House Republicans will take another swing at Planned Parenthood Thursday, in a fourth congressional hearing they hope this time will do some damage to the women’s health and abortion provider.
While past hearings have featured survivors of botched abortions, anti-abortion activists and even Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, this one is the first to include testimony from a former employee of the group who has turned against it.
Susan Thayer, who managed a clinic in Iowa and worked for Planned Parenthood for 17 years, will tell the House Judiciary Committee that her former employer is more interested in turning a profit than in providing women with healthcare.
“I started working at Planned Parenthood believing that I could serve young women and make their lives better,” according to testimony prepared by Thayer. “Over nearly two decades inside Planned Parenthood, I learned that was a lie.”
Conservatives have been mostly disappointed with the hearings the House GOP has held on Planned Parenthood and its involvement in providing aborted fetal tissue for medical research. Prompted by undercover videos shedding light on the practice, Republicans quickly started a major campaign against Planned Parenthood, including trying to block its federal funds and probing the group through three congressional investigations.
Commentators across the political spectrum agreed Richards emerged relatively unscathed from a House Oversight hearing last week, in which Republicans spent nearly five hours questioning her and trying to portray the group as a wasteful, extravagant organization that doesn’t need taxpayer dollars.
“The only thing more painful than watching Republicans not do anything about Planned Parenthood is watching them try to do something about Planned Parenthood,” wrote National Review’s Rich Lowry.
“Certainly there were some missed opportunities,” said Casey Mattox, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom. “There were questions that went unanswered that should have been answered.”
An initial hearing at the House Judiciary Committee last month fell somewhat flat, too. Republicans there focused on the procedure of abortion but didn’t produce any specific evidence that Planned Parenthood illegally profited from the fetal tissue or performed partial-birth abortions.
The controversial videos got more attention at a subsequent Energy and Commerce hearing, where Rep. Joe Pitts aired some of the footage showing a top Planned Parenthood official talking about “crushing” certain parts of a fetus to keep desirable organs intact.
But recent polls have shown that despite the Republican efforts, Planned Parenthood’s favorable rating is largely unchanged since the videos were released. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week found 45 percent of Americans view the group favorably, compared with 30 percent unfavorably, a shift from a 47-31 percent favorable/unfavorable rating when the videos were first released in July.
“The Planned Parenthood hearings left Planned Parenthood as strong as ever,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.
That’s disconcerting to abortion foes, who had hoped the anti-Planned Parenthood campaign would turn more people against the group, which provides more abortions than any other organization. They acknowledge that Republicans, to a large degree, haven’t used the congressional hearings to their advantage.
Mattox said that if he were in the place of House Republicans, he would have drilled Richards on why Planned Parenthood clinics provided tissue to a company called StemExpress, which promised “financial profits” to its suppliers.
In some of its marketing materials, the company California StemExpress said clinics can benefit financially from providing fetal tissue. “By partnering with StemExpress … you will also be contributing to the fiscal growth of your own clinic,” the materials say. Federal law allows clinics to be reimbursed for overhead expenses of obtaining the tissue, but they can’t profit from it.
Mattox said Republicans also should have focused on the fee per fetus Planned Parenthood has admitted receiving from tissue companies, which ranges from about $40 to $60. Lawmakers brought up that topic briefly during the hearings, but it wasn’t one of Republicans’ biggest talking points.
The Judiciary hearing is again supposed to focus on abortion and how Planned Parenthood doctors carry out the procedure. Besides Thayer, it also will feature an obstetrician-gynecologist.
David Christensen, a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, said he wants Republicans to drill down more into how abortions are performed, their effect on fetuses and women and whether Planned Parenthood has unethically altered methods.
In some of the videos, top Planned Parenthood officials referred to changing the way an abortion is performed to keep desirable organs intact. The group has said it hasn’t altered abortions in ways that would make them unsafe for women, but Republicans are skeptical.
“I don’t think that’s been focused on enough,” Christensen said. “I think the hearing tomorrow with a number of doctors can look at the science and the medical process of the abortion methods.”
House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, was widely ridiculed after presenting Richards with a chart showing that the number of Planned Parenthood’s abortions is skyrocketing while its breast exams are plummeting — but grossly distorted the trends, making them appear much more dramatic than they actually are.
“After watching Cecile Richards masterfully dodge critical questions and avoid messaging revealing that Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, I am hopeful that tomorrow’s hearing and witnesses will lead with science and facts,” said March for Life President Jeanne Mancini.
