Planned Parenthood’s decision to halt payments for fetal tissue won’t lighten the political pressure it’s under, Republicans said Tuesday.
Planned Parenthood’s announcement that it will now ban clinics from accepting any financial compensation for the tissue earned little praise from Republicans, who have been hounding the women’s health and abortion provider ever since the release of undercover videos exposing the practice.
“I’m glad to see Planned Parenthood is finally recognizing the need to end this disgusting practice. It’s about time,” said Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., vice chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, one of three House panels investigating the group.
“However, there are still many questions yet to be answered surrounding Planned Parenthood’s business practices and relationships with the procurement organizations,” she added.
David Daleiden, maker of the undercover videos, went further, insisting that Planned Parenthood’s policy shift is “an admission of guilt” and called it a “stunt.”
“This only raises more serious questions about what Planned Parenthood leadership has been allowing its clinics to do with money and baby parts, and intensifies the need for Congress to pursue full auditing and oversight of Planned Parenthood’s unaccountable criminal enterprise of baby parts trafficking,” said Daleiden, who spent nearly three years obtaining and editing the footage of top Planned Parenthood officials.
Republican leaders of two other committees investigating Planned Parenthood also dug into their commitments to keep looking into the group. House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, called Planned Parenthood’s new ban on compensation a “good, tangible result” of the House investigations, but doesn’t prove the group should still get federal dollars.
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said the announcement doesn’t “excuse” Planned Parenthood for providing aborted fetal tissue for medical research. Fetal tissue research is legal, but Republicans charge the videos raise questions about whether Planned Parenthood performed illegal abortions in order to keep certain organs intact.
“[Planned Parenthood] has not stated its commitment to end its horrific practice of harvesting fetal tissue,” Goodlatte said.
Planned Parenthood says the handful of its clinics that provide fetal tissue for medical research have complied with federal law allowing compensation for overhead costs but not profit. President Cecile Richards said Tuesday that banning all compensation wasn’t an acknowledgement of guilt, but rather an effort to invalidate the congressional probes.
The decision is “to completely debunk the disingenuous argument that our opponents have been using — and to reveal the true political purpose of these attacks,” Richards wrote in a letter to the National Institutes of Health.
Republicans have already held four congressional hearings on Planned Parenthood, although they’ve largely been focused more on the issue of abortion itself. They’ve not produced evidence that Planned Parenthood has broken any laws, but say the videos raise many questions.
The videos have prompted Republicans’ most coordinated effort yet against Planned Parenthood, which they deeply oppose for being the country’s largest abortion provider. Last week, Congress created a new panel within Energy and Commerce exclusively charged with investigating the group.
