The issue’s re-emergence followed the release of secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood officials offhandedly discussing how they sometimes procure tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research. The anti-abortion activists who made the videos say they show that Planned Parenthood is illegally profiting from fetal organ sales, an accusation the group denies.

Democrats said the true GOP goal was to whip up conservative voters with legislation that would make it harder for women to get health care. Planned Parenthood, whose clinics provide sexual disease tests, contraception and abortion, says it’s done nothing illegal and is being victimized by misleadingly edited videos.

Republicans “are willing to risk women’s lives just to score political points,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who chairs the Democratic National Committee. “Enough is enough.”

Planned Parenthood gets around $450 million yearly in federal payments, mostly Medicaid reimbursements for handling low-income patients.

Beyond Friday’s bill, some conservatives want to attach language halting Planned Parenthood’s payments to broader legislation financing government agencies, which run out of money Thursday.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other GOP leaders say a shutdown battle would be fruitless because they lack enough votes to prevail in the Senate or overcome an Obama veto.