Don’t expect many public hearings from a new House committee created to investigate fetal tissue procurement from Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.
The Republican woman leading the committee, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, says the bulk of the panel’s work will take place behind closed doors instead of in highly charged congressional hearings that lawmakers typically use to levy political attacks at each other.
“Our task is not to get attention, our task is to get answers, and that will clearly be our focus,” Blackburn told the Washington Examiner in an interview laying out the committee’s goals and timeline.
“I just don’t anticipate that we’re going to have lots of public hearings,” she said. “It will function more as a working, information-gathering committee.”
House Republicans eagerly started investigations into Planned Parenthood over the summer, after undercover videos from anti-abortion investigator David Daleiden highlighted how some clinics supply aborted fetal tissue for medical research.
Although no one has proven Planned Parenthood broke any laws, and the women’s health and abortion provider has since banned clinics from being compensated for the tissue, the GOP has viewed the footage as the perfect opportunity to draw attention to the practice of abortion and the ethical questions surrounding it.
Now Republicans are consolidating all the investigations into a special committee they say will look at abortion practices and how fetal tissue is obtained and made available to medical researchers.
Blackburn said she is working on hiring staffers for the committee and expects to hold the first working session with members before the Christmas break. The goal is to present a report near the end of 2016 with recommendations for how current laws should be modified.
The panel isn’t solely about Planned Parenthood, Blackburn insists, although the effort was prompted by the videos that feature some of the group’s top officials. She said she instead will guide the committee to look at the practices of every group, nonprofit and for-profit, involved in the transfer of fetal tissue.
“Having a discussion on how we protect life is a discussion we need to be having and looking at what is happening with these unborn children is something we need to do,” she said.
Some Democrats appointed to the 13-member panel say they’re fine with looking into fetal tissue practices to ensure no one is inappropriately profiting. While those donating the tissue may be compensated only for overhead costs, there are no limits for how much procurement companies may charge researchers, with some making thousands of dollars per fetus.
But that’s likely where any bipartisan cooperation will begin and end.
“I’m certainly open to making sure that fetal tissue that is made available is regulated appropriately and there are not obscene profits being made,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, one of the six Democrats appointed to the panel.
But she also said she anticipates the hearing may become “a typical witch-hunt, like the Benghazi hearing.”
Speier was referring to another special committee, this one formed last year by Republicans to investigate how the State Department under Hillary Clinton handled events around the U.S. embassy attack. Democrats have slammed the panel, saying it’s nothing more than an attempt to undermine Clinton’s presidential campaign.
That committee has held four hearings since its formation a year and a half ago. But that’s not the goal for the fetal tissue panel, according to Blackburn, who insists it’s not about riling up the public.
But it could be difficult for Republicans to avoid the perception that the panel is little more than an election-year effort to rile up the GOP base. Democrats are ready to levy their “war on women” attacks, labeling it the “Select Committee to Attack Women’s Health.”
Jan Schakowsky, who will serve as the top Democrat on the panel, said she questions its usefulness but had asked Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to place her on it regardless.
“If we were going to participate in such a panel, I wanted to be on it,” the Illinois Democrat said.
The committee will include six Democrats and eight Republicans, four of them women. Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., who angered anti-abortion groups earlier this year for opposing an abortion ban last-minute, had asked leadership to be on the panel but was not included.
Although hugely at odds over the abortion question, Schakowsky and Blackburn largely hold their fire when asked about working alongside the other. They both noted that they have served together on a special panel dealing with data security, as well as on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“My hope is that we can work together,” Schakowsky said.
Blackburn called her Democratic colleague a “fierce proponent” for her point of view. “I know we are not going to agree on many things, but I hope we will agree that life deserves to be protected in this country,” she said.
