A Sham Hearing, In Three Excuses

Whenever House Republicans took a break from interrupting and derogating Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards during her testimony before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, congressmen scrambled to offer explanations for the hearing on the women's health organization in the first place. Excuses ranged from it being effort to save taxpayer money, to improving women's health care, to punishing the organization over (false) allegations from edited videos purporting to expose the for-profit sale of fetal tissue.

Each justification, however, collapses under scrutiny.

The hearing is all about fiscal responsibility, Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, claimed in his opening remarks. "The question before us is: Does this organization – does Planned Parenthood really need a federal subsidy? Does it need federal dollars?" he asked, adding, "What I don't want to tolerate, what I don't want to become numb to, is wasting those taxpayer dollars."

But if Chaffetz cared about taxpayer money, the last thing he'd be seeking is to defund Planned Parenthood. The Congressional Budget Office estimated just last week that ending federal subsidies to Planned Parenthood would cost the government $130 million in new expenditures over the next 10 years. Not exactly a money-saving scheme, though Chaffetz isn't exactly a stickler for the facts – he embarrassed himself by not only using a comically misleading graph in an attempt to discredit Planned Parenthood but incorrectly claiming that the underlying data came from the group when it was clearly marked as coming from an anti-abortion group.

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Actually, the congressional investigation is about improving women's health, Michigan GOP Rep. Tim Walberg, later asserted. After rattling off services Walberg claimed Planned Parenthood doesn't provide at all clinics, he argued that women are better served by health centers unaffiliated with Planned Parenthood: "Now if we're talking about care for women, I would suggest that the care is there in 13,000 [other women's health care centers], without the controversy of the abortions, the fetal manipulation and potential use of body parts in the wrong way. And I think for the record, if we're talking about women's health care, the issue of where we find it is found in 13,000-plus centers available to women."

Walberg's analysis is faulty for a couple of reasons: First it assumes that women would seek these alternative services in the absence of Planned Parenthood and second he presumes that women have access to them at all. But the CBO determined that defunding Planned Parenthood would directly increase unplanned births, as women lost access to birth control. Without the organization, the Guttmacher Institute estimates, abortion rates and unplanned births would be 60 percent higher. In fact, Planned Parenthood is the primary provider of women's health services in many states, and approximately half of their clinics are located in rural areas without viable care alternatives. When Indiana shuttered its Planned Parenthood clinics, for example, the state suffered an unprecedented HIV outbreak; in Texas, defunding the women's reproductive organization lead to what one University of Texas professor called a devastating loss of access to contraception for millions across the state.

When in doubt at the hearing, House Republicans invoked the infamous videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of fetal tissue. The videos showed the organization engaged in "barbaric and repulsive" behavior, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan claimed. And if they were selectively edited and untrue, he pressed Richards, why had she initially apologized? The congressman repeatedly interrupted Richards' attempt to explain that her initial apology came before the videos were determined to be edited.

It's phony outrage – analysis after analysis has shown the videos were heavily edited to distort on-air discussions, and the unedited versions reveal only that Planned Parenthood is engaged in the legal donation of fetal tissue for scientific research. State investigations desperate to catch Planned Parenthood engaged in wrongdoing keep turning up empty-handed.

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These hollow excuses failed to cover up House Republicans' transparent motivation for investigating Planned Parenthood – showcasing their contempt for women's right to reproductive choice to prove their conservative credentials. One had to look no further than at the congressmen's deplorable treatment of Richards as proof of that.

The irony is they're likely shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to 2016. A new NBC News/WSJ poll found that 6 in 10 Americans oppose defunding Planned Parenthood. So it looks like the hearing's scrambling justifications, lies, and political exploitation might be all for naught.