If you are a Republican, it's not an issue at all to have a hearing about Planned Parenthood and whether they do icky, illegal stuff and not actually invite Planned Parenthood to testify. Instead, you
invite supposed "abortion survivors" (the existence of which is
highly suspect) and a rabid anti-choice extremist from the National Right to Life, like James Bopp Jr., their general counsel, and you call the hearing "Planned Parenthood Exposed: Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices at the Nation's Largest Abortion Provider."
This gives Republican members—predominantly male—the opportunity to say things like:
"When they came into Planned Parenthood they were living, feeling human children, and they died while they were there. Don't forget that these were once little babies that were killed at the hands of Planned Parenthood," said Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks.
Franks was asked
repeatedly if he had seen the whole, unedited complete video from Center for Medical Progress. He eventually admitted he had not. But that wasn't going to stop him. And he wasn't the worst, or the most stupid.
This was:
"Could you please tell me why Planned Parenthood needs to get over half a billion dollars of federal funding every year when there are other pressing needs, such as feeding hungry children, that we maybe we should be putting that money into? […] The question is whether Congress should appropriate another half-billion dollars plus to Planned Parenthood when we could be spending that money on feeding hungry children. […] This is a question of priorities. I'd like to know what your priority is: Planned Parenthood, or feeding hungry children?"
That question is from Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who
voted to slash funding for food stamps for hungry children. Remember, this hearing was supposed to be about whether Planned Parenthood broke any laws with regard to fetal tissue donation—the subject of the debunked "sting" videos that ostensibly sparked these hearings. There was one witness, Priscilla Smith, the director of the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at Yale Law School, there for the side of reality. She
reminded Sensenbrenner that keeping women healthy is a really big part of making sure their children are fed. She
tried to focus on the healthy part:
[T]here is an extreme mismatch between the concerns expressed over fetal tissue donation procedures and defunding the critical, nonabortion related health care services provided by Planned Parenthood. As HHS officials have emphasized recently, no federal funding supports abortions or health benefits coverage that includes abortions, except for abortions in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the woman is endangered. Instead, the only federal funds provided to Planned Parenthood cover "services such as annual wellness exams, cancer screenings, contraception, and the testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases."
Women's health and women's lives, of course, are not the issue for these Republicans. Nor is fetal tissue or life-saving fetal tissue research. The issue is taking away the autonomy of all the women who can't afford easy access to birth control and abortion.