[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PLANNED PARENTHOOD EXPOSED: EXAMINING
THE HORRIFIC ABORTION PRACTICES AT
THE NATION'S LARGEST ABORTION PROVIDER
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-41
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov
___________
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia, Chairman
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
Wisconsin JERROLD NADLER, New York
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
DARRELL E. ISSA, California STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
STEVE KING, Iowa Georgia
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico
LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas JUDY CHU, California
JIM JORDAN, Ohio TED DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah KAREN BASS, California
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania CEDRIC RICHMOND, Louisiana
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina SUZAN DelBENE, Washington
RAUL LABRADOR, Idaho HAKEEM JEFFRIES, New York
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia SCOTT PETERS, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida
MIMI WALTERS, California
KEN BUCK, Colorado
JOHN RATCLIFFE, Texas
DAVE TROTT, Michigan
MIKE BISHOP, Michigan
Shelley Husband, Chief of Staff & General Counsel
Perry Apelbaum, Minority Staff Director & Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
Page
OPENING STATEMENTS
The Honorable Bob Goodlatte, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Virginia, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary 1
The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress
from the State of Michigan, and Ranking Member, Committee on
the Judiciary.................................................. 3
The Honorable Trent Franks, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Arizona, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary....... 4
The Honorable Steve Cohen, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Tennessee, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary..... 6
WITNESSES
Gianna Jessen, Abortion Survivor and Pro-Life Advocate and
Speaker, Franklin, TN
Oral Testimony................................................. 13
Prepared Statement............................................. 15
James Bopp, Jr., General Counsel, National Right to Life,
Washington, DC
Oral Testimony................................................. 21
Prepared Statement............................................. 23
Priscilla J. Smith, Associate Research Scholar in Law, Senior
Fellow and Director, Program for the Study of Reproductive
Justice, Information Society Project, Yale Law School, New
Haven, CT
Oral Testimony................................................. 44
Prepared Statement............................................. 46
Melissa Ohden, Abortion Survivor, and Founder, Abortion Survivors
Network, Gladstone, MO
Oral Testimony................................................. 58
Prepared Statement............................................. 60
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Material submitted by the Honorable Steve Cohen, a Representative
in Congress from the State of Tennessee, and Member, Committee
on the Judiciary............................................... 8
Material submitted by the Honorable Bob Goodlatte, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, and
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary........................... 67
Material submitted by the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a
Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, and
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary..................... 83
Material submitted by the Honorable Jerrold Nadler, a
Representative in Congress from the State of New York, and
Member, Committee on the Judiciary............................. 101
Material submitted by the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, and Member,
Committee on the Judiciary..................................... 110
Material submitted by the Honorable Judy Chu, a Representative in
Congress from the State of California, and Member, Committee on
the Judiciary.................................................. 162
Material submitted by the Honorable Suzan DelBene, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Washington, and
Member, Committee on the Judiciary............................. 184
Material submitted by the Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative
in Congress from the State of California, and Member, Committee
on the Judiciary............................................... 192
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Doug Collins, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Georgia, and
Member, Committee on the Judiciary............................. 203
Additional Material submitted by the Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a
Representative in Congress from the State of California, and
Member, Committee on the Judiciary............................. 209
APPENDIX
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
Material submitted by the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a
Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, and
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary..................... 212
Material submitted by the Honorable Bruce Poliquin, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Maine.......216
deg.OFFICIAL HEARING RECORD
Unprinted Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
Material submitted by the Honorable Mike Bishop, a Representative
in Congress from the State of Michigan, and Member, Committee
on the Judiciary (see Rep. Mike Bishop Submissions at link
below)......................................................... 190
http://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/
ByEvent.aspx?EventID=103920
PLANNED PARENTHOOD EXPOSED: EXAMINING THE HORRIFIC ABORTION PRACTICES
AT THE NATION'S LARGEST ABORTION PROVIDER
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:39 a.m., in room
2141, Rayburn Office Building, the Honorable Bob Goodlatte
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Goodlatte, Sensenbrenner, Chabot,
Issa, Forbes, King, Franks, Gohmert, Jordan, Poe, Gowdy,
Labrador, Farenthold, Collins, DeSantis, Walters, Buck,
Ratcliffe, Trott, Bishop, Conyers, Nadler, Lofgren, Jackson
Lee, Cohen, Johnson, Chu, Deutch, Gutierrez, DelBene,
Cicilline, and Peters.
Staff present: (Majority) Shelley Husband, Chief of Staff &
General Counsel; Branden Ritchie, Depuyt Chief of Staff & Chief
Counsel; Allison Halataei, Parliamentarian & General Counsel;
Paul Taylor, Chief Counsel, Subcommittee on the Constitution
and Civil Justice; John Coleman, Counsel, Subcommittee on the
Constitution and Civil Justice; Kelsey Williams, Clerk;
(Minority) Perry Apelbaum, Staff Director & Chief Counsel;
Danielle Brown, Parliamentarian and Chief Legislative Counsel;
James Park, Chief Counsel, Subcommittee on the Constitution and
Civil Justice; and Veronica Eligan, Professional Staff Member.
Mr. Goodlatte. Good morning. The Judiciary Committee will
come to order, and without objection the Chair is authorized to
declare recesses of the Committee at any time.
We welcome everyone to this morning's hearing on Planned
Parenthood Exposed: Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices
at the Nation's Largest Abortion Provider. And I will begin by
recognizing myself for an opening statement.
Recently the Nation's attention has been drawn to a series
of undercover videos recorded by members of a group called The
Center for Medical Progress. These videos contained discussions
with representatives of the abortion providing organization,
Planned Parenthood, regarding the exchange of money for the
body parts of unborn children to be used in research.
Any discussion of abortion is inherently difficult as it is
unquestionably the taking of a human life. That discussion
becomes even more difficult when it turns to the monetary value
of the body parts of more developed unborn children, and to the
prospect of exposing them to potentially more painful abortions
conducted in different ways without the mother's consent to
preserve the added value of their more fully developed body
parts. Yet these videos force us all to engage in that
discussion, one that this Committee has been engaged in for
some time now, and which now begins its phase of public
hearings.
There are questions regarding whether there are gaps in the
law that should be filled to prevent the types of horrors
described in the videos. There are questions regarding whether
or not existing Federal laws have been violated. The Committee
is aggressively seeking answers to these questions, but there
is no question that the videos are deeply disturbing at a human
level.
The director of New York University's Division of Medical
Ethics said in response to the videos that it is ethically very
dangerous to change an abortion procedure for the purpose of
collecting the organs of unborn children because then, ``you're
starting to put the mom's health secondary.''
One of the unborn baby tissue procurement companies caught
on tape has already claimed to have severed its business
relationship with Planned Parenthood. The head of Planned
Parenthood herself has referred to what her own senior director
of medical services said on the videos as unacceptable, and
personally apologized for it. And during a sit-down interview
on the New Hampshire Union Leader, Democratic presidential
candidate, Hillary Clinton, said of the undercover videos, ``I
have seen pictures of them and obviously find them
disturbing.'' When the leading Democratic candidate for
President says she finds the videos obviously disturbing, I
think we can safely put to rest any allegations that the
investigation of these acts is inappropriate.
Some Members have questioned why our investigation is
focused on the conduct of Planned Parenthood and not on the
conduct of those who obtained the undercover footage. Part of
the answer is that Planned Parenthood, unlike the undercover
reporters, is granted huge amounts of Federal funds, making it
our business as Members of Congress, charged with controlling
Federal purse strings, to do what we can to ensure Federal
taxpayer dollars are not contributing to the sorts of horrors
reflected in the undercover videos.
The conduct exposed by the undercover videos may help
inform Congress on how to enact better laws, or to see to it
that current laws are better enforced to help protect innocent
life nationwide. To that end, the House has already passed The
Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit
abortion with certain limited exceptions when women are
entering the 6th month of pregnancy.
Today, America is one of only seven countries on earth,
including North Korea and China, that allow elective abortion
after 20 weeks post-fertilization, and an overwhelming majority
of just about every demographic group opposes its continued
practice here. The Senate should pass that bill immediately,
and the President should sign it, and in doing so help ensure
that the body parts of late aborted babies cannot be sold
because late-term abortions would be generally prohibited.
In the meantime, the House Judiciary Committee today
continues to examine additional ways of protecting human life
and preserving the conscience of America. Today's hearing is
the first part of a two-part hearing on this topic. I hope that
this hearing helps to shed light on some of the Nation's
darkest corners so the atrocities that some would very much
like to dehumanize can be exposed for what they really are.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses here today,
and it is now my pleasure to recognize the Ranking Member of
the Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Michigan, Mr.
Conyers, for his opening statement.
Mr. Conyers. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And to the
Members of the Judiciary Committee and our friends that are
here in the hearing room, as this one-sided hearing title
suggests, and by the way I have a file on these unusual titles
that come up from time to time, we will likely hear a series of
allegations leveled against Planned Parenthood, one of the most
popular organizations for almost 100 years, that it engaged in
unlawful conduct based solely on a series of deceptively edited
undercover videos.
Notably, the Center for Medical Progress, the entity that
filmed these videos and which could answer significant and
troubling questions of about their accuracy and veracity, is
not here today. In addition, the majority chose not to invite
Planned Parenthood, the target of today's attacks.
As we hear from our witnesses, we should keep in mind the
following points. To begin with, there is no credible evidence
that Planned Parenthood violated the law. The videos wrongly
implied that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue and organs
for profit. That is not the case. The law governing fetal
tissue research, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan
support back in 1993, provides in part that no one can
``knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human
fetal tissue for valuable consideration.'' In short, for-profit
sales, and purchases of fetal tissue are illegal. Similarly,
Federal law prohibits for-profit sales and purchases of human
organs. In both cases, however, valuable consideration does not
include reasonable payments to cover certain costs associated
with either fetal tissue or organ donations.
The Center for Medical Progress' doctored videos do not
support the allegation that Planned Parenthood sought profit
from fetal tissue or organ donations. Rather, they show, among
other things, discussions over payments for costs associated
with fetal tissue or organ donation payments that the law
clearly allows.
The videos also wrongly suggest that doctors at Planned
Parenthood violated the law by altering the procedures used to
perform abortion so as to preserve fetal tissue or organs.
There is no evidence that Planned Parenthood has altered
methods. Moreover, the statutory prohibition on changing the
timing, method, or procedures of an abortion to preserve fetal
tissues applies only to certain federally-funded research, and
such research has not been funded since 2007. In other words,
the legal prohibition did not apply to Planned Parenthood at
the time the Center's undercover videos were filmed.
Finally, no evidence supports the suggestion that Planned
Parenthood doctors may have violated the Partial Birth Abortion
Ban Act. The fact that Planned Parenthood officials refer to
intact fetuses and tissue specimens in many of the videos is
immaterial. To violate the act, the physicians must partially
deliver a living fetus and have the intent to terminate that
fetus after its partial delivery. None of the videos shows any
Planned Parenthood official engaging in or suggesting the use
of such a procedure. In short, no reliable evidence
demonstrates that Planned Parenthood violated Federal law.
What is troubling about the videos is the manner in which
they were produced. The Center for Medical Progress created a
false tissue procurement company to use as a front in order to
infiltrate Planned Parenthood facilities and to create the
undercover videos, and may have deceived any number of State
and Federal authorities to do so. Additionally, the Center
heavily edited the videos to present a misleading picture of
the surreptitiously recorded conversations in order to suggest
illegal conduct by Planned Parenthood and to maximize the
videos' shock value.
A forensic analysis submitted to Congress has concluded
that a thorough review of these videos in consultation with
qualified experts found that they do not represent a complete
or accurate record of the events they purport to depict. And
even the alleged full footage released by the Center includes,
and I quote, ``cuts, skips, missing tape, and changes in camera
angle,'' as well more than 30 minutes of missing video, and
took out of context so as to substantively and significantly
alter the meaning of the dialogue.
Finally, we must step back and look at the context in which
this hearing itself is being held. The real purpose of the
videos is to undermine one of the Nation's leading providers of
high-quality healthcare for women. Planned Parenthood serves
2.7 million Americans a year, and 1 in 3 women have used
Planned Parenthood services by the age of 45. The organization
is nearly 100 years old, and some abortion opponents are
attempting to use these videos as a pretext to end Federal
funding for Planned Parenthood. If successful, this effort
would hurt those who rely on Planned Parenthood's services, and
doing so would not prevent abortions.
It is already the case that no Federal funds may be used to
pay for abortions with certain limited exceptions. Instead,
Federal funding pays for Planned Parenthood's many critical
health services, such as annual wellness exams, cancer
screenings, contraception, and to further the study of sexually
transmitted diseases. Surely we in the Congress have better
things to do than to spend our time helping to undermine an
organization that provides such vital health services.
And I thank you, Chairman Goodlatte.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair now recognizes the Chairman of the
Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee, Mr. Franks of
Arizona, for his opening statement.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman,
the United States of America is a unique Nation that is
premised on the foundation that all of us in the human family
were created equal, and that each of us is endowed by our
Creator with this inalienable right to live. Yet this Committee
is convened here today in a hearing titled, ``Planned
Parenthood Exposed: Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices
at the Nation's Largest Abortion Provider,'' because numerous
video recordings have been recently released that
incontrovertibly document corporate officers and employees of
Planned Parenthood casually discussing their rampant practice
of harvesting and selling the little body parts from many of
the hundreds of thousands of innocent babies they are guilty of
killing in their abortion clinics across this Nation every
year.
These video recording irrefutably reveal officers of
Planned Parenthood haggling over the price of these little
organs and body parts, and casually describing ways of killing
these little babies, often using much more painful methods,
like partial birth abortion, to make sure the sellable organs
of these babies remains undamaged.
One of these videos describes an incident where one of
Planned Parenthood's employees calls one of the younger
employees over to witness something that was ``kind of cool,''
that one of the babies' hearts was still beating. The older
employee then said, ``Okay, this is a really good fetus, and it
looks like we can procure a lot from it. We're going to procure
a brain.'' And then using scissors, together the two employees,
starting at the baby's chin, cut upward through the center of
this child's face and pulled out the baby's little brain, and
placed it in a container where it could later be sold.
Mr. Chairman, I find it so crushingly sad that the only
time this little baby was ever held by anyone in its short life
was by those who cut his face open and took his brain. Have we
forgotten that it was not so long ago that authorities entered
the clinic of Dr. Kermit Gosnell? They found a torture chamber
for little babies that really defies description within the
constraints of the English language.
The grand jury report at the time said, ``Dr. Kermit
Gosnell had a simple solution for unwanted babies: he killed
them. He didn't call it that. He called it 'ensuring fetal
demise.' The way he insured fetal demise was by sticking
scissors in the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal
cord. He called it 'snipping.' Over the years, there were
hundreds of snippings.''
Ashley Baldwin, one of Dr. Gosnell's employees, said she
saw babies breathing, and she described one as 2 feet long that
no longer had eyes or a mouth, but in her words was ``making
this screeching noise, and it sounded like a little alien.''
And yet the President of the United States of America and many
Members of Congress have not uttered one single syllable
against these gut-wrenching atrocities of Kermit Gosnell or
Planned Parenthood. For God's sake, is this who we truly are?
The fact is, Mr. Chairman, that more than 18,000 late-term
pain capable unborn babies were torturously killed without
anesthesia in America in just the last year. Many of them cried
and screamed as they died, but because it was amniotic fluid
going over the vocal cords instead of air, we could not hear
them. It is the worst human rights atrocity in the history of
the United States of America.
Now, I know that many of you on this Committee will hold to
the standard line and try to cloak all of this in the name of
freedom of choice. But I beg you to open your own hearts and
ask yourselves what is so liberating about brutally and
painfully dismembering living helpless little human babies?
In spite of all the political noise, protecting these
little babies and their mothers is not a Republican issue, and
it is not a Democrat issue. It is a basic test of our humanity
and who we are as a human family.
Mr. Chairman, the sands of time should blow over this
Capitol dome before we ever give Planned Parenthood another
dime of taxpayer money. And in the name of humanity, Democrat
senators should end their filibuster against the Pain-Capable
Unborn Child Protection Act in the U.S. Senate, because passing
it would prevent the vast majority of these evil acts by
Planned Parenthood these videos have now so clearly shown to
the entire world.
And with that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair thanks the gentleman, and now
recognizes the Ranking Member of the Constitution and Civil
Justice Subcommittee, the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen,
for his opening statement.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Goodlatte. First, I want to say
that this is one of the issues that divides this country and
has for 40-some-odd years. It divides this Committee. I respect
my Republican colleagues, Mr. Franks in particular, who have a
strong-held position. But it is not my position, and it is not
the position of most of the women in this country, and that is
the position that women should have a right to choose.
Roe v. Wade, a United States Supreme Court decision in the
early 70's, made that point clear, and it is has been the law
of the land for many years. This hearing is not about the
videos. In fact, the videos have been doctored, and the videos
are not what they are supposed to be, and it is show business.
This hearing is about a woman's right to choose, and many
people who for their honest beliefs feel should be a litmus
test of a politician's life and support for ``life'' and human
beings. They want to outlaw abortion, and they will not be
happy until abortion is outlawed in the United States of
America. That is what this hearing is about.
And if you will notice, the testimony has been about
abortion, and that issue is raised again. Planned Parenthood is
simply a group where 3 percent of its work is abortion. Ninety-
seven percent of its work is about health for poor women,
healthcare, screenings. And 2.7 million women a year get that
healthcare. That is so important. My district is a poor
district, and a lot of women in my district get their
healthcare, primary female healthcare, from Planned Parenthood.
And to cut off Federal funding would deny them that healthcare.
I know that will not make a big difference to many on the
other side for none on the other side voted for the Affordable
Care Act, even though it is a growth out of two of the great
Presidents of the Republican side, Teddy Roosevelt and Richard
Nixon, both of whom espoused it. But not a one voted for the
Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act helps women get
healthcare, but because some on the extreme side, particularly
in the South in legislatures and governors, have not expanded
Medicaid to many women who need healthcare, which they can do
at no cost and at great fiscal as well as fiscal benefit to
their States, have denied healthcare to women. This would
further deny healthcare to women.
Planned Parenthood cannot use, because of law that has been
on the books since the 70's, any Federal funds for abortion.
That is outlawed, unless it is the life of the mother, incest
exceptions. Rape, incest, life of the mother. With the
exception of those three exceptions, you cannot use Federal
funds for abortion anyway.
So we are talking about annullity. This is the government
takeover of healthcare, the death panel in healthcare, the
Benghazi of healthcare hearing. It is a way to get attention to
an issue that these people want to highlight. I do not doubt
their sincerity in wanting to highlight it, but it is just
wrong in 2015. We should be going forward and not backwards in
this country, and to a lot of people who say we want to take
back our country, what they say is they want the country of
Dwight Eisenhower, a fine many who operated at a time before
civil rights, before women's rights, before gay rights, before
people had opportunities independent of physical
characteristics or sexual orientation.
America has moved forward, and it is not going to go
backwards. It is a new America, and you are not going to get
that America back. I loved Ricky Nelson and Ozzie, but they are
history. It is gone. It is a new America. And this hearing is
about eliminating and overruling Roe v. Wade. It is about
partial birth abortion. It is about abortion, period.
There are 143, I believe it is, labor civil rights and
civil liberties groups that say that this hearing should not
necessarily be held, and they oppose these efforts to defund
Planned Parenthood. And I would like to enter into the record a
list of these groups, if that is okay, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection, they will be made a part
of the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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Mr. Cohen. Great. I value the Republicans' opinions. They
are strong felt, and I understand that, and there is a big
difference in this country. But for me, Planned Parenthood is
part of my DNA. It is one of the finest organizations in this
country. It helps women, women of color, poor women, and it
gives them choice as the Supreme Court gave them choice. It is
about upholding the law of the land.
A lot of people here would not want the law of the land to
be held up in that county in Kentucky where some woman refused
to do what the Supreme Court told her, and they made her a
hero. I say fund Planned Parenthood. It does not deliver
abortions with Federal funds. This hearing is about abortion,
and I support Roe v. Wade. And I yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection, all other Members'
opening statements will be made a part of the record.
We welcome our distinguished witnesses today, and if you
would all please rise, I will begin by swearing you in.
Do you and each of you solemnly swear that that testimony
that you are about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
[A chorus of ayes.]
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you. You may all be seated, and let
the record reflect that the witnesses responded in the
affirmative.
Ms. Gianna Jessen survived a failed abortion when she was a
baby. A pro-life advocate and speaker, Ms. Jessen currently
lives in Franklin, Tennessee.
Mr. James Bopp, Jr. has served as National Right to Life's
general counsel since 1978. In 1987, Mr. Bopp was appointed by
the U.S. Congress to the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee,
which advises Congress on the ethical issues arising from
delivery of healthcare and from biomedical and behavioral
research.
In 1988, Mr. Bopp served on the Human Fetal Tissue
Transplantation Research Panel for the National Institutes of
Health. Mr. Bopp has testified before numerous Federal and
State legislative committees, hearings on pro-life issues, and
has argued before the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Priscilla J. Smith is director of the Program for the
Study of Reproductive Justice at the Information Society
Project at the Yale Law School. Prior to joining the ISP, Smith
was an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights for 13
years serving as the U.S. legal program director from 2003 to
2007, and litigated cases nationwide. She conducts research and
writes on privacy, reproductive rights and justice, and the
information society.
Ms. Melissa Ohden also survived an abortion as a baby. She
is the founder of the Abortion Survivors Network.
All of your written statements will be entered into the
record in their entirety. I ask that each of you summarize your
testimony in 5 minutes or less, and to help you stay within
that time, there is a timing light on your table. When the
light switches from green to yellow, you have 1 minute to
conclude your testimony. When the light turns red, it signals
that your 5 minutes have expired.
Ms. Jessen, welcome, and we are pleased to start with you.
You want to push that button at the bottom and make sure it is
on.
TESTIMONY OF GIANNA JESSEN, ABORTION SURVIVOR AND PRO-LIFE
ADVOCATE AND SPEAKER, FRANKLIN, TN
Ms. Jessen. Is it on?
Mr. Goodlatte. Yes.
Ms. Jessen. Sorry. Good morning. My name is Gianna Jessen,
and I would like to thank you so much for the opportunity to
testify here today. My biological mother was 7-and-a-half
months pregnant when she went to a Planned Parenthood and they
advised her to have a late-term saline abortion.
This method of abortion burns the baby inside and out,
blinding and suffocating the child, who is then born dead
usually within 24 hours. And there should be a photo there.
Yes. This is what I survived.
Instead of dying, after 18 hours of being burned in my
mother's womb, I was delivered alive in an abortion clinic in
Los Angeles on April the 6th, 1977. You can see a photo as well
of my medical records. My medical records state, ``born alive
during saline abortion, 6 a.m.'' Victory. Thankfully the
abortionist was not at work yet. Had he been there, he would
have ended my life with strangulation, suffocation, or leaving
me there to die. Instead, a nurse called an ambulance, and I
was rushed to a hospital. Doctors did not expect me to live. I
did.
I was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy which was caused
by a lack of oxygen to my brain while surviving an abortion. I
was never supposed to hold up my head or walk. I do. And
cerebral palsy, ladies and gentlemen, is a tremendous gift to
me.
I was eventually placed in foster care and later adopted,
and hear me clearly. I forgive my biological mother. Within the
first year after my birth, I was used as an expert witness in a
case where an abortionist had been caught strangling a child to
death after being born alive.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, said
the following: ``The most merciful thing that a large family
does to one of its infant members is to kill it.'' Planned
Parenthood is not ashamed of what they have done or continues
to do, but we will have to give an account as a Nation before
God for our apathy and for the murder of over 50 million
children in the womb.
Every time we falter in courage as individuals and fail to
confront this evil, I wonder how many lives have been lost in
our silence while we make sure we are lauded among men and that
we do not offend anyone. How many children have died and been
dismembered and their parts sold for our ego, our convenience,
and our promiscuity? How many Lamborghinis were purchased with
the blood innocent children, the blood that cries to the Lord
from the ground like that of the blood of Abel? Not one of
them, ladies and gentlemen, is forgotten by Him.
I would ask Planned Parenthood the following questions 38
years later. I would ask them these questions. If abortion is
about women's rights, then what were mine? You continuously use
the argument if the baby is disabled we need to terminate the
pregnancy as if you can determine the quality of someone's
life. Is my life less valuable due to my cerebral palsy? You
have failed in your arrogance and greed to see one thing. It is
often from the weakest among us that we learn wisdom, something
sorely lacking in our Nation today, and it is both our folly
and our shame that blinds us to the beauty of adversity.
Planned Parenthood uses deception, the manipulation of
language, and slogans, such as ``a woman's right to choose,''
to achieve their monetary aims. I will illustrate how well they
employ this technique with the following quote: ``The
receptivity of the masses is very limited. Their intelligence
is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In
consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be
limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans
until the last member of the public understands what you want
him to understand by your slogan.'' Adolf Hitler.
We often hear that if Planned Parenthood were to be
defunded there would be a health crisis among women without the
services they provide. This is absolutely false. Pregnancy
resource centers are located nationwide as an option for the
woman in crisis. All of their services are free and
confidential. They can be reached by texting helpline to
313131. There is access to vital exams for women other than
Planned Parenthood. We are not a Nation without options.
Planned Parenthood receives $500 million of taxpayer money
a year to primarily destroy and dismember babies. Do not tell
me these are not children. A heartbeat proves that, so does 40
ultrasounds. So do I, and so does the fact that they are
selling human organs for profit. Do not tell me this is only a
woman's issue. It takes both a man and a woman to create a
child.
And to that point I wish to speak to the men listening to
me. You are made for greatness. You were born to defend women
and children, not to use and abandon us, nor sit idly by while
you know we are being harmed. And I am asking you to be brave.
In conclusion, let me say I am alive because of the power
of Jesus Christ alone, in Whom I live, move, and have my being.
Without Him, I would have nothing, and with Him I have all.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jessen follows:]
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you, Ms. Jessen, for that compelling
testimony.
Mr. Bopp, welcome.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES BOPP, JR., GENERAL COUNSEL, NATIONAL RIGHT
TO LIFE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Bopp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the
opportunity to speak. I have substantial familiarity with this
subject, and Mr. Chairman mentioned my participation in the
Fetal Tissue Transplant Research Panel impaneled by NIH on the
question of whether or not fetal tissue transplantation
research should be funded.
The panel recommended that the moratorium that the Bush
Administration had issued be lifted. Four of us dissented, and
Father James Burtchaell and I published a lengthy dissent.
Based upon some of the arguments in that dissent, the Bush
Administration continued the moratorium on funding such
research.
Based on the information that has come to light through the
investigative reporting of CMP, it is apparent that Planned
Parenthood fetal tissue procurement practices violate Federal
and State laws when applicable, ethical and moral principles,
and their own guidelines and promises to their patients. There
are reasons why this happens, and it is, frankly, inevitable.
First, Planned Parenthood believes that the unborn has no
human rights and can be killed at will at any time during
pregnancy with the consent of the mother. History tells us that
as soon as you strip human beings of all legal rights, people
will be treated as commodities, and abuse is inevitable.
Second, Planned Parenthood receives substantial financial
incentives for harvesting fetal tissue, and their love of money
supersedes all other consideration. In the CMP videos, there
are reported incidences of babies born intact and potentially
alive after an induced abortion because he or she had a
heartbeat. And the fetal brain was removed by taking scissors
and cutting the face open to extract the brain. This barbaric
practice, if true, and if the child were, in fact, alive,
rivals any of the documented abuses of human persons in medical
research throughout history.
But it goes beyond any individual instance. Planned
Parenthood's lust for money from fetal tissue procurement, in
some instances equal or even exceed the cost they charge for
the abortion itself, has apparently caused Planned Parenthood
to change all relevant aspects of the abortion procedure
itself.
As a Planned Parenthood abortion physician explained, she
would meet with tissue procurement people before the day's
schedule of abortions and find out what tissue they wanted, and
then she would target those particular abortions which might
yield the fetal tissue that researchers wanted to purchase. In
so doing, she made clear that she would change the abortion
procedure to obtain the fetal tissue intact by only crushing
those parts of the fetal body that contained tissue not being
sought, or by trying to extract the baby feet first to
encourage an intact delivery.
So the abortionist starts her day with a shopping list and
spends the rest of the day trying to fill that list with fetal
tissue. In other words, she said, ``If I know what they're
looking for, I'll just keep it in the back of my mind, and try
to at least keep that part intact.'' So rather than being on a
search and destroy mission for the mother, the Planned
Parenthood abortionist is now on a search and harvest mission
for their own profit.
These practices potentially violate several Federal and
State laws when applicable, various moral and ethical
principles, and even Planned Parenthood's own guidelines.
First, Federal and State law prohibits valuable consideration
which has been mentioned. However, there is a gaping loophole
which is allowing reasonable payments for the procurement costs
that are associated with harvesting fetal tissue. However, even
with this broad exception, the evidence now is clear that
Planned Parenthood, even if they are complying with it, that it
creates sufficient financial incentives for substantial abuse
to occur. But the evidence also demonstrates that they go even
beyond this broad exception to negotiate a per specimen market
price with no regard to the associated cost.
Planned Parenthood also readily changes the abortion
procedure to gain more fetal tissue to sell, which would
certainly violate Federal law for funding of fetal tissue
transplantation research, which admittedly has not occurred
since 2007. But it certainly violates the promise Planned
Parenthood made to their patients not to change the abortion
procedure, and the Planned Parenthood president has admitted to
Congress this is exactly what they do. And Planned Parenthood
may not even get consent to obtain the donations as required by
many Federal and State laws, and there is evidence that
technicians simply grab whatever tissue is available regardless
of consent.
But finally, there is substantial evidence that children
are born intact and alive, and they are killed for their
tissue. Federal law prohibits through the Partial Birth
Abortion Ban Act and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act
killing live-born infants after an induced abortion either
during delivery or after delivery. This law passed in 2000 has
an important, but limited, purpose, and that is a child born
alive after an induced abortion has the same legal rights as
the rest of us. It is not dependent upon the desires of the
mother. There is no right to a dead baby as a result of the
abortion. And finally that it is not viability, but being born
alive, which is a critical legal point.
There is now, however, sufficient evidence both from CMP
and otherwise that abortionists are not taking these legal
protections seriously, and general criminal law is just too
blunt an instrument to provide sufficient legal protection for
live-born infants when abortion clinics have financial
incentives to encourage delivery of intact and potentially
live-born infants, who they could then kill to harvest their
fetal tissue.
This law needs to be updated to ensure that live-born
infants are not killed, but that they also receive appropriate
care just like everyone else. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bopp follows:]
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you, Mr. Bopp.
Ms. Smith, welcome.
TESTIMONY OF PRISCILLA J. SMITH, ASSOCIATE RESEARCH SCHOLAR IN
LAW, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR, PROGRAM FOR THE STUDY OF
REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE, INFORMATION SOCIETY PROJECT, YALE LAW
SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN, CT
Ms. Smith. I am an associate research scholar in law at
Yale Law School where I direct the Program for the Study of
Reproductive Justice. I am testifying today in my personal
capacity and do not purport to represent the institutional
views of Yale Law School, of course. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify.
I will make a few points here, and obviously I am open for
questioning. I do not repeat some of the important points that
have already been made by the Members, but I do want to point
out a few things. First of all, this attack is part of a long
campaign to discredit Planned Parenthood and other abortion
providers. It is an indeed an attack on the right to abortion.
But Planned Parenthood has been a specific target of many
of these types of attacks, and just since the year 2000 they
have been the target of nine similar smear campaigns using
hidden videos or other recordings full of innuendo and false
claims. Every single time these allegations have been
thoroughly investigated and debunked.
Second, I will make a quick comment on the videos. I am
very reluctant to rely on anything in these videos given the
findings of a team of forensic experts that has been submitted
to this Congress, to this Committee rather, which found that
the tapes have been distorted and misleadingly edited, and as a
result, have no evidentiary value. This has also been
recognized in a report issued this morning by the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce, which also found that there
is no evidence that Planned Parenthood or its affiliates have
violated any Federal or State laws, and this is after
conducting a thorough investigation, questioning witnesses, and
reviewing documents.
I can comment, however, on the statutes as issued. As has
been pointed out, the Federal tissue statute does ban the sale
of fetal tissue, but it specifically allows those who donate
tissue to recoup reasonable reimbursement for costs, such as
the cost of maintaining, storing, and transporting fetal
tissue. These fetal tissue provisions were adopted with broad
bipartisan support, passing by a vote of 93 to 4 in the Senate,
for example.
And Planned Parenthood officials specifically state in the
videos in numerous statements that were edited out of the short
videos that were put on the Web that they are only seeking
reimbursement costs, that they do not make profits from fetal
tissue donation. And, in fact, they refused contracts that were
offered that offered unreasonable costs. There is simply
nothing in the tapes that indicate a violation of the fetal
tissue law.
There are also these allegations that these misleadingly
edited video tapes provide probable cause to believe that
Planned Parenthood violates the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Now, I am intimately familiar with that act. I was lead counsel
in the case challenging the act. The Supreme Court upheld the
law over my objections, and held that the law was narrowly
interpreted to apply in situations to which intactness is
completely irrelevant. So the allegations here are based mostly
on repeated statements of the word ``intact'' in a sort of
ominous manner, the word being repeated both by interviewees
and interviewers, kind of Law and Order style in the videos.
But intactness has no relevance. It is neither sufficient
nor is it perhaps even required to establish a violation of the
act. Instead, all that matters under the statute is whether at
the outset of the procedure, the physician had the intent to do
two things: vaginally deliver a living fetus up to certain
anatomical landmarks, and then, second, perform a step to cause
fetal demise at that point.
Now, the reason it was so limited was because interpreting
it more broadly would have applied to many abortion procedures.
And I am not surprised that there is so much confusion about
this partial birth abortion statute because it was deceptively
campaigned for in this Congress and to this Congress, and
people were convinced it had something to do with banning late-
term post-viability abortions to which it does not apply
whatsoever. So, again, there is no evidence that physicians at
Planned Parenthood perform procedures in a way outlawed by the
act.
Now, also there are a number of questions that have been
raised generally about the ethics of fetal tissue donation.
When similar issues were raised during the Reagan
Administration, the National Institutes of Health convened a
research panel of ethicists and scientists, those on both sides
of the abortion issue. As Mr. Bopp stated, he, in fact, was on
that panel. It was also chaired by a former judge who was
himself anti-abortion. And a decisive majority of that panel
found that fetal tissue research was morally desirable because
it held great medical promise and could be accomplished without
incentivizing abortion in any way. And, in fact, it has done
so, and many medical advances have come from that research.
I see that my time is almost done, so I want to skip to
what I think is the really horrifying thing about this hearing.
The horrifying thing here is the mismatch between the
allegations and concerns here about abortion, about fetal
tissue research and what is being considered, which is
defunding Planned Parenthood's non-abortion related services.
As Judge Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit explained recently in
his dissent from the denial of re-hearing en banc in Priests
for Life, providing seamless access to contraceptives, which is
a large portion of what Planned Parenthood does, ``reduces the
number of unintended pregnancies. It furthers women's health.
It advances women's personal and professional opportunities,
reduces the number of abortions, and helps break a cycle of
poverty.
So the horrible irony here is that defunding Planned
Parenthood would increase the number of unintended pregnancies
and drastically, I fear, increase the number of abortions that
are necessary in this country. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Smith follows:]
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. Ms. Ohden, welcome.
TESTIMONY OF MELISSA OHDEN, ABORTION SURVIVOR, AND FOUNDER,
ABORTION SURVIVORS NETWORK, GLADSTONE, MO
Ms. Ohden. Thank you so much for your time this morning,
Mr. Chairman and representatives.
Three hundred twenty-seven thousand, six hundred and fifty-
three. This is the number of abortions that Planned
Parenthood's 2014 fiscal report lists as being completed that
year. Based on these numbers, 897 children will lose their
lives to an abortion completed by Planned Parenthood each and
every day.
Why do I find this horrific? Because I actually have a lot
in common with them. I was meant to be one of them. I should
have been just another statistic, but by the grace of God I am
more than a statistic. I come here to you today as a wife, a
mother, a daughter, a sister, a master's level prepared social
worker, and, yes, as an abortion survivor, from a botched
abortion to the dreaded complication, a child who lives.
I have been called just about everything that you can
imagine, but if you want to turn your attention up to the
screen, as you can see in my medical records from 1977, kind of
right there in the middle, saline infusion for an abortion was
done, but was unsuccessful. And at other times throughout my
medical records you will read statements like the complication
of my birth mother's pregnancy was a saline infusion abortion.
You could certainly say that saline infusion complicated
the pregnancy. It has taken years to unravel the secrets
surrounding my survival, to have contact with my biological
family, and even medical professionals that cared for me. And
although there are still unanswered questions, what I do know
is that my life was intended to be ended by that abortion. And
even after I survived, my life was in jeopardy.
You would not know it by looking at me today, but in August
1977, I also survived a saline infusion abortion. And as Gianna
shared, that saline infusion abortion involves injecting a
toxic salt solution into the amniotic fluid surrounding the
pre-born child. The intent of that toxic salt solution is to
scald the child to death from the outside in. For days I soaked
in that toxic salt solution, and on the 5th day of the
procedure, my biological mother, who was a 19-year-old college
student, delivered me after her labor was induced. I should
have been delivered dead that day as a successful abortion.
In 2013, I learned through contact with my biological
mother's family that not only was this abortion forced upon her
against her will at the age of 19, but also that it was my
grandmother, my maternal grandmother, a nurse, who delivered me
in this final step of the abortion procedure at St. Luke's
Hospital in Sioux City, Iowa. Unfortunately I also learned that
when my grandmother realized that the abortion had not
succeeded in ending my life, she demanded that I be left to
die.
I may never know how exactly the two nurses who were on
staff that day found about me, but what I do know is that their
willingness to fight for medical care to be provided to me
ultimately sustained my life.
And I know there were children like me who were left to die
at St. Luke's Hospital. I met a nurse there who delivered a
child much like me in 1976. She delivered a little boy after a
failed saline infusion abortion, but she followed her
superiors' orders, and she placed him there in a utility closet
in a bucket of formaldehyde to be picked up later as medical
waste after he was left there to die alone. A bucket of
formaldehyde in a utility closet was meant to be my fate after
I survived that abortion attempt.
I weighed a little less than 3 pounds when I survived. I
suffered from jaundice, severe respiratory problems and
seizures for an extended period of time. And one of the first
notations in my medical records by a doctor after I survived is
that I looked like I was about 31 weeks gestational age when I
was delivered.
Despite the miracle of my survival, the doctor's prognosis
for my life was very poor initially. My adoptive parents were
told that I would suffer from multiple disabilities throughout
my life, yet here I am today perfectly healthy. Yet I know it
is not just how abortion ends the life of children like me that
is not talked about in today's world. It is also not discussed
what happens to children like me who live. I can tell you we
are your friend, your neighbor, your co-worker, and you would
likely never guess by passing us on the street that we survived
what we did.
In my work as the founder of the Abortion Survivors
Network, I have had contact with 203 of these other survivors.
Letters from some of those survivors have been submitted to
this Committee. I am here today to share my story to not only
highlight the horror of abortion taking place at Planned
Parenthood, but to give a voice to other survivors like me,
and, most importantly, to give a name, a face, and a voice to
the hundreds of thousands of children who will have their lives
ended by Planned Parenthood this year alone.
As you consider the horrors of what happens at Planned
Parenthood each day, I would urge you to remember my story and
Gianna's, too. We may not have survived abortions at Planned
Parenthood, but the expectation for our lives to be ended by
abortion are the very same as those who do lose their lives
there. And I have long believed that if my birth mother's
abortion would have taken place at a Planned Parenthood, I
would not be here today. Completing over 300,000 abortions a
year provides them with the experience to make sure that
failures like me do not exist.
As a fellow American and as a fellow human being, I deserve
the same right to life, the same equal protection under the law
as each and every one of you. Yet we live in a time where not
only do such protections not exist, but my own tax dollars and
yours go to fund an organization that has perfected the very
thing that was meant to end my life, and this must end.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ohden follows:]
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you very much, Ms. Ohden. We will
begin the questioning of the witnesses under the 5-minute rule,
and I will begin by recognizing myself.
We will hear a lot today about efforts to sanitize the
discussion of what takes place with regard to late-term
abortions, which were the subject of the videos that have been
made public. But, Ms. Jessen, I would like to read you a
statement from the video and then another statement offered by
the Center for Reproductive Rights and get your reaction to
that, what I would call, sanitization.
In the first video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola describes a D&E
abortion saying, ``So I am not going to crush that part. I'm
going to crush basically below. I'm going to crush above.''
Planned Parenthood issued an apology for Nucatola's tone, but a
markedly more clinical tone is used in a lawsuit brought by the
Center for Reproductive Rights, a leading abortion advocacy
group, against a Kansas law prohibiting dismemberment abortion.
In the suit, CRR states, ``starting around 15 weeks LMP,
physicians performing abortions may use forceps or other
instruments to remove the products of conception from the
uterus often in combination with suction. Usually
disarticulation of the fetus occurs as the physician brings
fetal parts through the cervix. This procedure is known as
dilation and evacuation, or D&E procedure.'' As someone who has
survived an abortion, can you please tell us how these two
descriptions of an abortion procedure make you feel?
Ms. Jessen. My face. You can probably just see my face. It
is horrifying to me, absolutely horrifying to hear such things.
But I also will never ever forget for as long as I live
watching Dr. Nucatola eat a salad and drink wine discussing so
casually the dismemberment of children, and I will never ever
forget that. I find it absolutely appalling that we are even
having to conduct such a hearing in the United States of
America. I hope that sufficiently answers your question.
Mr. Goodlatte. It does. Thank you. Mr. Bopp, several years
ago, there was a news story that came out of Florida about an
abortion survivor who was not rescued. Instead, according to
World Magazine, the child was born alive in a toilet while the
mother sought anxiously for someone at the abortion clinic to
help her baby, but no one would help, and the baby died. Mr.
Bopp, are you aware of other evidence that some abortion
survivors are not rescued?
Mr. Bopp. Yes, and the example that you gave was from
Hialeah, Florida in 2006 when a live-born infant was born in an
abortion clinic, and what happened to the live-born infant was
the baby was put in a medical waste bag to die rather than
provided any care or treatment. There have been a number of
criminal and civil actions taken in that instance. But the
people involved at the clinic were not charged, however, with
the specific death of the child that they clearly caused.
There have been other instances in the Kermit Gosnell case
when, of course, he was killing born infants or partially-born
infants using scissors by thrusting them into the back of the
neck of the child. You do not do that if the baby is dead. You
only do that if the baby is alive. And, of course, we do not
know for sure whether that was while the baby was still in the
womb partially or was, in fact, outside of the womb.
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you, Mr. Bopp. Ms. Smith----
Ms. Smith. Yes?
Mr. Goodlatte [continuing]. In the precursor to the
Gonzales case, the case of Stenberg v. Carhart, Justice Kennedy
dissented from the decision to strike down the partial birth
abortion ban, which was later upheld in the Gonzales case in a
different ban.
Ms. Smith. A different version, yes.
Mr. Goodlatte. That is right. He described at length the
testimony provided by abortionist Leroy Carhart about the
alternative D&E method or dismemberment procedure. The fetus
can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and
can survive for at time while its limbs are being torn off.
Dr. Carhart agreed that when you pull out a piece of the
fetus, let us say, an arm or a leg, and remove that at the time
just prior to removal of the portion of the fetus, the fetus is
alive. Dr. Carhart also has observed a fetal heartbeat via
ultrasound with extensive parts of the fetus removed, and
testified that mere dismemberment of a limb does not always
cause death because he knows a physician who removed the arm of
a fetus only to have the fetus go on to be born as a living
child with one arm. At the conclusion of a D&E abortion, no
intact fetus remains. In Dr. Carhart's words, the abortionist
is left with a tray full of pieces.
Justice Kennedy said, ``The fetus in many cases dies just
as a human adult or child would. It bleeds to death as it is
torn from limb from limb.'' Ms. Smith, do you believe this
practice represents a humane way to die?
Ms. Smith. Let me separate, which I think something that is
getting confused here in this hearing again and again, which is
procedures performed on pre-viable fetuses and procedures that
are performed on viable fetuses. Both of the women here on this
panel are here today because they were viable at the time the
procedures were performed.
What you are talking about is pre-viability procedures
performed on a fetus that cannot survive outside the womb.
Mr. Goodlatte. Maybe, maybe not. Justice Kennedy was
talking about a child that was born alive with only one arm
because the other had been pulled off already in the abortion
procedure. My question to you is--are you going to answer it--
is this a humane way to die?
Ms. Smith. I believe for a fetus, pre-viable fetus, yes, a
D&E procedure is a very humane procedure, and it protects the
woman and her health and safety more than any other procedure.
And, in fact, it was substituted for the saline infusion
procedure.
Mr. Goodlatte. Ms. Smith, I am going to reclaim my time and
just say that I have to say that your view of humanity and mine
are different.
Ms. Smith. I think----
Mr. Goodlatte. And I will ask Ms. Jessen, and Mr. Bopp, and
Ms. Ohden very quickly if you support, because you have already
answered this question, if you support the Pain Capable
Abortion Act that has passed the House of Representatives and
is awaiting action in the United States Senate. Mr. Bopp?
Mr. Bopp. Yes. It is necessary for a number of reasons and
pertinent to----
Mr. Goodlatte. It would prevent many of the instances I
just described to the three of you, would it not?
Mr. Bopp. It would and could also prevent some of the
instances, because we do not know for sure the gestational age
of the child in some of the instances in the videos. But I
could have also prevented some of them.
Mr. Goodlatte. Correct. Ms. Jessen?
Ms. Jessen. I am speechless with Ms. Smith's reply that she
thinks that is a humane way to die. I support.
Mr. Goodlatte. Ms. Ohden?
Ms. Ohden. Yes, I, too, support the Pain Capable Act, and I
want to make it clear that I want abortion to be unthinkable in
our country.
Ms. Jessen. Yes.
Ms. Ohden. I want us to not even have to have a
conversation about another act.
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you. I agree. Mr. Conyers? The
gentleman from Michigan is recognized for his questions.
Mr. Conyers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all the
witnesses for being here today, but I want to direct my
discussion with Ms. Smith. You note in your written testimony
that Section 289(g)(2)(A) prohibits the transfer of any human
fetal tissue for valuable consideration. But the videos do not
explain that the law specifies that valuable consideration does
not include reasonable payment reimbursing costs.
Would an individual watching these videos have any idea
that the law excludes the reimbursement of reasonable costs?
Ms. Smith. No, I think they would not, and I think they are
very deceptive in that regard so that they juxtapose
discussions of money with the text of the ban on valuable
consideration. It makes it appear that the money that is being
discussed is the ``valuable consideration'' that is banned.
There is no mention of the reasonable payments provision in the
act and the allowance for reimbursement of reasonable expenses,
and I think that is terribly deceptive in the video, yes.
Well, I think that is a very perceptive response on your
part. What are some of the examples of reasonable reimbursement
costs, Ms. Smith?
Ms. Smith. Transportation costs, processing, preservation,
quality control, storage. Those are all examples in the statute
itself, and those are the things that would be appropriate.
Mr. Conyers. Thank you. You note that fetal tissue research
has provided innumerable medical benefits and has saved lives.
Could you please explain what these medical benefits have been?
Ms. Smith. Yes. In fact, in addition to the early polio
vaccine in the 1930's, that was actually a result of fetal
tissue research. There are more recent examples, and the
Department of Health and Human Services has called fetal tissue
research vital to the improvements that are being made in some
very important areas, such as retinal degeneration,
Parkinson's, ALS, infectious diseases, developmental disorders,
autism, schizophrenia, diabetes. So there are many, many areas
in which fetal tissue research has proved important, and we are
actually seeing lives being saved because of it and lives
improved because of new treatments.
Mr. Conyers. Thank you. Could you explain, please, Ms.
Smith, the ramifications for women if their access to abortion
services is further restricted or ultimately denied?
Ms. Smith. Yes. I think one of the things we are seeing
recently is a new wave of attack on abortion access in
particular. So an unprecedented number of restrictions have
been enacted in the last 4 years by state legislatures, which
have been designed really and have resulted in the closure of
many clinics throughout the country.
So Texas, in particular, as has been in the news quite
often, has seen the number of clinics that are closed by half.
There are States that have only one abortion provider for all
residents in the State, like Mississippi and North Dakota. And
in those States, many women are unable to get abortions. They
cannot travel the distance required to obtain abortions.
And the result of that is women with pregnancies that they
do not wish to carry to term. Some of them will suffer health
impacts, and some of them their lives will be endangered, and
they will get sick. But also abortion is also equally important
because as the Supreme Court has recognized, it protects the
ability of women to participate equally in the economic and
social life of the Nation. As Justice Ginsberg put it,
``Abortion preserves a woman's autonomy to determine her life's
course and, thus, to enjoy equal citizenship stature.''
And that is why I believe the Supreme Court got it right
when it balanced the issues here involved and the interest in
potential fetal life, and the interests of the woman in her
life, and her health, and her autonomy, and decided that
abortion up to viability must be preserved. After viability it
can be, in fact, banned, but with exceptions for women's life
and health.
Mr. Conyers. Well, would it----
Ms. Smith. One interesting note. In Germany, for example,
the courts there recognized a right of the fetus to life, but
at the same time they recognized that the woman who carries
that life in her uterus and carries it through, gestates it
until it is fully developed, the woman has a greater right,
and, thus, abortions are legal in Germany.
Mr. Conyers. I want to thank you very much for your
response to my questions, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair thanks the gentleman. And before
going to our next Member, I want to make available for the
record the following letters from other abortion survivors and
a letter submitted to the written record by Americans United
for Life. Without objection, these will be made a part of the
record.
[The information referred to follows:]
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. And I also want to clarify something that
Ms. Smith said about the Energy and Commerce Committee. The
report you referred to is a report of the minority of that
Committee and is by no means reflective of the work of the
majority of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Ms. Smith. Thank you for clarifying that.
Mr. Conyers. Mr. Chairman----
Ms. Smith. I just received it this morning, so.
Mr. Conyers [continuing]. May I please introduce into the
record the Planned Parenthood statement as well as the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Human Rights
statement?
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection, those will be made a part
of the record as well.
[The information referred to follows:]
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. And the Chair now recognizes the gentleman
from Wisconsin, Mr. Sensenbrenner, for his questions.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much. Ms. Smith, you have
had a great deal of experience in litigating these questions,
and could you please give the Committee your definition of what
constitutes ``infanticide?"
Ms. Smith. What constitutes, I am sorry? I did not hear
you.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. ``Infanticide.''
Ms. Smith. ``Infanticide?'' I think infanticide is when a
baby is killed, an infant.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay. Now, assuming that the baby is
born following a botched abortion and is alive, do you think
that either killing the baby by commission or killing the baby
by omission is infanticide?
Ms. Smith. I think I would have to do more research on the
State laws and what----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, we have a Federal Born Alive Act,
yeah.
Ms. Smith. Yeah, there is a Federal Born Alive Act that
requires, so I would say it was a violation of the Born Alive
Infant Protection Act not to take actions to preserve the life
of a viable child. But when you are talking about a pre-viable
fetus, and let us remember that the----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. No, I am talking about born alive. A
pre-viable fetus is not born alive, and does not fall----
Ms. Smith. Well, a pre-viable----
Mr. Sensenbrenner [continuing]. Does not fall under this
definition. Now, I guess what you are saying that both Ms.
Jessen and Ms. Ohden, if there were not sufficiently concerned
nurses that found them after the abortionists have not killed
them during the delivery, the partial birth abortion delivery,
then there would have a crime of infanticide simply by
abandoning an alive baby, and not taking care of it. Am I
correct in that?
Ms. Smith. Well, that certainly would be a violation of the
current Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay. Well, that is what the law is now.
Ms. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. So I guess you are admitting that I am
correct in this.
Ms. Smith. I am saying that it would be a violation of the
Born Alive Protection Act.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay, fine. I think you are right on
that.
Ms. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. You and I agree on that.
Ms. Smith. That that is the Federal law, yes.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Yes, that is the Federal law. Well then,
how come abortionists do not follow the Federal law when they
make a mistake and the baby is not killed prior to being born?
Ms. Smith. To my knowledge, they do follow the Federal law.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, we have two examples sitting to
your right and left of people where the law was not followed,
and even----
Ms. Smith. Well, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was
not in place when they were born, so.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I know it was not, but I started out by
asking you to define ``infanticide,'' and there were murder
laws that were on the books even before Born Alive.
Ms. Smith. Yes. Most murder laws in the country require if
a fetus is born alive, then it becomes a person. So then an act
taken to, in fact, cause demise at that point would be murder
in most States.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. And if they did not do anything to save
the child's life----
Ms. Smith. An act of omission----
Mr. Sensenbrenner [continuing]. Would it be manslaughter?
Ms. Smith. I do not know if an act of omission would have
qualified in those cases. I am not familiar with the old cases
on that.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay.
Ms. Smith. And I do not think that they were very common,
so I think we would have heard a lot more about it if they
were.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay.
Ms. Smith. And certainly now----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, we would be hearing a lot about it
when it happens now, and we have two witnesses who were born
alive, you know----
Ms. Smith. In the 1970's.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Infanticide laws were on the books in
most States without the Born Alive Protection Act, and they are
here. Now, I guess my question is, you are a lawyer. You have
been advising Planned Parenthood.
Ms. Smith. No, I have never actually advised them. I have
never----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, you represented their interests
before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Ms. Smith. I actually did not. I was counsel for different
plaintiffs in that case, but Planned Parenthood, they were a
separate case, so.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I am sure Planned Parenthood did
not disagree with anything you said to the Court, right?
Ms. Smith. Probably not.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay. Well, good, we will assume that.
Ms. Smith. I hope not.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. We will assume that for the sake of
argument. Now, whether or not Planned Parenthood broke the law,
when Congress sets budgeting priorities we have to decide what
is important and what is not, and which has a higher priority
and should be funded, and which has a lower priority and should
not be funded in the age of a $19 trillion deficit.
Ms. Smith. Right.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Now, could you please tell us why
Planned Parenthood needs to get over a half a billion dollars
of Federal funding every year when there are other pressing
needs, such as feeding hungry children that maybe we should put
that money into?
Ms. Smith. Let us be clear that Planned Parenthood is not
getting any Federal funding for abortion. What Planned
Parenthood is----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, money is fungible, Ms. Smith. You
and I know that money is fungible----
Ms. Smith. I do not believe that----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. So 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 would like
to know what your priority is----
Ms. Smith. My priority----
Mr. Sensenbrenner.--Planned Parenthood or feeding hungry
children.
Ms. Smith. My priority, I think funding Planned Parenthood
and the services it provides is equal to feeding children
because what Planned Parenthood does is preserve women's lives
that are the mothers of those children. It provides
contraception----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. How can they be the mothers of the
children when children are aborted through Planned Parenthood?
Ms. Smith. Because many women go to Planned Parenthood who
have children and have families. In fact, even women who are
obtaining abortion, 60 percent of women obtaining abortions in
this country already have at least one, if not more, children.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay.
Ms. Smith. So women are often mothers----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I guess your priorities are different
than mine.
Ms. Smith. My priorities are funding Planned Parenthood's
excellent high-quality, comprehensive healthcare services that
go to low-income women throughout this country, women who
otherwise would become pregnant unintendedly, and who would
then need abortions. So I would think as somebody who opposes
abortion, you would, in fact, support, as does Judge Kavanaugh
of the D.C. Circuit, the funding of contraceptive services to
reduce unintended pregnancies and to reduce the number of
abortions. It is really a no-brainer. It makes no sense not to
fund those services if you want to reduce the number of
abortions.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I do not think there is statistics
that indicate that that is the case.
Ms. Smith. There absolutely are.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I am way out of time, so I will yield
back.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair thanks the gentleman, and
recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Nadler. Mr. Chairman, first of all, before I begin my 5
minutes, I ask unanimous consent to insert into the record a
letter from 56 national faith-based and religious groups
supporting Planned Parenthood.
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection, it will be made a part of
the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Also before I start my
statement, I simply want to say, I want to clarify, when the
Born Alive Infant Protection Act, whatever we called it, was
brought before this Committee, I surprised people by saying
that I saw no point to opposing it, that it was a deliberate
trap designed to entice pro-abortion groups into opposing it.
It is already the law of the land against murder. Anyone
who kills a child that has been born outside the womb, anyone
who stands idly by and does not help it survive is guilty of
murder or manslaughter, period, no questions asked, with or
without the Born Alive Protection Act. And it was introduced
simply to slander the abortion groups to say that pro-abortion
people support infanticide. We do not obviously.
Mr. Chairman, before I begin my questions, I would like to
express my dismay at the title given to this hearing: ``Planned
Parenthood Exposed: Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices
of the Nation's Largest Abortion Provider.'' The title alone is
enough to call this hearing a farce. It is wrong and should be
beneath this Committee to state its conclusion without a shred
of evidence and before we receive even a word of testimony.
Perhaps the majority's conclusion explains why not a single
representative from Planned Parenthood is here to testify about
its practices. It may also explain why the Chairman has chosen
to ignore the request from Ranking Members Conyers and Cummings
to suspend these one-sided investigations until they include
the so-called Center for Medical Progress, which made the
videos about which we have heard today.
Of course, if we really wanted to hear about the practices
of Planned Parenthood, we could have hours of testimony on the
compassionate, comprehensive, and affordable healthcare
services they provide women and families, but the majority is
not interested in hearing that testimony. If you clear away the
partisan rhetoric, it appears the Chairman has called this
hearing to examine how Planned Parenthood participates in fetal
tissue donation, which Congress made illegal with almost
unanimous bipartisan support in 1993.
In the years since, fetal tissue and cells have been used
to make groundbreaking medical discoveries. If you want to find
a cure for diabetes, for stroke, or for hundreds of other life-
threatening illnesses, fetal tissues and cells are a necessary
part of the research toolkit, and a moral part.
The law surrounding fetal tissue donation are simple and
clear. Planned Parenthood has consistently and clearly
demonstrated that the affiliates who participate in fetal
tissue research, which represent about 1 percent of all 700
Planned Parenthood health centers in just two States, comply
with these laws, just as they comply with thousands of other
Federal, State, and local laws and regulations every single
day.
That should be the conclusion of this hearing, but instead
before any inquiry, this Committee has already declared Planned
Parenthood guilty and chosen to capitalize on the sensational,
unsubstantiated smears made in a series of unethical, possibly
illegal, videos. The goal here is clear: to smear Planned
Parenthood. Senator Joseph McCarthy would be proud of this
Committee today.
Sadly, this is not the first time Congress has been drawn
into this charade. Every time it follows the same pattern.
Extremists try to entrap Planned Parenthood into unethical or
illegal conduct, and then make sensationalist accusations. But
in no time at all, the claims are debunked and the
investigations find no wrongdoing. This pattern is being
repeated here today.
Mr. Bopp, I would like to walk through some of that history
with you. Were you aware, Mr. Bopp, that in 2012, anti-abortion
groups released videos claiming to show Planned Parenthood was
conducting sex-elective abortions?
Mr. Bopp. No.
Mr. Nadler. You are under oath, Mr. Bopp.
Mr. Bopp. I know what is in my mind, Congressman.
Mr. Nadler. So you are not aware of that.
Mr. Bopp. I was not aware of that.
Mr. Nadler. Then you remarkably ignorant for someone in the
field, and it was not true. Mr. Bopp, are you aware in 2011
that anti-abortion groups released videos claiming to show
Planned Parenthood condoned sex trafficking and statutory rape?
Mr. Bopp. No.
Mr. Nadler. You are still under oath. And following the
release of those videos, Republicans in Congress tried to cut
off funding for Planned Parenthood and nearly shut down the
government. Are you aware of that?
Mr. Bopp. I do not remember that they were connected in
that way.
Mr. Nadler. Okay. But you remember that the two things
occurred.
Mr. Bopp. You know, the older I get, the harder my memory--
--
Mr. Nadler. I asked you a question. Do you remember----
Mr. Bopp. I am trying to answer your question, Congressman.
Mr. Nadler. Yes or no, do you remember or not?
Mr. Bopp. I do not know what your question is.
Mr. Nadler. Do you remember that following the release of
those videos, Republicans in Congress tried to cut off funding
for Planned Parenthood and nearly shut down the government?
Mr. Bopp. I have answered that question.
Mr. Nadler. Okay. And your answer was that the two things,
that Congress tried to cut of funding for Planned Parenthood
and that government was nearly shut down, and you do not
remember if they were connected. Is that correct?
Mr. Bopp. In that way, yes.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you. But, of course, Planned Parenthood
already reported the actors claiming to be sex traffickers to
the FBI, so once again not true. The list goes on. In 2010,
videos falsely claimed women were pressured into abortion, not
true. In 2009, false claims about clinics avoiding parental
consent, not true. In 2002, false claims about statutory rape,
not true. And for a real sense of deja vu, in 2000 videos were
released claiming Planned Parenthood was participating in
illegal tissue sales. But, of course, when the man who made
those videos came before Congress, he totally recanted his
testimony, and an FBI investigation did not lead to any charges
against Planned Parenthood. Again, not true.
Mr. Bopp, were you aware of that hearing?
Mr. Bopp. I do not recall it.
Mr. Nadler. Okay. What is true is that the people who made
these videos are liars in a long line of liars. It is true that
if you had a shred of real evidence that Planned Parenthood is
breaking the law, you would have taken it to a State or a
Federal prosecutor right away, but you did not. Mr. Chairman,
if you had even a bit of real confidence in the man who made
these videos, you would have brought him here to testify before
this Committee, but you did not, and you do not have that
confidence.
The fact is, this is all a farce designed to shame women
for exercising their constitutional right to an abortion, to
scare abortion providers into ending their services, and to
eliminate options for women to access health services. This is
all based on lies, knowingly based on lies. I hope the majority
comes to its senses and realizes they have fallen into the same
sad pattern of lies and lies that we have seen for more than a
decade.
I yield back my time.
Mr. Franks [presiding]. The Chair recognizes Mr. Forbes
from Virginia for 5 minutes.
Mr. Forbes. I want to start, Mr. Bopp, by apologizing for
anybody on this Committee calling any witness that comes before
this Committee ``remarkably ignorant,'' and I apologize for
that statement even though it was not made by us.
I can understand the voices on the other side of this
Committee who would say please do not look at the video. This
not about the video. We do not want to talk about the acts in
the video, kind of like the Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to
the man moving those levers behind there.
What I cannot understand is that those same voices cannot
say that there is no act that is too far, there is no act that
is too brutal, there is no act that is not acceptable even for
Planned Parenthood. And they want to talk about dollars. Ms.
Ohden, if you are correct on the number of abortions, even
though they do not report these numbers, based on the best
evidence we have, you are talking about $147 million for
abortions last year that are big dollars.
And what just startles me is when I hear Mrs. Smith say,
and I want to read this again. This is what the Chairman
stated, this is Justice Kennedy's statements, not mine. He says
this. He described at length the testimony provided by
abortionist Leroy Carhart about the alternate D&E method or
dismemberment procedure. This is what he said in Court.
And Mrs. Smith does not say that is wrong. She does not say
that is inaccurate. Here is what it says. ``The fetus can be
alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process, and can
survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.''
Dr. Carhart agreed that when you pull out a piece of the
fetus, let us say an arm or a leg, and remove that at the time
just prior to the removal of the portion of the fetus, the
fetus is alive. Dr. Carhart has observed fetal heartbeat via
ultrasound with extensive parts of the fetus removed, and
testified that near dismemberment of a limb does not always
cause death because he knows of a physician who removed the arm
of a fetus, only to have the fetus go on to be born as a living
child with one arm.
At the conclusion of the D&E abortion, no intact fetus
remains. In Dr. Carhart's words, ``The abortionist is left with
a tray full of pieces.'' And then Justice Kennedy goes on in a
Supreme Court case: ``The fetus in many cases dies just as a
human adult or child would. It bleeds to death as it torn limb
from limb.''
And to say that you support a woman's right to choose is
one thing. To say that you might want to give healthcare to
people is another thing. But for anybody to say that procedure
and what you just described is humane, that that does not go
too far, that is not too brutal, that is humane and acceptable
just defies my imagination. I could not imagine that happening
to one of my pets, much less an unborn child.
And then when I look, Ms. Smith, I know you state that you
are an associate research scholar in law and senior fellow and
director for Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at
Yale Law School. And I know you are here in your personal
capacity today. But I just wondered, does Yale have any study
for the rights of individuals like Ms. Jessen or Ms. Ohden to
be born without cerebral palsy, because there was a lot of
questions when Mr. Sensenbrenner was raising about those issues
a while ago that are apparently unanswered. Are there any such
studies up there that would dare suggest the right of one of
these children not to be born with one arm?
And, Mr. Chairman, and that is what just baffles me about
this, not that we have disagreements, but that none of those
voices in the crowd do not look at this act, do not look at
this act, can find no point that is too far, no point that is
too brutal, no point that is inhumane. And then they dare
suggest that we are extreme.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I just thank you for this
hearing and for our witnesses coming here today. Thank you for
being here, and I yield back.
Mr. Franks. Thank you, Mr. Forbes. The Chair recognizes Ms.
Jackson Lee for 5 minutes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Let me thank the Chairman for yielding and
for allowing those with a great deal of emotion on this
question to be able to project and present their views. I have
lived through this Judiciary Committee for a period of years,
to the witnesses, that I have been through eons of these
hearings starting back in the 1990's on a medical procedure
that saved the lives of women that were called the partial
birth abortion.
Let me say to the witnesses, I have the greatest respect
for your viewpoint, and I am grateful for you being here,
grateful for your life, and grateful for your passion. As an
aside let me say that as a graduate of Yale, undergraduate, and
being very familiar with Yale Law School, I know that the law
school is one of the premiere teachers of the Constitution, and
well recognizes the rights of all people. And I would venture
to say that there are individuals with different thought from
you, I would imagine, Professor Smith.
Ms. Smith. Absolutely.
Ms. Jackson Lee. And, therefore, to my colleague, yes, Yale
Law School and Yale undergraduate schools produce individuals
that have a great concern for the Constitution of this Nation.
So let me begin my questioning and to ask Mr. Bopp, would
you join in a request to the director of the National
Institutes of Health to suggest convening an expert panel to
re-look at, the expert panel, on fetal tissue research. Would
you join in that request?
Mr. Bopp. I have not considered that question.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Well, would you? I am giving it to you
now.
Mr. Bopp. I am not prepared to testify under oath whether I
agree with that or not.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I am sorry. Pardon me? Do you think it is
a good idea? If we have such a dispute here about fetal tissue
research, would it be a good idea?
Mr. Bopp. Well, I served on a panel that I thought fairly
explored the issues that came to conclusions that I believe
were not warranted, and that history has proven were
fallacious.
Ms. Jackson Lee. So you would not be interested in having a
review.
Mr. Bopp. I do not know what----
Ms. Jackson Lee. I thank you for your answer.
Mr. Bopp. I do not know what benefit it would be.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I thank you for your answer. Let me say
that Planned Parenthood complying with the Fetal Research
Commission under President Reagan, you may have been one of
those did not agree. But I would argue that the consensus came
out and the panel found that it was an acceptable public policy
to support transplant research with fetal tissue, and as well
developed a guideline that said the research in question is
intended to achieve significant medical goals.
Professor Smith, is it not true, and this question has been
asked again, but I think it should be asked over again, that
out of this long journey of fetal tissue research, the impact
in medicine has been overwhelming dealing with issues of polio,
measles, rubella, or Rh disease. The use of fetal tissue cell
lines has helped in vaccinations, normal human development in
order to gain insight into birth defects and other
developmental diseases. Has this come to your attention,
Professor Smith, that fetal tissue research in the medical
science has generated this kind of productivity?
Ms. Smith. Absolutely.
Ms. Jackson Lee. And in actuality, the proponent of these
videos was actually trying to highlight the ugliness of what is
misdirected, which is the harvesting of organs, which that was
not the case.
Let me ask you this question, Mr. Bopp. Are you aware of
how Mr. Daleiden was able to engage in these false and
misdirected, distorted, and maybe criminal videos? Do you know
how he was able to do that?
Mr. Bopp. I have been advised by the Committee staff that
this hearing is not on that subject and I should not comment.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Well, I am not sure how the Committee
could staff could tell you it is not on that subject because
the videos are all in the letters that have been sent by the
three Republican chairs of the Committees that are engaged in
it.
So let me just say to you what he actually did. He stole--
stole--stole the identity of the president of the Feminist Club
at Mr. Daleiden's high school. When he was asked to participate
in a lawsuit, Mr. Daleiden invoked his Fifth Amendment right to
refrain from self-incrimination in response to this lawsuit.
That does not sound like a man who has any truth to stand on.
Might I ask you, Professor Smith, if you would, the
question was asked to you about whether or not Planned
Parenthood does anything good with respect to women's health.
Would you recite that again for me, that separate from the
limited right to abortion under Roe v. Wade, do they not engage
in women's health?
Ms. Smith. Absolutely. The services that are supported by
the Federal Government include contraceptive services, wellness
exams, cancer screenings, STI testing, and STD treatment. And
Planned Parenthood services millions of women. 1 in 5 women in
this country has visited a Planned Parenthood clinic.
It is a beloved institution not just by me, but by most
Americans because it is one of the few accessible providers of
excellent high-quality care outside of the abortion area in
addition to the limited number of abortions they do.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I would like----
Mr. Issa. Regular order, please.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I would like to put into the record, and I
would ask that we not engage in this kind of Member attack. I
am putting into the record state-by-state data that indicates
that through the Planned Parenthood with respect to health and
2 million patients, 371,000 pap tests and 451,000 breast exams.
This is cervical and breast cancer screenings by Planned
Parenthood to young women. Not young women, to women who
otherwise would not be able to afford it. I ask unanimous
consent for that to be submitted, and every Member's State is
recorded here of helping these women get healthcare.
Another I would like to put into the record from the Young
Women From URGE, Unite for Reproductive Gender Equity, who have
indicated that young people are less likely to have insurance
and have low-paying jobs. I would like to submit this into the
record.
And finally, I would like to submit into the record from
the Congressional Research Service the definition of ``fetal
tissue,'' what is fetal tissue research, and the amazing
miracles that have come about through fetal tissue research.
[The information referred to follows:]
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__________
Ms. Jackson Lee. I am not here to push abortion. I am here
to push life, and the respect for women, and the Roe v. Wade
legality of what we do under the Hyde amendment. And I am not
here to defund Planned Parenthood that has now been presented
by Members of Congress----
Mr. Issa. Regular order.
Ms. Jackson Lee [continuing]. Members of Congress who
really should be getting rid of sequester and not be stopping
women from getting good healthcare. Please do not stop women
from getting good healthcare. I am thankful for the Chairman's
generosity, and I thank him so very much. And I yield back my
time.
Mr. Franks. I thank the gentlelady, and I now recognize Mr.
Issa for 5 minutes.
Mr. Issa. Wow, I would sure like to have the time she
yielded back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The gentlelady from Texas cited the Hyde amendment, so I
would like to take a moment. I served on this Committee and on
Foreign Affairs with the late Henry Hyde, and I would like to
take a moment to create a perspective for just a moment for
this hearing because I think the hearing with Chairman Henry
Hyde's portrait to your right looking down needs to be focused
a little bit more on his legacy and a little bit less on what I
hear perhaps on both sides of the aisle where we are having a
discussion perhaps beyond the scope of our jurisdiction and
beyond the scope of what I think the Chairman asked for.
Many years ago Henry Hyde came to California, and no
surprise, he was well known for his pro-life position, and the
California Right to Life group asked if they could meet with
him. We were together for another reason, and he said, sure.
So we got together in a room of very strident, pro-life
advocates in California, and they asked him about overturning
Roe, and they asked him about every issue that you might
expect. And Henry, more eloquently than I ever could,
redirected the conversation to why he was pro-life and why it
was so essential that Congress take a position.
And what he said in my poor interpretation of Henry Hyde
was that a Nation that does not provide respect for life is not
a Nation that he or anyone else could be proud of; that the
life of the unborn and the concern for their welfare, the life
of the newborn, the life of the infirmed, and the life of the
elderly all were issues which a civilized society had to
promote. They had to promote it both publicly and privately.
He never, as far as I know, supported broadly trying to
reverse everything that was done, but he did stand for a
question of will we treat people with respect. And I bring that
up before asking questions because the questions from what I
have seen in these videos, however obtained, seems to have a
question of are these individuals, not the organization for a
moment, these individuals. Do they have a respect for the
sanctity of life?
These are more than organs. These were the unborn who now
are hopefully providing life to others so they may live or
research. It is legal. It is part of the process. But there is
a question about whether an organization and its employees are
as efficient as they should be, effective as they should be, as
good stewards of half a billion dollars of our money, and
whether or not their conduct is conduct that is inappropriate
for this organization to further allow.
And I would like to leave it at that because I think the
important thing for us to consider here today is with our half
billion dollars every year under any President, including
President Bush for all 8 years of his. Planned Parenthood
receives a large block of money, more than any other
organization of its type. Other organizations including clinics
in my district receive similar money for similar outreach to
help women and families. These are funds that the Congress has
decided with your taxpayer dollars that we will appropriate and
deliver for this purpose.
So, Mr. Bopp, I know your long history in the pro-life
movement, but I am going to ask you just one question. Assuming
that this half billion dollars and other monies are going to be
spent, should we not make sure that they are spent to the best
steward of that money for the most effective support of women's
health, and should we not take an interest in whether or not
that organization and its employees are respectful and
supportive of women's health and the quality of life for they
and, in many cases, their children to be born, not just
children not to be born. Thank you.
Mr. Bopp. Yes, I think that is a proper role of Congress. I
mean, after all, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of
providers out there who, if the half billion was not given to
Planned Parenthood, could receive those funds for these
beneficial services that are not tainted by association with
abortion, not tainted by their reckless practices in terms of
procurement of fetal tissue.
And, I think everybody would be a lot more comfortable with
that, that resources would not be inadvertently diverted to
support those activities, and its association would be
terminated.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Franks. And I thank the gentleman, and would now
recognize the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you. Ms. Smith, can you tell us what you
think was incorrect in the portrayal in the videos of Planned
Parenthood's activities and the use of fetal tissue and the
price thereof?
Mr. Bopp. Well, if I understand your question----
Mr. Cohen. I said ``Ms. Smith.'' Thank you, Mr. Bopp.
Mr. Bopp. Oh, I am sorry.
Mr. Cohen. Yeah, I know you are getting older, and you do
not hear, and you do not remember.
Mr. Bopp. You are right.
Mr. Cohen. Ms. Smith, thank you.
Ms. Smith. It is hard for me to tell from the videos what
is correct or incorrect because I am not familiar with Planned
Parenthood's actual practices. I am not a lawyer for Planned
Parenthood. What I believe happened according to the team of
forensic experts and their report is that the video, things
were edited out of context and made to look like they were
actually negotiating, haggling, one of the Members put it,
about the price as if they were selling body parts. And I do
not think that is true. I do not think they were selling fetal
tissue, so.
Mr. Cohen. Does the law allow them to get reimbursed for
the cost?
Ms. Smith. Absolutely, the law allows them to get
reimbursed. So the discussion of money was about reimbursement
costs, and, in fact, even in the edited version, the official
does say we are not in this for the profit, and I have to check
and see what the reasonable costs are. I understand there were
other statements that were edited out of that version that I
have not seen.
Mr. Cohen. Mr. Bopp, his comments made on some of the
videos, he said that they raise considerable concerns that
infants are born alive after an induced abortion at Planned
Parenthood and then killed to harvest their tissue. This would
be a violation of Federal law, I believe. What is your response
to that, Ms. Smith?
Ms. Smith. I did not see any evidence or hear anything
about a violation of the Born Alive statute. If we are talking
about pre-viable fetuses, I do not see any violation at all.
Mr. Cohen. And Mr. Bopp has raised concerns that fetal
tissue research may be an incentive for women to obtain an
abortion, which she might otherwise might be conflicted and not
do so. Can you even make a comment on such a convoluted
statement?
Ms. Smith. Well, I know a number of women who have gone
through the process of deciding whether to have an abortion,
and fetal tissue donation does not seem to me to be something
that would enter into their decision making on that issue
itself. So I cannot imagine that that is happening.
Also I understand consent and the decision to make the
abortion to be happening at a time separate from a discussion
about whether given the fact that one has decided to have an
abortion, would one like to contribute to the enormous health
and lifesaving benefits that can come from fetal tissue, those
two decisions are being made separately. And I think the 1988
report recommends that, and I think that is appropriate. And it
seems to me that that is happening.
Mr. Cohen. You have already commented, but I would like to
hear it again about some of the research being done with the
use of fetal tissue to protect people and save people's lives
in the future, and maybe find cures and treatments.
Ms. Smith. Yes, it is contributing, and there was a recent
indication from the NIH about this, about the importance of
fetal tissue research to many new treatment areas, including
diabetes, common diseases like diabetes, and uncommon ones like
ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, and other diseases that we know
little about--Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. And there are some
promising new treatments in those areas.
Mr. Cohen. As an individual who had polio, and you
mentioned that polio was----
Ms. Smith. Yes, the early polio vaccines came from fetal
cell line research, I believe.
Mr. Cohen. I appreciate what fetal tissue can do.
Alzheimer's is an issue that is very important to many in
America because so many Americans are going to suffer from it,
and it costs us so much at our budget, let alone losing our
loved ones, and this is research.
Ms. Smith. Let me say I do think it is important that we
are concerned about consent, and that consent is properly
obtained from the woman, and that as the Committee represented
in 1988 or recommended in 1988, that the decision to donate be
made at a time after one has already decided whether or not to
have an abortion. I think that is a very appropriate safeguard
against incentivizing abortion somehow.
I find it difficult to think that this would change a
woman's mind about having an abortion. Women make decisions to
have an abortion for all kinds of reasons. This does not seem
to me to be one of them. It would be something that one would
decide only after one had made the actual decision.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Smith. I yield back the balance.
Mr. Franks. I thank the gentleman. I will now recognize
myself for 5 minutes for questions.
There is a lot of focus here by certain Committee Members
related to just the fetal tissue portions of it as to the
legality or is it for sale, a lot of that. But one thing that
is pretty clear. If you look at the videos, you do see that
these little body parts represented what once was a living,
feeling human child, and that when they came into Planned
Parenthood, they were living, human little children, and they
died a brutal death while they were there. And we cannot avoid
that reality.
With all of the subterfuge, and the distortion, and trying
to do the bait and switch tactic, do not forget that these were
once little babies that were killed at the hands of Planned
Parenthood.
In the first video released by Center for Medical Progress,
Mr. Bopp, Dr. Nucatola, senior director of Medical Services at
Planned Parenthood, described the factor of intent as playing
an important role in an abortionist use of the abortion method.
She said, ``The Federal abortion ban is a law, and laws are up
to interpretation.'' So there are some people who interpret it
as intent. So if I say on day one I do not intend to do this,
what ultimately happens does not matter because I did not
intend to do this on day one, so I am complying with the law.
So I ask you two questions. First of all, do you believe
Dr. Nucatola's reliance on intent as she described it
represents a valid legal approach? And secondly, what would
change if we had the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act
on the books here at the moment?
Mr. Bopp. Well, I think she was referring to the issue of
partial birth abortion, and it has been the dodge by the pro-
abortion side that that law is only violated if you intend at
the very beginning to have a birth partially delivered of a
live child, and then killing the child, and then completing the
delivery, that that is the process that you intended at the
beginning.
However, the law does not work like that. The intent
applies to each of those actions; that is, for instance, the
intent to kill the child once the child is partially delivered,
not whether this complete process was intended in the first
instance. Secondly, the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection
Act that was passed by this House of Representatives, there is
certainly a potential that some of the children who are born
intact and potentially alive are produced at that period of
time in which that act would prevent that sort of activity. As
a result it could have an impact on obtaining fetal tissue in
those instances.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, sir. Ms. Smith, I will turn to
you. When you were asked to define ``infanticide,'' your own
words were, ``It is when a baby or infant is killed.'' The Born
Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 clarifies that infants who
were born alive during abortion or attempted abortion are
afforded all legal protections enjoyed by other persons in the
United States.
Ms. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Franks. Please tell me if you would support amendments
to the Federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act to protect
infants born alive infants into these incredibly vulnerable
circumstances by providing a requirement that abortion
providers or their staff immediately call 9-1-1 for an
emergency transfer to a hospital of these infants born alive at
the clinic, and to also provide criminal penalties, including
prison time and fines for physicians and medical professionals
who do not provide medically-appropriate and reasonable care to
a born alive infant.
Ms. Smith. If you are talking about a viable fetus that is
born alive----
Mr. Franks. I am talking about born alive.
Ms. Smith. A viable fetus.
Mr. Franks. I am talking about born alive.
Ms. Smith. Okay. So you are saying pre-viable.
Mr. Franks. I am talking about born alive.
Ms. Smith. Pre-viable.
Mr. Franks. I am talking born alive. I do not know what you
do not understand.
Ms. Smith. We are talking about cross-purposes.
Mr. Franks. We are talking about a child who is born and is
alive. Is that hard to understand?
Ms. Smith. That is not hard to understand, but the question
is it a viable fetus. If it is not viable, nothing will save
it.
Mr. Franks. So viability transcends being born alive?
Ms. Smith. Like the Supreme Court, I believe that the
proper line we draw is at viability, yes, because if you call
9-1-1----
Mr. Franks. So whatever that legal term ``viability'' is,
if the child can do ballet, if they have not achieved that
viability thing, then even though they are born alive, then all
of a sudden that transcends the whole question?
Let me ask it again. For a child born alive--born alive--a
child born alive--that means breathing, moving around, born
alive child--do you think that we should have some amendments
to our Infants Born Alive Child Protection Act to require that
9-1-1 be called to provide a transfer to a hospital, this
infant born alive, and provide criminal penalties, including
prison time and fines, for those physicians or medical
professionals who do not provide medically-appropriate and
reasonable care to a born alive infant?
Ms. Smith. I think our law already protects born alive
infants.
Mr. Franks. So you are not going to answer the question.
Ms. Smith. I am answering your question. Calling 9-1-1 for
a 13-week----
Mr. Franks. All right. Let me get more specific here then.
If a child is born, let us say, at 5 months. We will be
specific, 5 months.
Ms. Smith. Five months, okay.
Mr. Franks. Five months, and the child is born alive,
should that child then be afforded protection after they are
born alive?
Ms. Smith. Yes, because I think----
Mr. Franks. Okay, but not if it is 5 minutes earlier before
they move----
Ms. Smith. [continuing]. I think you are getting close to
viability.
Mr. Franks [continuing]. Down the birth canal, they are not
afforded protection, correct?
Ms. Smith. Sorry?
Mr. Franks. In other words, if they are born alive at 5
months, they deserve the protection, correct? That is what you
just said.
Ms. Smith. If they are a viable fetus, yes, absolutely.
Mr. Franks. No, you did not say that. You said that they
should be protected if they are born alive. Now, if you have
changed your mind, that is fine. You can tell us.
Ms. Smith. No, I did not change my mind. I think you are
confusing me. So if it is born alive and you have a viable
fetus, they deserve protection. Yes, they are protected under
the----
Mr. Franks. But if they are born alive and somebody says--
--
Ms. Smith. [continuing]. Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
They are already protected.
Mr. Franks [continuing]. Somebody arbitrarily says they are
not viable, then they are not protectable.
Ms. Smith. If they are not viable, they will not survive,
and so whether you have a Federal law to call 9-1-1 or not, I
do not think will protect them.
Mr. Franks. Well, how do you know if it is viable without
medical professionals? I mean, how do you know? What is----
Ms. Smith. Well, I am a doctor, but doctors know how to
evaluate viability.
Mr. Franks. So, but what you are saying is that the child
that is born alive then is subject to whatever the doctor says,
well, this child is viable, this child is not, so we will
decide to let this one live, or we will transfer this one for
medical care, but not this one.
Ms. Smith. Well, some fetuses are viable and some fetuses
are not.
Mr. Franks. See, that is the schizophrenia of all of this,
Mrs. Smith, is that--Ms. Smith, I am sorry.
Ms. Smith. You should be asking a doctor the questions
about how to determine viability protocol.
Mr. Franks. Well, but my question to you----
Ms. Smith. I am giving you the legal defense definition.
Mr. Franks. My question to you----
Ms. Smith. Yes?
Mr. Franks. My question to you was if the child is born
alive at 5 months, should they be protected, and you are having
difficulty answering that question, and I understand. I would
have difficulty in your position, too.
Ms. Smith. Well, because 5 months, I am not sure how many
weeks that is, and also it depends on whether the fetus is
viable. Some fetuses are never viable.
Mr. Franks. Right, whether they are alive or not is the
issue. It is whether they are viable. I understand. I would
like to understand.
Ms. Smith. Some fetuses never are viable. At 30 weeks they
cannot have a brain, they are not viable, they are not going to
live. Would you provide aid and comfort? Yes, I think you do.
Mr. Franks. Yes, providing----
Ms. Smith. But that fetus is going to die.
Mr. Franks. Provide appropriate and reasonable care.
Ms. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Franks. That is what we should do.
Ms. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Franks. All right. With that, I will now yield to Mr.
King for 5 minutes. I apologize. I will recognize Mr. Johnson
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Johnson. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. This hearing
has all of the hallmarks of a Third World 4th rate Nation show
trial. The objective of the hearing is to highlight for my
friends on the other side of the aisle or to make the case for
defunding Planned Parenthood. The reason being or the stated
reason that they give it is an abortion provider, and it has
got horrific things that it does to effectuate abortion. And
so, therefore, we should have a defunding of Planned
Parenthood. That is what this hearing is all about.
I call it a ``show trial'' kind of hearing because the
accuser is not present, the Center for Medical Progress. They
are not present, neither is the accused, Planned Parenthood.
And so, what we have at a crucial moment in the affairs of the
Nation, we are coming up on September the 30th, which is the
end of the Fiscal Year. We are not talking about funding
government operations past September 30th. We are talking about
abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood instead.
And we have got only 7 legislative days left in this month
to put together a budget so that this country can continue to
operate past September 30. And indeed we are careening toward a
government shutdown on the issue that is being addressed here
today, and it is a show trial. A lot of people are scoring
political points.
I will note that on this Committee, only one female on the
other side of the aisle. That is pathetic. The voices that are
being heard are male voices from the other side of the aisle
that want to continue the attack on women's reproductive
health. That is what this is all about. It is nothing new. It
is a continuation of a mission that the other side has been on
since it has been in power here in Congress, and it is a shame
that it is engaging in show trials.
Let me ask this question, Mr. Bopp. Outside forensic
investigators have determined that the released Center for
Medical Progress videos have been heavily edited. Transcripts
released from the Center for Medical Progress videos also
include words and phrases omitted from the released videos. Mr.
Bopp, were you involved in the production of these videos?
Mr. Bopp. I am advised by the Committee staff that this is
not the subject of this hearing.
Mr. Johnson. Well, no, I am asking the question. Were you
involved in the production of the CMP videos, yes or no?
Mr. Bopp. If the Chairman permits me, I will answer the
question.
Mr. Franks. If the gentleman would like to answer the
question he can, but he is not obligated.
Mr. Bopp. No.
Mr. Johnson. You were not involved, and you were not
present at the time these videos were being shot, were you?
Mr. Franks. The gentleman is not obligated, but he is
certainly welcome to answer the question.
Mr. Bopp. No.
Mr. Johnson. And you have not seen these videos in their
unedited entirety, have you?
Mr. Bopp. No.
Mr. Johnson. And so, based on your answers, you are telling
us that you are here to testify about a series of videos that
you cannot confirm whether or not they were accurate or not.
Mr. Bopp. Yes, and this is the old----
Mr. Johnson. Yes or no?
Mr. Bopp. No, I am not answering ``yes'' or ``no.''
Mr. Johnson. You are not? Okay.
Mr. Bopp. No, because I----
Mr. Johnson. Well, I will tell you what then----
Mr. Bopp. This is the old----
Mr. Johnson [continuing]. If you do not want to answer the
question, I have got questions for other----
Mr. Bopp. I said not ``yes'' or ``no.''
Mr. Johnson. I have got questions for other witnesses, so I
am not going to argue with you.
Mr. Franks. Let the witness answer the question----
Mr. Bopp. Do not trust your lying eyes, right, Congressman?
Mr. Johnson. Well, I mean, you are testifying, sir, to
videos that you do not know whether or not they are accurate.
Mr. Bopp. I have seen the videos.
Mr. Johnson. You have seen the videos, but you have not
seen the unedited videos, correct?
Mr. Bopp. That is correct.
Mr. Johnson. And so, therefore, you want this----
Mr. Bopp. And many of the statements----
Mr. Johnson. You want this Committee to accept your
opinions about some edited videos that you--this is a show
trial, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bopp. I am testifying based upon the video.
Mr. Johnson. You are not testifying on unedited videos. You
are testifying based on edited videos.
Mr. Franks. Just for my clarity, has the gentleman seen all
the unedited videos himself?
Mr. Johnson. No, I have not. [Laughter.]
Mr. Bopp. But, of course, he still tries----
Mr. Johnson. I have not even seen the edited videos, but my
question to this witness is about his ability to come up here
and testify in a way that people can accept his testimony with
any credibility or not. And I would venture to conclude that
your testimony is pretty worthless here.
But let me ask you this question, Mr. Bopp. You are a
strong proponent of the death penalty, are you not?
Mr. Bopp. I am a supporter of the death penalty in certain
circumstances.
Mr. Johnson. And what about you, Ms. Jessen? Do you support
the death penalty also?
Ms. Jessen: In certain circumstances.
Mr. Johnson. Okay. And, Ms. Ohden, do you----
Ms. Ohden. No, I am not.
Mr. Johnson. You do not support the death penalty?
Ms. Ohden. No, I do not.
Mr. Johnson. Well, I gave you an A for consistency.
Ms. Ohden. Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. You are welcome. And with that, I will yield
back the balance of my time.
Mr. Franks. I will now recognize the gentleman from Ohio--I
am sorry--Iowa. Boy, I have got to get that right. Iowa, Mr.
King.
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
witnesses for coming forward here today and delivering your
testimony. And I know that sometimes reliving these things is a
heavy burden, and I am always impressed when we have witnesses
that can deliver that message from the head and the heart from
direct experience.
I was listening to the gentleman from Georgia, and some of
this does not quite fit up with my world view you might not be
surprised to learn. But I notice that, Ms. Smith, he did not
ask you your position on the death penalty, so I would give you
an opportunity to tell us.
Ms. Smith. I am against the death penalty.
Mr. King. You are opposed to the death.
Ms. Smith. Yes, I am.
Mr. King. Was it your earlier testimony, though, that
dismemberment of babies is not necessarily an inhumane way for
those babies to die?
Ms. Smith. You are using the word ``baby.'' My definition
of ``baby'' is a baby that is born. So if you are talking about
fetuses, if you are talking about----
Mr. King. But you acknowledge that testimony even though--
--
Ms. Smith. I support D&E abortion----
Mr. King. And you would not assert it is inhumane----
Ms. Smith [continuing]. The safest procedure.
Mr. King [continuing]. To dismember this unborn baby.
Ms. Smith. I am sorry, say it again.
Mr. King. You would not assert that it is inhumane to
dismember an unborn baby.
Ms. Smith. I would not say it that way. I would say it is
not inhumane to perform a D&E abortion on a pre-viable fetus,
absolutely.
Mr. King. A pre-viable fetus would be an unborn baby, would
they not? We are back to that.
Ms. Smith. Well, I do not think----
Mr. King. Excuse me. I will just stop this exchange because
you went through this with Chairman Franks----
Ms. Smith [continuing]. The disagreement we have, yeah.
Mr. King [continuing]. And I think we have resolved that.
Ms. Smith. That is a disagreement we have.
Mr. King. You have your language, and you are sticking to
it.
Ms. Smith. Yes.
Mr. King. And if anybody uses any other kind of term that
describes it any differently, you would object to that.
Ms. Smith. No, I just want to know what you mean by it. If
you tell me what you mean by it, I will answer it.
Mr. King. So let me ask you another question then since we
have established where you are on this with many years of
practice, and it is do you recall when it hit the news a few
years ago that Red China, the Chinese, would bring criminals up
on capital charges, and through due process, the Red Chinese
due process, convict them of a capital crime, sentence them to
execution, and on their way to execution, harvest their organs
and use those organs in medical practices in China. Do you
recall that?
Ms. Smith. No.
Mr. King. Well, it happened.
Ms. Smith. I believe you, but I was not----
Mr. King. Okay. It does happen, and I recall that America
was appalled by the idea that a heartless, barbaric
civilization like the Red Chinese would sentence someone to
death under their version of due process roll them through the
operating room on the gurney and harvest their organs: their
kidneys, their hearts, their livers, their pancreas, whatever
it is that they thought they could utilize at the time. And
that was, I will say, the harvest of the execution.
We were appalled at the immorality of executing someone and
harvesting their organs. Does that appall you, Ms. Smith?
Ms. Smith. Yes, absolutely.
Mr. King. Yeah, I thought it might, and it appalls me.
Ms. Smith. I am glad we agree.
Mr. King. But I wonder what the Chinese might think of the
United States of America to be borrowing a half a billion
dollars from the Chinese, send that money over to Planned
Parenthood. That money that gets flowed through their system,
ends up being utilized however Planned Parenthood decides, but
we are helping to fund an organization that is dismembering
babies, harvesting their organs, and selling those organs on
the market. And we heard them negotiating for the price on the
market, along with the methodologies that would be used in
order to harvest more organs.
Now, I wonder, and I would ask you, what do you think the
Chinese think of us if we are critical of them for harvesting
organs from someone who has gone through due process and
sentenced to death?
Ms. Smith. I have no idea what the Chinese think of us, but
I do think that the Supreme Court got it right when it
recognized that the State has an interest in the developing and
potential life of the fetus and growth with time.
Mr. King. I would agree with that, and my clock is running,
so I appreciate you saying so. And I turn to Mr. Bopp and ask
you that same question, Mr. Bopp. Have you heard of the
practice in China of harvesting organs? Have you
philosophically compared the two methodologies and what the
Chinese might think of us?
Mr. Bopp. Yes, I am familiar with those allegations, and,
of course, the Chinese are using the same utilitarian
calculation that the abortion advocates here are using to
justify the abuses that have been documented regarding
collection of fetal tissue such as Professor Smith. Well, the
person is not viable, so, therefore, you can kill it at will.
Well, the prisoner convicted of a capital punishment on the way
to being executed is clearly not viable. ``Viable'' means the
ability for long-term survival.
So in their calculation, the way they treat human beings or
do not respect human beings, then it would be perfectly
appropriate to do what the Chinese are doing.
Mr. King. If I could just tie this loop together, Mr.
Chairman, is that the United States, at least virtually, the
United States is virtually borrowing a half a billion dollars
from China and funneling that money through to Planned
Parenthood. The fungible budget of Planned Parenthood I will
say is being used to commit abortion that are dismembering
babies and selling their organs on the open market by the
evidence we have seen before our very eyes.
I do not need an investigation to understand what is going
here. I hold those truths to be self-evident when I saw the
video. And so, this Congress really, we are informing the
public by this hearing, but the Justice Department needs to
investigate and act, and if they see what I have seen by
watching the videos, I believe that brings about prosecutions
and eventually convictions. And I call upon the Justice
Department, do your job.
You have testified here before this Committee that you are
independent branch of the government that is not directed by
the President. The President stood on the floor of the Illinois
State Senate and said a woman who wants an abortion has a right
to a dead baby. I am saying there is nobody in this United
States of America that should be compelled to pay taxes that
are going to pay the interest on the debt to China so that
something like this can happen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Mr. Franks. And I thank the gentleman, and I would now
recognize Ms. Chu for 5 minutes.
Ms. Chu. Mr. Chair, I am outraged by the sensational nature
of this hearing that makes no pretense of being fair or
impartial. And I am outraged by the accusations made against an
organization that serves millions of women in our country. In
fact, 1 in 5 American women visit Planned Parenthood center for
healthcare at some point in their lives. For some it is the
only place that they can turn to for even the most basic of
care.
When our economy fell into tough times a few years ago,
women, especially low-income women, turned to Planned
Parenthood for affordable and dependable primary care services.
They fill a vital gap that community health centers cannot fill
by themselves. The local affiliate in my district, Planned
Parenthood Pasadena in San Gabriel Valley, was one of the
targets of these videos. The Center for Medical Progress tried
to discredit them with their heavily edited videos.
These five short videos, the ones that have been released
by CMP, have at least 47 splices where content is edited out,
but the conversation appears to be seamless. Critical context
is omitted, including Planned Parenthood staff members
repeatedly saying that there is no profit from tissue donation
and should not be, that tissue donation programs must follow
the law, and that substantial changes to medical procedures
would not occur.
And we know from the longer version of the first video that
Dr. Nucatola said at least 10 times that Planned Parenthood
affiliates do not profit from fetal tissue donation, making
statements such as, ``Affiliates are not looking to make money
by doing this. They're looking to serve their patients and just
make it not impact their bottom line.'' Yet none of the highly
relevant and exculpatory passages were included in the edited
versions' excerpts that CMP initially released to the national
media.
And yet, my four affiliates in my local area served over
27,000 women last year alone and saw over 51,500 patients. They
did thousands of well women exams, breast exams, tests to
determine sexually transmitted diseases, and cervical cancer
screenings. By doing this, they saved lives. The leading
questions in these videos do not lead to these numbers.
Instead, the questions lead to a discussion about a legal fetal
tissue donation program that affiliates do not even participate
in for the most part. And so, along with my constituents, I am
calling out these videos for what they are, the latest attacks
on women's access to reproductive healthcare.
Now, Republicans are saying that we do not want to see the
videos, but the truth is the opposite. We want to see the whole
video, not a selectively edited version. And, in fact, that is
why I along with 11 of my colleagues sent a letter to Chairman
Goodlatte today saying that the full footage must be made
available to us and the public. Only then can there be a fair
and complete investigation. And, in fact, without the full
unedited source footage, it is impossible for there to be a
thorough and transparent congressional investigation.
And so, Professor Smith.
Ms. Smith. Yes?
Ms. Chu. Would videos like these have any evidentiary
value? In other words, should we rely on these videos in our
own investigations? And do you believe that the public would
benefit from CMP releasing the full footage?
Ms. Smith. Absolutely. I think CMP should be required to
release the full footage. The edited versions would not have
evidentiary value precisely for the reasons you have stated
because words are taken out of context and placed over each
other, out of time, the way sometimes world leaders are made to
appear to be singing pop songs. It is that kind of technique
that is used on the internet quite often, and it is used here
in these videos. And it is just as unreliable.
Ms. Chu. And, Professor Smith, you talked about that
research panel that determined the ethics of fetal tissue
donation, that 21 people were appointed to this commission and
support the idea of fetal research. Can you speak about some of
the safeguards that the commission and what lawmakers put in
place to ensure no wrongdoing, and do you believe these
safeguards are working?
Ms. Smith. Yes, I do. As far as I can tell, the safeguards
appear to be working. The fetal tissue is not allowed to be
sold. Women have consented to the abortion separately from the
consent to donate tissue, so the incentive for the main actors
in these situations, it is not pushing abortion in any way. It
is not manipulating people or coercing their choice. And those
are all the things and factors that I would hope would be in
place.
To the extent the Committee continues to have concerns
about that and the public continues to have concerns about
whether this is being implemented properly, I think the
appropriate response is another commission to address the
issues and to investigate the issue.
Ms. Chu. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I would like to enter into
the record two letters. The first is a letter from 11 Latino
organizations in support of Planned Parenthood of America. The
second is a letter from Planned Parenthood to the National
Institutes of Health on fetal tissue donation and medical
research.
Mr. Franks. Without objection.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
Mr. Cicilline. Mr. Chairman, a parliamentary inquiry?
Mr. Franks. The gentleman will state his inquiry.
Mr. Cicilline. Mr. Chairman, I would like to know whether
or not the majority is currently in possession of the unedited
videos that are at issue in this hearing.
Mr. Franks. I was going to address that. The unedited full
footage of these videos is online, and all you have to do--is
that incorrect? The CMP has stated that they released it online
weeks ago.
Mr. Cicilline. Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Franks. And so, the point is I would only hope that my
friends on the minority would actually look at them.
Mr. Cicilline. No, Mr. Chairman, I believe those are the
edited versions of these videos.
Ms. Smith. There are two things. There are short videos
that are heavily edited, and then there are what the CMP has
called full footage videos which themselves have also been
edited. This is in the forensic analysis report that was
submitted to the Committee. So nobody that we know of has seen
the actual full footage videos. There is a short version and a
long version.
Mr. Cicilline. That is my point of parliamentary inquiry,
Mr. Chairman, that the majority on this Committee is, in fact,
in possession of the full unedited videos that are at issue in
this hearing.
Mr. Franks. The answer is, no, that we are not. But I would
suggest to you that we are in possession of enough of it to
indicate that living human viable babies are being murdered at
Planned Parenthood, and their body parts are being harvested.
Mr. Cicilline. Point of parliamentary inquiry, Mr.
Chairman? Point of parliamentary inquiry?
Mr. Franks. One more.
Mr. Cicilline. Has the majority received videos from this
organization?
Mr. Franks. We have looked at the ones available to
everyone else online. We have not received anything directly
from the organization.
Mr. Cicilline. Point of parliamentary inquiry. Has the
majority----
Mr. Franks. I am going to move on, sir.
Mr. Cicilline. Has the majority communicated with this
organization and sought copies of unedited versions of these
videos?
Mr. Franks. The answer is that we have not received any
additional footage from CMP, and with that I am going to move
on.
Mr. Cicilline. Mr. Chairman, that was not my inquiry. My
parliamentary inquiry is whether or not the majority----
Mr. Franks. I recognize the gentleman from Texas for 5
minutes.
Mr. Cicilline. Point of parliamentary inquiry. Mr.
Chairman, my inquiry is has the majority communicated with CMP
in an effort to obtain copies of unedited videos or in
connection with the ongoing investigation of CMP with respect
to these videos.
Mr. Franks. They are not in Committee records at this time,
and we have made no formal request for that.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Franks. And with that, I will recognize the gentleman
from Texas for 5 minutes for his questions.
Mr. Poe. I thank the Chairman. It seems to me this hearing
is not whether there is a crime that has been committed or not.
That is a, I think, a decision for the Department of Justice to
determine later, even though my friend from Georgia acted as a
defense lawyer defending someone that has not been charged in
his entire questioning. The issue is whether or not taxpayers
should fund Planned Parenthood. That is the issue that is
before this Committee today. This is just my opinion, the name
is sort of interesting, ``Planned Parenthood.'' Maybe it should
be ``planned non-parenthood'' as opposed to ``Planned
Parenthood,'' but that is just my personal opinion.
We talk about women and all of this. I am going to ask the
ladies on the far left and the far right at the table, and
maybe Ms. Smith in the middle, some questions. Ms. Ohden, just
your opinion, is there any reason taxpayers should fund Planned
Parenthood? Are there other options where women can receive
women's healthcare?
Ms. Ohden. Correct. I do not have the statistics right in
front of me, but your own State is funding women's health at a
higher level at the State level. I was reading something
yesterday that there is more funding than there had been in the
past. Despite the restrictions that have been placed on
abortion facilities through different measures.
So I think that is a great example that we know that the
State of Texas is still funding women's health services at an
all-time high level. I apologize that I do not have that
specific information, but I was just reading it on the plane
last night.
And I have to just say as a woman who survived an abortion,
there is something wrong when healthcare, and women's needs,
and women's empowerment is based on someone's life ending.
Ms. Jessen. Absolutely.
Mr. Poe. Thank you. My understanding is there is 732
federally-qualified health centers in Texas, and there are 38
Planned Parenthood centers in Texas. The issue about the videos
and was it edited, and was it not edited, that seems to be the
discussion in Congress on multiple things. Do we have the full
video? Do we have all of the emails? Do we have the side deals
with the Iranian nuclear agreement? We always seem to be
missing something when we want to make a decision. And here we
are wanting the full videos. I think that will all play out.
But the issue is whether or not there should be Federal
funds for Planned Non-Parenthood. Ms. Jessen. Is it Jessen?
Ms. Jessen. Yes.
Mr. Poe. Tell me a little bit about your knowledge of
Planned Parenthood, I mean, based on your background and your
life experiences. You do not have to go into those, but
Margaret Sanger, or Planned Parenthood, what do you know about
them?
Ms. Jessen. Well, my biological mother went to a Planned
Parenthood, and they advised her to have a saline abortion. So
Planned Parenthood has had an enormous impact on my life. I
have the gift of cerebral palsy as the direct result of a lack
of oxygen to my brain from that procedure.
Margaret Sanger was quite an individual. She said, if I
may----
Mr. Poe. You may.
Ms. Jessen [continuing]. Reread this quote that I quoted
her earlier. She said, ``The most merciful thing that a large
family does to one of its infant members is to kill it,'' and
that is the woman that began this organization.
Mr. Poe. Do you have a problem with statues of her in
different prominent places in America?
Ms. Jessen. A little bit, yeah.
Mr. Poe. I mean, do you or not?
Ms. Jessen. Yes.
Mr. Poe. Do you think that, just your opinion based on your
life experiences, and I value you a great deal.
Ms. Jessen. Thank you.
Mr. Poe. Do you think that the taxpayers should fund
Planned Parenthood, an organization that does harvest, if we
can use the term, body parts of the unborn?
Ms. Jessen. Absolutely not.
Mr. Poe. Okay. Well, my time has expired, and I will yield
back the balance of my time.
Mr. Franks. And I thank the gentleman. I now recognize Ms.
Lofgren for 5 minutes.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My apologies for
having to step out. I chair the California Democratic
delegation, and we had the Secretary of Labor meeting with us,
and I had to go over for 50 minutes to deal with that. However,
I had the benefit of reading all the testimony and, of course,
hearing the testimony this morning.
And really it seems to me that there are a lot of
distortions in terms of how we are approaching this issue. The
real agenda here is pretty obvious, which is to try and outlaw
or eliminate abortion in the United States. That is a right
that women have under the Constitution, at least in the first
trimester. And I think this is a thinly-veiled attack on that
right that women have.
Now, Ms. Smith, you are at the law school. You have
analyzed all of this stuff. I have got a list of the services
that are provided by Planned Parenthood in my State in
California, 117 centers, just over 800,000 patients that could
not be absorbed by the other clinics at all. None of the
abortion services are funded by the Federal Government. It is
only these other services--contraception, sexually transmitted
disease treatment, pap smears, breast exams, and even sex
education and outreach.
I am just wondering what the impact would be, if you have
had a chance to look at California's impact. If these centers
were defunded, what would happen to their patients?
Ms. Smith. Thank you for the question. Yeah, I do not have
the exact numbers, but what I know is that, and I think this is
the terrible irony of this hearing and this idea of defunding
Planned Parenthood is that if you defund the important non-
abortion related services that the government funds around this
country, and particularly in California, what would end up
happening is there would be a significant increase in the
number of unintended pregnancies, and, therefore, also an
increase in the number of abortions that would occur. Now, that
is just the impact on abortion rates alone.
We are also talking the ability of women, particularly low-
income women, to obtain high quality services, services that
simply cannot be absorbed by State community health centers, as
has been suggested. We are talking about wellness exams, cancer
screenings, pap smears, STD testing, all kinds of services.
So Planned Parenthood has become so popular not because it
provides abortions, but because it provides a wide range of
services that women and men need to stay healthy. And it does
so at reasonable costs, and with very high quality. And that is
why I support Planned Parenthood, and that is why a vast
majority of the American people do as well.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, in my community, Planned Parenthood not
only provides birth control and cancer screening and the like,
but they provide pediatric care. It is a whole family. It is
not just women coming in. It is women and their children----
Ms. Smith. And their children.
Ms. Lofgren [continuing]. That are getting immunizations
and getting, you know----
Ms. Smith. Yes. And, in fact, that is----
Ms. Lofgren [continuing]. Pediatric care.
Ms. Smith [continuing]. An important point, which is that
the name ``Planned Parenthood'' I would disagree with the
Member before. The name ``Planned Parenthood'' is indeed very
apt because Planned Parenthood is about helping people plan
their families, plan when they are going to have their
families, and take care of their families to the best of their
ability.
Ms. Lofgren. Just a final question. There has been talk of
shutting the government down and that then would somehow stop
Planned Parenthood. What would happen to funding for Planned
Parenthood if we had a government shutdown at the end of this
month?
Ms. Smith. Well, because I am not an official at Planned
Parenthood, I do know what would happen exactly with their
funding stream when they get Federal funding----
Ms. Lofgren. It is mainly Medicaid funding.
Ms. Smith [continuing]. And when it would come in. So
Medicaid recipients would not be covered, I assume, for their
services and for their healthcare needs, and would be unable to
go to Planned Parenthood clinics. And women would go without
necessary, and their children, would go without necessary
healthcare.
Ms. Lofgren. But it would not defund abortion because there
is no Federal money going into abortion.
Ms. Smith. No. No, it would not defund abortion. This
question about fungibility of money I think is quite ironic
also. Under Federal law, we do not consider money fungible in
this way because it really does not apply. It does not move
from one sphere to another.
For example, in our religious freedom cases, we allow the
funding of secular services at faith-based organizations, and
we do that, and we say it is not an establishment clause
violation because the money that goes to religious activities
at those same organizations is separately funded. So we
recognize the ability, and we can keep those things separate in
our head in that context. I think we should be able to keep
those separate here as well because they are separate in
reality.
Ms. Lofgren. My time has expired. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Franks. And I thank the gentlelady, and I will now
recognize Mr. Gowdy for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bopp, can you
describe the process of a partial birth abortion so people will
have a better understanding of why it might have been banned,
and they may actually have a better understanding of why
Professor Smith would have argued against that ban.
Mr. Bopp. Yes. A partial birth abortion, as defined under
Federal law, is where a physician partially delivers, usually
the trunk and legs, of the baby, leaving only the head in the
birth canal, and the baby is alive. And then takes an act to
kill the baby at that point, usually thrusting scissors into
the back of the skull in order to kill the baby, and then
completes the delivery.
So it is a way of killing the baby when most of the baby is
already outside of the womb.
Mr. Gowdy. And there are actually people who argued against
banning that barbaric practice?
Mr. Bopp. Oh, yes. I mean, many of the people we have been
hearing from today were big advocates for a continuation of
partial birth abortions. They have no respect for human life if
they consider it to be unborn, or they want to label it as a
``fetus.'' And literally anything is all right as far as they
seem to be concerned.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, let us go to that point because Professor
Smith seems to draw a line, artificial as it may be, between
the humanity owed to a viable fetus and the lack of humanity
owed to what she considers to be a non-viable fetus. Who gets
to draw that line of demarcation between viability and non-
viability?
Mr. Bopp. Well, that is a complex question. Number one, it
is a medical determination on whether or not a child is viable,
but it is a difficult one, and there are many gray areas. For
instance, the statistics are after 20 weeks, 1 in 4 can
survive. And we would consider that to mean, therefore, that
anyone born at that point in time ought to be considered
viable.
But many times you just simply do not know until later. And
I have not heard any people that work at abortion clinics who
are able to make that kind of complex medical decision.
Mr. Gowdy. No, I think Professor Smith, if I heard her
correctly, said that she was not a doctor, and it should be up
to the doctors to make that determination, although I did note
the irony it was 9 damn lawyers who came up with that plan, not
a one of whom was a doctor. And I also noted the irony of Hank
Johnson wondering why there were not more women on our side of
the aisle when they tend to target to seek office as Republican
women. And there was not a single woman on the Court when Roe
v. Wade was decided, but that does not seem to trouble him much
either.
For those watching at home or here, does civil law not
recognize the viability of even a pre-viable fetus when it
comes time for the plaintiff's attorney to get paid?
Mr. Bopp. There are many instances of cases in various
states of wrongful death of the unborn, of criminal laws to
punish----
Mr. Gowdy. Well, we are going to get to criminal law in a
second. Let us just stick civil right now.
Mr. Bopp. Okay.
Mr. Gowdy. Now, when it comes time for the trial attorney
to get paid, we have a different definition of ``viability,''
right?
Mr. Bopp. Well, viability is simply not relevant.
Mr. Gowdy. Exactly. You can be 2 weeks pregnant and you
have a cause of action on behalf of that unborn child.
Mr. Bopp. That is correct.
Mr. Gowdy. And our friends on the other side of the aisle,
some of whom were plaintiffs' attorneys, have no trouble being
paid for the life of that 2-week-old.
Mr. Bopp. Right. The idea of using viability as a standard
is really antiquated, and most courts have gone away from that
to just simply the point that if the child is alive.
Mr. Gowdy. But it is hard to go away from viability when
Professor Smith said there is not any humanity owed a pre-
viable, she will not say, baby, pre-viable fetus.
Mr. Bopp. That is exactly----
Mr. Gowdy. Did I misunderstand her? Is there any degree of
humanity owed?
Mr. Bopp. Well----
Mr. Gowdy. You have been sitting beside her all morning.
Did I miss something? Is there something outside the bounds of
decency that we really will not allow as long as the fetus is
pre-viable?
Mr. Bopp. Well, as I understand her testimony, if the born
alive infant is considered to be not viable, then we have a
free fire zone. We can do whatever we want. We can kill the
baby at will, harvest their tissues, whatever the case may be.
And, of course, the concern about producing intact infants,
which has been demonstrated in the videos, is, of course, the
possibility that these unborn children are alive. And there is
even evidence that one of the intact babies born alive had a
beating heart, which is a definition of being alive.
Mr. Gowdy. Which is why the videos are relevant to our
conversation about partial birth abortions. Mr. Chairman, I am
out of time. I just have two really quick questions for Ms.
Smith, which she can answer with a ``yes'' or ``no.''
Ms. Smith, if we were to double the amount of money
available to the providers, but give it to someone not named
``Planned Parenthood,'' would you be okay with that?
Ms. Smith. I would have to know who it was going to and
whether they were qualified----
Mr. Gowdy. Anyone not named ``Planned Parenthood.''
Ms. Smith. Not ``anyone,'' no.
Mr. Gowdy. Anyone who is qualified to provide services.
Ms. Smith. If they provide high quality services to low-
income people in the same way that Planned Parenthood does,
frankly, yes, I do not have any----
Mr. Gowdy. So you are okay with us defunding Planned
Parenthood as long as the money goes somewhere where it can do
the most amount of good for the same group of people. You are
okay with Congress defunding Planned Parenthood.
Ms. Smith. Not in the current environment where there is no
one----
Mr. Gowdy. And if there were, would you be okay with it?
Ms. Smith. If there were, yeah, it would be a different
world, then, yes, then you could fund that organization----
Mr. Gowdy. So if we can identify----
Ms. Smith [continuing]. To do those services.
Mr. Gowdy [continuing]. Service providers that meet that
same quality of care not named Planned Parenthood, you will
support the Republicans in defunding Planned Parenthood.
Ms. Smith. I do not know that you and I will agree on who
those people are, and I would have to know who they are.
Mr. Gowdy. How about we just try?
Ms. Smith. Theoretically----
Mr. Gowdy. Why do we not do that?
Ms. Smith. If you are asking me a hypothetical question
there was----
Mr. Gowdy. Yeah, I will double the money as long as it does
not go to the folks who donate money to Democrats, Planned
Parenthood. We will double the amount of money available as
long as it does not go to Planned Parenthood. How is that?
Ms. Smith. ``As long as it does not go to Planned
Parenthood?'' Planned Parenthood today is the institution that
provides the best, highest quality care to women in this
country across this Nation, in cities, in low-income areas
where these services are unavailable to them otherwise.
Mr. Gowdy. They are also the target of videos that are
barbaric, and heinous, and subhuman.
Ms. Smith. They are----
Mr. Gowdy. So as long as we can get that same level of care
and do it through an entity not named Planned Parenthood----
Ms. Smith. They abortions at a very small part of their
services, and this is why you oppose them, and that is the only
reason you oppose them.
Mr. Gowdy. You have no idea why. I was voting to defund
Planned Parenthood, with all due respect, Professor, before the
videos ever showed up.
Ms. Smith. I was not talking about the videos.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, I do not think we know each other well
enough for you to assign a motive to what I am doing----
Ms. Smith. Probably not.
Mr. Gowdy [continuing]. I do not think.
Ms. Smith. Vice versa. And vice versa.
Mr. Gowdy. I yield back.
Mr. Franks. I thank the gentleman. I thank the gentleman.
Just to clarify, Ms. Smith, you said earlier that in order to
determine whether an unborn child is viable, one would need to
ask a doctor. And so, consequently, would you support a
requirement that when an unborn child is born alive, that the
child be transported to a hospital so that it can survive if it
is viable.
Ms. Smith. If it is viable, if it is born alive?
Mr. Franks. No, I am saying so that it can be transported
to a hospital where medical----
Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Franks [continuing]. Where medical doctors can
ascertain if it is viable.
Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Chairman, is there an intent to have a
second round of questions since you are engaging in a second
round?
Mr. Franks. I will move on. Can you answer the question?
Ms. Smith. I would have to see the bill, so I am not
prepared to support or not support.
Mr. Franks. I will recognize, Mr. Gutierrez, I believe you
are next in line.
Mr. Gutierrez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just first
say I thank all of the men and women that work at Planned
Parenthood. I thank them for the incredible service that they
offer millions of women who would otherwise go without the kind
of kind, considerate, compassionate, understanding service that
I believe that women in this country need, and that is not
being offered in other venues.
I thank them because just this last year, there are 500,000
fewer pregnancies. That is a way to stop abortion. This should
not be a question of who is for abortion, who is against.
Everybody is against abortion, but how do you stop abortions?
How do you allow everyone to live in the 21st century? How do
you allow women to live freely in the 21st century if they are
not charge of their reproductive system? I think that is key.
And I think part of what is going on here is that Planned
Parenthood has a direct association with the pill, with
contraception, and that fight continues to go on. We should not
have that fight. The vast majority of women in America and
across the world that have access take birth control. I am
certainly not going to judge my wife.
We have two beautiful daughters. They are 8 years apart.
Why? Because we had access to birth control. We had access to
birth control so that we could determine when it was we were
going to have children and we could raise those children. We
could raise those children to be productive citizens of our
society.
When you show me that Planned Parenthood actually was
selling body parts, then we are going to have a conversation
about the future of Planned Parenthood. Nobody is showing that.
And let us make it very, very clear. Medical advances, and
vaccines for polio, measles, rubella, vaccines against drugs
and neurological disorders, immune deficiencies, cancer,
Parkinson's. We need to continue to have medical research, and
part of that medical research is because there is the ability
to access the fetal tissues, and that there is not
profitability in it, and nobody has shown there is
profitability in it. But there needs to be a way that we have
medical research in this country.
And so, I just want to say thank you to all of the women,
and the men, and all of those that labor in our healthcare
delivery system across this country, and especially those who
would provide that to women.
80 percent of the clients who receive birth control
services, that is 516,000 unintended pregnancies annually. I
want you to think about that, and I want you to think about the
estimated 1 out of 5 women in the United States has visited a
Planned Parenthood health center at least once in her life. 20
percent of the women in this country. Of course, some people do
not want them to visit there anymore.
And I also want to talk just a little bit about the fact
that as much as we try to have universal healthcare, we still
do not have universal healthcare unfortunately in this country.
And so, I just want to talk just a little bit, I am not for
abortion. Do I honk if I see a sign that says ``honk if you are
for choice?'' Yeah, I do honk. We have been very lucky and very
fortunate in my family and in my own personal experience, even
when we were pretty poor, to have access to healthcare for my
wife, because there were people out there that were giving that
kind of access.
And I want to end not by trying to have, I mean, to kind of
say that we are for Planned Parenthood because we receive
money, I think it is a little just under the belt. This is
really about women and about what is the law. So just two last
points.
There seems to be a question here of morality, and I just
want to say that, look, when you have Members of the House of
Representatives proposing DOMA that have been divorced four
times, I think we might want to question their knowledge or
their sincerity about marriage. Of course, that was overturned
by the Supreme Court. When we have clerks that are married
once, twice, three, and then all of a sudden get religious and
say, well, I am not going to give a marriage certificate to
those two men or those two women because it is a case of
morality, maybe I might want to question people's morality.
But in the end, what you cannot question is this
Congressman's right to defend his two daughters' rights. I
raised them. I gave them the best I could, and I trust them.
And I am going to protect their right and the right of every
other woman to make decisions about their reproductive systems
with their conscience. I raised them. I gave them the best
values and the best I could do, and I need to respect them now.
And I just wish that in this society we would have a system
that respected all women and the kinds of decisions that they
have to make every day. Every day they have to make decisions.
And I do not think we are in a position to judge them, and I am
certainly not going to allow others to promote legislation or
to promote situations that put that in jeopardy.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Franks. I now recognize Mr. Labrador for 5 minutes.
Mr. Labrador. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, in fact, I am
really grateful for the words of morality that we just heard
from my good friend, Luis Gutierrez because this is an issue of
morality. This is why we are here today.
I want to begin by making it clear that to me it is not an
issue simply of whether Planned Parenthood broke the law by
selling fetal body parts obtained through abortion. In fact, I
do not know if we are ever going to be able to answer that
question whether it was illegal for them to do what they were
doing. The real tragedy is that we are confronted today with is
that human beings have been reduced to mere commodities in this
practice, and Federal dollars are contributing to it. And I
think that is immoral.
I do not want to contribute to a system that profits from
someone's fate, nor do I want to subject millions of taxpayers
to supporting this violation of life. It is often a temptation
to boil this argument down to medical terms and ignore the real
losses our Nation faces when we choose to reject someone before
he or she has been given a chance to live, like these two
beautiful women who are here today with us and who have
testified so eloquently.
I commend both Ms. Jessen and Ms. Ohden for their courage
to come before this Committee as living expressions of life's
potential. I am certain that life has not always been easy for
them, but I am incredibly grateful that you were given the
opportunity to live, and that you are choosing to spend time
with us today.
I, too, could be said to be a survivor of abortion. My
mother, God rest her soul, passed away 10 years ago this month.
I love her, and I love her most of all because at the time of
her pregnancy when she was a single mom, she was encouraged by
people like Ms. Smith and others to abort me. She was told that
the only way she was going to have a life, a good life, was
making sure that she did not have this child.
And she did a make personal choice, a choice that should be
respected. She made the choice to give me life, but not to just
give me life, but to give me a good life; to raise me to the
best of my ability to become the best that I could do. She made
a deal with her God that if she was going to have this child,
she was going to do everything in her power to make sure that
this child had a good life. Even though she was a single mom,
she did not have any money, she did not have much in her life,
she was going to give me the best opportunities and everything
else available to me.
And when we talk about this in scientific terms, we forget
that we are talking about children. We are talking about human
life. We are talking about people who have a God-given
potential to be the best that they can be and to be everything
that they can be. So I hope we do not forget that.
And when I watched those videos, I have to admit that I
could only watch two of them. I think there are seven or eight
of them. I could not watch after the second one because I was
sickened to my core. To me it was immoral. I do not know if it
is illegal, Ms. Smith, but it was immoral what I was seeing on
that video.
We can have a discussion whether at some point there should
be abortions. You and I will disagree on that discussion. But I
can tell you that at that point when those videos were showing
that abortion, this Nation should really step back and decide
whether we are a moral Nation or an immoral Nation; whether we
are willing to allow that to happen or not.
So I have a few questions for you, Ms. Smith. You
emphasized that Federal funding for Planned Parenthood is not
used for abortion, yet you go on to say that defunding Planned
Parenthood would ultimate lead to an increase in abortions.
Explain to me why you only associate abortion with Planned
Parenthood in the case of defunding Planned Parenthood, but
fail to recognize the connection the Federal Government
actively contributes money to Planned Parenthood.
Ms. Smith. What I was saying was that if you defund Planned
Parenthood, you defund their contraceptive services and the
care that they provide to women who are----
Mr. Labrador. So as Mr. Gowdy said, if we gave that money
to other community health organizations, would that be okay?
Ms. Smith. If there were community health organizations
that provided as high quality care as Planned Parenthood----
Mr. Labrador. Do you think the only community health
organization in America that can provide this high-quality care
is Planned Parenthood?
Ms. Smith. Currently, it is definitely the highest quality
care available, yes.
Mr. Labrador. Well, you are saying ``the highest,'' but are
they the only? There are other community health organizations
that can do that.
Ms. Smith. There are definitely community health centers.
There is a reason people do not go to them and people go to
Planned Parenthood. It is because the care is better.
Mr. Labrador. Mr. Bopp, you have elaborated about the
potential legal violations that Planned Parenthood may face.
However, even it is found that Planned Parenthood did not
violate any laws, what justification remains for using taxpayer
dollars to fund their practices?
Mr. Bopp. I am sorry, the question again, sir?
Mr. Labrador. You have elaborated on whether Planned
Parenthood potentially violated the law. Even if they did not
violate the law, is there any justification to continue to fund
their practices?
Mr. Bopp. Is there any justification to continue to fund
Planned Parenthood? No. The reason there is no justification is
that even if the current laws are not violated, they clearly
are committing abuses and violating moral and ethical
principles, and violating the safeguards. As wrong as the NIH
panel was about recommending this research, at least they
talked about and proposed safeguards, like no financial
incentives.
When the laws got passed, it was passed by people that
wanted to facilitate. The law was written by people who wanted
to facilitate fetal tissue procurement from aborted fetuses,
and, frankly, went beyond what the panel would have limited it
to.
So it could very well be that the current laws need to be
adjusted in order to provide, one, effective protection against
these financial incentives, and, two, by providing the
necessary protection for infants born alive, which we have a
witness right here before this Committee speaking for the
abortion industry that says they are in a free fire zone if
they are not viable.
Mr. Labrador. Thank you. I yield back my time.
Mr. Franks. I thank the gentleman, and I will recognize Mr.
Deutch for 5 minutes.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today marks the first
hearing of the full House Judiciary Committee after a lengthy
August recess. How fitting it is that it be devoted to a bogus
and politically-motivated attack on women's healthcare and on
those who provide it.
Let us be clear. The entire premise of today's hearing is
based on viral videos that have been dissected, debunked, and
discredited. For 3 years, anti-abortion activist fraudulently
cast themselves as biomedical researchers. Their goal: to find
a gotcha moment that catches staff affiliated with Planned
Parenthood breaking the law, and after 3 years of deception
they have failed to find it.
So what do these extremists do? They heavily edited footage
to smear Planned Parenthood, a non-profit healthcare provider
that serves over 2.7 million Americans every year as some sort
of for-profit enterprise engaged in a preposterous black market
of fetal tissue. Conveniently scrubbed out of the parts where
staff says that no one should sell fetal tissue, and their goal
is to cover the costs of the donation process. In short, these
videos are heavily edited and intended to deceive.
So why are we here? We have already learned that Planned
Parenthood did not engage in any wrongdoing. They only do fetal
tissue donation in a handful of states; that fetal tissue
research was consensually obtained through legal abortion, was
legalized by Congress in 1993 with bipartisan support; that
Planned Parenthood's goal is to fulfill the wishes of those
patients who decide to donate fetal tissue to science, and
perhaps--perhaps--contribute to research that may someday yield
cures to Alzheimer's, and blindness, muscular dystrophy, and so
many other ills.
So fetal tissue research is legal. Family planning is
legal. And as much as some of our witnesses today like to
pretend otherwise, abortion is legal. Yet here we are. This
deception has led Congress to hold the first of apparently
several hearings. This deception has led presidential
candidates to pledge to defund Planned Parenthood, a provider
that 1 in 5 American women relies on in their lifetime.
Well, guess what? No Federal funding goes to abortion, so
when you defund Planned Parenthood, you are just defunding the
over 97 percent of what they do that is not abortion, meaning
you defund pregnancy tests. You defund birth control. You
defund screenings for breast cancer, and cervical cancer, and
ovarian cancer. You defund vaccinations, you defund access to
referrals to other hospital and specialists, and you deny
prenatal care.
So what happens when you defund Planned Parenthood, a
provider that serves over 2.7 million Americans? You defund
access to healthcare that has nothing--nothing--to do with
abortion.
Now, let me correct the record here. Planned Parenthood
does spend Federal funding on birth control that prevents
unwanted pregnancies that may lead to abortion. Indeed, in 2013
alone, Title 10 sites like Planned Parenthood helped prevent 1
million unintended pregnancies, which statistically would have
likely led to over 300,000 more abortions that year.
I honestly do not know why we are here today, but here is
what I do know. I know that not a single one of the men sitting
on this dais today ever had to cap a sentence about their
educational goals, or their career plans, or their financial
aspirations with the phrase, ``unless I get pregnant.''
I know that Federal law already prohibits Planned
Parenthood from using any tax dollars on abortion-related care.
Frankly, I think all women should have access to legal abortion
regardless of their financial means. And I know that this
movement to defund Planned Parenthood is not just an attack on
the constitutional right to a safe legal abortion. It is an
attack on the entire concept of reproductive justice, which is
the idea that all women, regardless of their race, or sexual
orientation, or economic background, have the right to
education about sexual health and the right to manage their
reproductive health; that they have the right to delay
childbearing until they are ready to become mothers, that this
right to control their fertility gives them a better shot at
controlling their own destinies.
Today's hearing, Mr. Chairman, is an attack on the autonomy
and, therefore, on the dignity of women. I, therefore, will not
dignify it with any questions, and I yield back the balance of
my time.
Mr. Franks. And I am grateful. We now recognize Mr.
Ratcliffe for 5 minutes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. I thank the Chair for convening this
hearing, although I certainly wish it was not necessary, and
that the horrifying events that have prompted it had not
occurred in our country. I am grateful for pro-life leaders
like Chairman Goodlatte, who are spearheading this critical
investigation. And I think it is worth pointing out that that
is what this is, it is an investigation, and it is the
beginning of an investigation, not the end of one.
I did not come here to make conclusions unlike some of the
Democratic colleagues of mine who have been making conclusions
from the beginning of this hearing. In fact, in the Ranking
Member's opening remarks, he stated that there was no credible
evidence that Planned Parenthood had violated the law. He said
that before he heard a single word of testimony here.
The Democrats in this room, my colleagues across the aisle,
can feign outrage, but this is the obligation of Congress. If
Federal tax dollars are going to Planned Parenthood, we have an
obligation as duly elected representatives of the people to
determine whether or not they are using those Federal tax
dollars to violate the law. So my colleagues across the aisle
can be upset, but Congress is doing exactly what it should here
today.
The gentleman before me just commented on the fact that
Congress has returned after a month of recess. Well, I can tell
you what the 700,000 people in East Texas that I am privileged
to represent wanted to talk about. They wanted to talk about
what they saw on these Planned Parenthood videos. Now, again,
my colleagues across the aisle can say that the videos are not
real, but they are very real to the 700,000 Texans that I
represent. And I came here today to ask some questions about
that, and I think that the Texans that I represent and
Americans generally have been sickened by what they have seen
on those videos.
Professor Smith, earlier today you referred to Planned
Parenthood as a beloved institution. I do not know Planned
Parenthood. All I know is what I have seen on the videos and
what their representatives have said. And in examining that
footage, I do not see a beloved institution. I see an
organization that appears to have a blatant disregard for human
life. At least that is what appears on the video.
Now, I know that you have talked about how those videos are
not reliable, but that is not the same thing as saying that
they are not true. You are not here today under oath to say
that none of those statements made by Planned Parenthood
employees were not true, are you?
Ms. Smith. Certainly some of the words they uttered and
many of the statements they said, they did say absolutely. But
I think the videos were edited to make it seem that they said
things they did not say.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, again, I am not asking you to say that
they are true. What I am saying is would you at least agree
with me that if the words as you heard them on the video are
true, that there were some outrageous statements made.
Ms. Smith. Well, we would have to talk about which
statements I think, so.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Well, let us talk about some of those
statements.
Ms. Smith. Okay.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Ms. O'Donnell said, and I will quote it
exactly, ``This is the most gestated fetus and the closest
thing to a baby that I have ever seen,'' and she taps the heart
and it starts beating. ``I knew why that was happening. The
nodes were still firing, and I do not know if that means it is
technically dead or it is alive. It had a face. It was not
completely torn up. Its nose was pronounced. It had eyelids.
Since the fetus was so intact,'' she said, ``Okay, well, this
is a really good fetus, and it looks like we can procure a lot
from it. We are going to procure a brain.''
I am not asking you if that statement is true. I am saying
if it is true, would you agree with me that that is outrageous,
and it raises questions about the legality of actions being
taken at Planned Parenthood?
Ms. Smith. I do not think it raises questions about the
legality of the actions. I think what she is talking about is
an abortion of a pre-viable fetus in ways that are distasteful
to many of us. And I think the language perhaps is not
sensitive to people in how they want to think about a fetus.
We often equate fetus with baby. In fact, Members of this
Committee have done so repeatedly today, and that makes us
think about full-term gestated babies rather than fetuses in a
very early stage of gestation, which is what she is talking
about. So when you juxtapose those images in your mind, it
becomes very distasteful. But when you are talking about a very
early undeveloped----
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, reclaiming my time, I understand we
are going to----
Ms. Smith [continuing]. Situation.
Mr. Ratcliffe [continuing]. We are going to disagree about,
you used the term ``fetus,'' I will use the term ``baby.'' But
that statement as I read does not give you reason to think that
Congress should investigate whether or not that statement, if
true, perhaps violated the partial birth ban or the born alive
law?
Ms. Smith. There is nothing in that statement. Let me talk
briefly about----
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, let me move on. You have told me that
you do not agree with me.
Ms. Smith. Okay.
Mr. Ratcliffe. We are just going to have to agree to
disagree. But something earlier that you said with Congressman
Gowdy was that you would be okay with Congress defunding
Planned Parenthood if it made those same Federal tax dollars
available to other providers that were qualified to give
healthcare to women in this country.
Ms. Smith. If there was an institution that provided as
high quality care as Planned Parenthood does on a consistent
basis----
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, that is not what you said earlier.
Ms. Smith. Well, let me correct the record and be more
clear about it. Yes, that is what I am talking about is----
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Well, so did you know that there are
20 federally-funded comprehensive care clinics for every one
Planned Parenthood in this country?
Ms. Smith. There are many community health centers----
Mr. Ratcliffe. And are you aware that there are actually
13,000 federally-qualified healthcare centers for women in this
country?
Ms. Smith. Yes, and many of them provide much lower quality
healthcare unfortunately than Planned Parenthood does. There
was an investigation recently and an article, I think it was in
Salon.com about the difference between community health centers
and Planned Parenthood clinics and comparing----
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, with all due respect, Professor Smith,
you keep saying that you do not----
Ms. Smith. There is a reason people go to Planned
Parenthood, which is that the care is very good, very
compassionate, and----
Mr. Ratcliffe. As compassionate as what we saw in those
videos?
Ms. Smith. People trust them.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, we are just going to have to agree to
disagree on that. I do want to reserve some of my time to----
Mr. Goodlatte [presiding]. Unfortunately, the gentleman's
time has expired.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Then I will yield back.
Mr. Goodlatte. And the Chair thanks the gentleman, and
recognizes the gentlewoman from Washington, Ms. DelBene.
Ms. DelBene. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wish I could say I am
surprised that this Committee's first order of business after
this August break is to launch yet another attack on women's
health, but I am not. Already this year the House has voted to
restrict reproductive healthcare in private insurance, to enact
a sweeping 20-week abortion ban, and to allow employers to
discriminate against their workers for using birth control. And
now, we are conducting a so-called investigation that is rooted
in extreme anti-choice ideology rather than evidence and facts.
It is shameful that this Committee is legitimizing the
extremists, whose only real intent is to intimidate women and
their healthcare providers, and to shutter Planned Parenthood
clinics in communities across the country. In my State of
Washington, we are already seeing the consequences of these
irresponsible, baseless attacks. Last Friday, one of our
Planned Parenthood clinics was the victim of arson, a senseless
act of violence.
It is past time for Congress to stop focusing on ideology
and start focusing on the fats. And the fact is that defunding
Planned Parenthood would have a devastating impact on women's
access to care. That care includes well women visits, cancer
screenings, immunizations, birth control. In fact, more than 90
percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are
preventative.
We cannot allow the reckless actions of a few extremists to
jeopardize the critical safety net provided by Planned
Parenthood. And with that, Mr. Chair, I would like to submit
for the record a letter from 92 organizations, including the
National Women's Law Center, expressing their support for
Planned Parenthood.
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection, it will be made part of
the record.
Ms. DelBene. Thank you.
[The information referred to follows:]
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__________
Ms. DelBene. Professor Smith, we were just talking about
comments that some of my colleagues have made that community
health centers would be able to fill the void if Planned
Parenthood was defunded. I would love to get your opinion on
that. Is it your understanding that some Americans would be
left without access to preventative health services if they
were no longer funded and those services were no longer
available?
Ms. Smith. That is right. I do not know the details. I have
not studied all the areas that are without community health
centers, but I know that there are many places that simply do
not have access to them. I also question the level of services
that are provided in some of those centers as well. And Planned
Parenthood remains the only option for many people to obtain
these services. That is definitely true.
Can I correct the record with one point also while----
Ms. DelBene. Certainly.
Ms. Smith [continuing]. Which is something that Mr.
Labrador said that people like Ms. Smith encourage people to
have abortions. And I just want to correct the record and say I
have never encouraged someone to have an abortion. I have
talked to some women who are friends who have been considering
abortion, and they have discussed their options with me. But I
would never encourage someone or push anyone to have an
abortion, and I wanted to just make that clear on the record.
Ms. DelBene. I understand. I just want to highlight in my
State of Washington, Planned Parenthood has--this is actually
2013 numbers--almost 120,000 patients, over 17,000 folks who
have gone in for a pap test, over 17,000 who have gone in for
breast exams. So we are talking about preventative services
that are so critical.
Ms. Smith. A huge number, yes.
Ms. DelBene. And in your opinion, are there particular
groups that would be impacted more significantly if Planned
Parenthood preventative services were no longer available?
Ms. Smith. Absolutely. Women who do not have insurance,
low-income women in particular, women of color in communities
which do not have access to high-quality services and do not
have health insurance despite the Affordable Care Act and all
the gains that we have made there.
Ms. DelBene. And as we talk about some of the attacks that
we have seen against Planned Parenthood, you talked about this
in your testimony. There is a history of this. Can you
elaborate a little bit more on that?
Ms. Smith. Yes. There have been 9 different similar kinds
of smear campaigns just since 2000 using these kinds of videos,
accusing Planned Parenthood of everything from hiding statutory
rape, to I forget all the different ones. There have been a
number of them, and Mr. Bopp was asked about them previously as
well, and that certainly has gone on. Every time there has been
a full investigation. There is a huge hue and cry about it. It
gets in the press. Everyone goes crazy. Congressional hearings
are held. Things are investigated, and the claims are debunked.
It has happened again and again and again, and I will predict
that that will happen again this time.
Ms. DelBene. Thank you. It is unfortunate that it is
happening right now. Thank you and I yield back the remainder
of my time, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Michigan, Mr. Bishop, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to those of
you who have showed up to testify today. Thank you for the fact
that you have had to sit through this long bit of questioning.
It is very important to all of us.
I take exception with the last exchange that I heard, terms
like ``smear tactics,'' or ``smear campaign,'' ``attack on
women's health.'' What would you have us do? I do not
understand. All of us had to witness what we saw in these
videos. Planned Parenthood is funded by the United States
government, by taxpayers. It is our responsibility as Members,
Republicans and Democrats, to address issues like this in this
format.
I think it would be easy just to walk away from this and to
just pretend like it did not happen, put our head in the sand.
It seems like Congress does that a lot. But in this case, the
videos were so abhorrent and so unconscionable that it is our
responsibility to step up and to have these hearings to get to
the bottom of it before we go forward with the same old same
old of funding and funding for the sake of having done it
before.
This is our responsibility, and I just want to make that
point clear that I am not here on any witch hunt. I am a newer
Member. I have not been a part of anything that has happened in
the past. I am not here as Republican or Democrat. I am here
because I am an American citizen, and I am also a taxpayer, and
I believe it is our responsibility to marshal our resources and
do it in a way that is consistent with our fiduciary duty. That
said, when I see this video I am outraged, and as a citizen I
want to be here and talk to all of you. I am sorry about the
diatribe, but I think it is very important that you see the
emotion in all of us.
I want to get back to a question that we began with, and
that was the discussion that we had about valuable
consideration, and whether or not any of this testimony,
everything that we have heard, the video, is, in fact, illegal.
What is ``valuable consideration?'' I offer that as a question
to my legal counsel, both of you. Mr. Bopp, you suggested there
is a gaping hole, and it is for reasonable payments for
reimbursable costs, whatever that might mean.
I want to read you a portion of this transcript, if I
might. And this is between one of the folks that set up the
undercover video and two individuals in Planned Parenthood. The
actor that was there for the undercover video said, ``And we
agree that $100 will keep you happy, correct?'' Lauren Felzer
replies--she is also the senior director of Planned
Parenthood--``I think so.'' Dr. Gatter, also there, M.D. with
Planned Parenthood, said, ``Well, let me find out what other
affiliates in California are getting, and if they are getting
substantially more, then we can discuss it then.'' The actor
says, ``Yes.'' Dr. Gatter says, ``I mean, the money isn't the
important thing, but it has to be big enough that it is
worthwhile.'' The undercover person says, ``No, no, but it is
something to talk about. I mean, it was one of the first things
that you brought up, right?'' Dr. Gatter, ``Hmm.''
The undercover person says, ``Now, here's another thought.
If we could talk about a specimen, per specimen per case, or
procured tissue sample.'' Dr. Gatter, ``Hmm.'' Buyer, ``So if
we are able to get a liver thymus pair, maybe that's $75 per
specimen. So that is a liver thymus pair, and that's $150.''
Dr. Gatter, ``Hmm.'' Maybe that is ``mm hmm.'' I cannot tell
from this transcript.
Buyer, ``Versus if we get a liver thymus brain hemisphere,
and all of that is,'' and Dr. Gatter says, ``Okay.'' Buyer,
``So that protects us so that we're not paying for stuff we
cannot use, and I think it also maybe illustrates things.'' Dr.
Gatter, ``It's been years since I have talked about
compensation, so let me just figure out what others are
getting. If this is in the ballpark, it is fine. If it's still
too low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini.'' And
the undercover person says, ``What did you say?'' And Dr.
Gatter says, ``I said I want a Lamborghini.''
Now, I just read you a portion of that transcript of that
video, and this appears to be a flat fee exchange. It is almost
as though they are at a restaurant picking from a menu. Is that
not valuable consideration that they are talking about, and
have we had any discussion about reasonable payment for
reimbursable costs?
Mr. Bopp. Well, your last point is what is noteworthy
because paying anything is a valuable consideration. And the
exception, which they are trying to exploit, is for reasonable
reimbursement of costs, reasonable payments for various costs
associated with the procurement of the tissue. Well, the costs
do not vary based upon how many specimens you get out of a
particular fetus. What varies is how much money you are going
to get out of it.
And what is noteworthy about that exchange is where was the
discussion or reference to, well, what does it cost us when
they are talking about how much. What she was interested in is
what is the market price. In other words, what is everybody
getting for this, not because of our costs, but because of what
they are getting. That discussion is 100 percent about
maximizing the amount of money that is obtained based upon
market considerations and based on per specimen. The costs are
not going to change by how many specimens you get, and a per
specimen price is not based on any idea of what are the costs
related to the procurement.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. I know that my time has expired, Mr.
Chair, but if I might, the video to which I just referred to
and what this Committee has repeatedly referred to throughout
this hearing is a material part of this discussion. And at this
time, I would ask unanimous consent to enter into the record
the entire transcripts, all the transcripts, from these
abhorrent tapes that we have been discussing today.*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Note: The material referred to is not printed in this hearing
record but is on file with the Subcommittee. Also, see Rep. Mike Bishop
Submissions at:
http://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/
ByEvent.aspx?EventID=103920.
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection.
Mr. Cicilline. A point of parliamentary inquiry, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Goodlatte. I am sorry.
Mr. Cicilline. A point of parliamentary inquiry.
Mr. Goodlatte. Sure.
Mr. Cicilline. Are those transcripts complete and full and
unedited? Do they contain all of the statements made because I
think a review was done that demonstrated the transcripts were
inaccurate, and I think it is important if the Committee is
going to admit them and rely on them, that we should have some
affidavit ensuring that they are, in fact, complete, fair, and
accurate recordings of what was actually said in the complete,
unedited recordings.
Mr. Bishop. Mr. Chair, if I might respond.
Mr. Goodlatte. Absolutely.
Mr. Cicilline. Because we are just compounding injury upon
injury if we are going to admit to this Committee a set of
transcripts that are inaccurate, that distort exactly what
happened, and rely on them. We have a responsibility to be sure
that they are complete and accurate.
Mr. Goodlatte. Is the gentleman requesting that the
transcript of the public video be made a part of the record?
Mr. Bishop. Yes. These are the public videos that appear
that on the----
Ms. Lofgren. Reserving the right----
Mr. Goodlatte. So much like of a transcript of any other
program----
Mr. Cicilline. No, quite unlike----
Mr. Goodlatte [continuing]. That is made available through
a news organization or anything else, that is what the
gentleman is requesting.
Mr. Bishop. Exactly.
Ms. Lofgren. Reserving the right to object.
Mr. Bishop. And Members can assign credibility to whatever
part of it is----
Mr. Goodlatte. You are not characterizing it. You are just
putting into the----
Mr. Bishop. Exactly.
Mr. Goodlatte. A transcript of the public record.
Mr. Bishop. What has appeared to everybody.
Ms. Lofgren. Reserving the right to object.
Mr. Goodlatte. For what purpose does the gentlewoman----
Ms. Lofgren. I would like to comment, it has been the
policy of the Committee to not object to putting anything in
the record of whatever evidentiary value, so I do understand
that tradition, and it is not my intention in the end to
object. But I would like to note that if we are going to agree
with this, we must also include the forensic report by the
Fusion Group that analyzed the video showing that it has no
evidentiary value.
Mr. Goodlatte. If the gentlewoman wishes to offer that, I
would be happy to put that in the record if there is no
objection to that as well.
Ms. Lofgren. That would be my request, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goodlatte. All right. Without objection, both of those
documents will be made part of the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. And the Chair thanks the gentleman, and now
recognizes the gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Cicilline.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the
witnesses for being here today and for offering your differing
viewpoints on this very difficult issue. And I know the passion
that accompanies both sides as well as passion from my
colleagues.
I am still kind of struggling with what exactly this
hearing is about. Issues have been raised with respect to the
fetal tissue research. It is clear that there are established
scientific protocols that were followed. There is a
correspondence in the record from August 27th that confirms
that. There has been a lot of discussion about late term
abortion, which, of course, is prohibited under Federal law.
And then a lot of discussion about the central question of
whether women have a constitutional right to make decisions
regarding their own reproductive healthcare. That is also a
settled question of law.
You said, Mr. Bopp, that you in your written testimony
reviewed these recorded conversations released by the Center
for Medical Progress, and they reveal many legal issues with
Planned Parenthood's procedures and practices regarding fetal
tissue procurement. And you base that on your review of these
video recordings, and then you were asked about a series of
allegations that laws may have been broken in the generation of
these videos, Federal tax laws, criminal laws in California
that prohibit fraud and forgery, making false charitable
solicitations and the like. And Mr. Dahlia's lawyer recently
advised a Federal court that he intends to invoke his Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to a
lawsuit alleging he violated Federal and State laws.
You said further that you were advised by this Committee
not to discuss the circumstances that occurred in the
production, and editing, and alteration, and securing of these
videos. Is that correct?
Mr. Bopp. As you are aware, the purpose of this hearing,
that is not part of purposes of this hearing.
Mr. Cicilline. That is not my question, Mr. Bopp. Were you
advised by the Committee counsel not to discuss the allegations
of criminal behavior in the generation of these videos? That is
a ``yes'' or ``no.''
Mr. Bopp. I am not answering ``yes'' or ``no'' to that
question.
Mr. Cicilline. But were you advised? You said you were
advised not discuss it.
Mr. Bopp. You misstated what I said I was advised about, so
how can I say ``yes'' or ``no?"
Mr. Cicilline. Were you advised not to discuss how these
videos were produced, whether it was done in violation of law?
Mr. Bopp. I was advised that that is not the purpose of the
hearing, and I should not comment.
Mr. Cicilline. Okay. What this really is, Mr. Chairman and
Members of the Committee, is creating an opportunity to defund
Planned Parenthood, and to make it more difficult for women to
have access to full reproductive healthcare. We know the value
of Planned Parenthood each year provides essential care to 2.7
million patients, men and women; that 1 in 5 women in the
United States has visited Planned Parenthood once in her
lifetime; that a million and a half young people and adults
participate in educational programs on reproductive health;
that 6 million visits a month to the Planned Parenthood website
where healthcare information is readily available in English
and in Spanish.
700 clinics throughout the country that provide 900,000
cancer screenings to help women detect cervical and breast
cancer early. 400,000 pap tests, 500,000 breast exams, and
80,000 of those cancer screenings detected early so that
hundreds of thousands of children, siblings, and parents are
still able to be with their loved ones because Planned
Parenthood saved their lives.
I want to associate myself with the remarks of Congressman
Deutch and Congressman Gutierrez. I think as you said, Ms.
Smith, the cruel irony is that an effort to defund Planned
Parenthood, which is already prohibited from using any Federal
funds to provide abortion services, means the other 97 percent
of their services that I just outlined would be compromised.
And, in fact, the incidence of unwanted pregnancies and
abortion would increase.
So defunding Planned Parenthood is very likely to cause
exactly the thing that the opponents of Planned Parenthood
claim they do not want, and that is more abortion. Could you
speak more about that?
Ms. Smith. Yes, I think that is right, and I think one of
the things that this makes clear is that the campaign against
abortion goes beyond abortion, and that it is also a campaign
against contraceptives. We have seen that campaign heat up
recently. I just wrote a paper about this, not to promote my
own research, but called ``Contraceptive Comstockery,'' which
is about the recent campaign, which revives some of the tactics
of anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive advocates in the late
1800's and into the 1950's. So that continues today.
Mr. Cicilline. Yeah, it is very disappointing since many of
us had hoped that this issue has been settled, that women have
the right to full reproductive healthcare, that they have a
right to make decisions about their own bodies in consultations
with their own physicians and their own conscience, and that to
have our first hearing in the Judiciary Committee, another
effort to make it more difficult for women in America to access
high-quality healthcare is incredibly disappointing.
I thank you for your testimony, and I yield back.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Georgia, Mr. Collins, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask unanimous
consent to enter into the record my opening statement.
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection, it will be made a part of
the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Collins follows:]
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Doug Collins, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Georgia, and Member, Committee on the
Judiciary
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today's hearing on the abortion
practices at Planned Parenthood. I'm grateful for your commitment to
examining the horrific practices that have been uncovered through a
series of undercover videos and to investigating the allegations
against Planned Parenthood.
As the father of three children, I believe we have no greater
responsibility than protecting human life. I believe abortion is wrong
and I think we have a responsibility as human beings to be a voice for
those who do not yet have a voice--the innocent unborn. These unborn
children are human beings, gifts from God that are brimming with
potential. We need to look no further than two of the witnesses sitting
before us today. These women, Gianna Jessen and Melissa Ohden, are
survivors. They are also proof that there was and is a plan and purpose
for their life and that babies unborn and born deserve protection.
But we are here today to talk specifically about Planned Parenthood
and their abortion practices. For years Planned Parenthood has engaged
in morally questionable activities, but the videos released by the
Center for Medical Progress have raised serious questions about
immoral, inhumane, and quite possibly illegal practices at Planned
Parenthood.
The videos seem to indicate clear intent to alter abortions to
harvest fetal organs. This is despicable in and of itself, but it
becomes even more morally reprehensible when shown that Planned
Parenthood could even be profiting from the sale of babies' body parts.
Planned Parenthood officials in the videos seem to have no qualms
discussing the dissection and sale of fetal organs. They casually
discuss the commercial exploitation of aborted fetal tissue over lunch,
as if babies are a commodity for trade and profit rather than precious
lives to be protected.
Abortion proponents and Planned Parenthood apologists try to
distort the issue by painting the justifiable outrage and upset over
the videos as attacks on women's health. In fact, the Democratic
witness present today has claimed this hearing is an attack on Planned
Parenthood and the reproductive care it provides. This could not be
more false.
First of all, just looking at Georgia as an example, there are 5
Planned Parenthood facilities in my home state. Compare that to the 274
clinics in Georgia providing comprehensive health care services for
women. This issue is not about access to care.
This hearing is about ensuring the nation's largest abortion
provider--which receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal
funding--is not illegally harvesting fetal organs.
The Committee's investigation is not a jump to conclusions but
rather a fact-finding mission to gather the full truth surrounding the
horrific allegations in the Center for Medical Progress' videos.
I hope that this will be just the first among many hearings to
investigate these abortion practices and to shed light on Planned
Parenthood's actions. The American people have a right to know what is
happening, and we have a moral obligation to be a voice for the unborn.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
__________
Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I have said many
times as being a Member the last Congress and now this
Congress, I am sort of down here toward the end. And after
hearing everything, there are many times that you come to
points of really wondering, the points of why we are here. And
I am able to talk about a lot of different things.
Ms. Smith, I am not even sure, and I may get to you on
questions. But what I have heard a lot today from you is
context. I am not sure how any of these you could ever put into
proper context. I do not care how many ways you want to spin
it, what was on those videos and what was said. There is no way
you put some of these in context that they are not abhorrent to
anyone who would watch those videos.
But I think there is a bigger issue here that really for me
it carries out something, and Ms. Ohden and Ms. Jessen. You
made a statement in your opening statement about, you talked
about, and I have heard this, and I have counseled many who
have either had abortions or were thinking about abortion in my
life and what I have done as a chaplain, as a pastor, but also
as an attorney. And you made a statement, because I have heard
this before, if a baby is disabled, we need to terminate the
pregnancy as if someone on the outside can determine a quality
of life.
And that, frankly, from my position, and was mentioned by
even a friend of mine. He is a friend. We disagree greatly on
this issue. It is many times a mom and a dad who are facing a
tough decision just like we did 23 years ago when my daughter,
we found out she had spina bifida. My wife went back to work,
and in a time of much emotional turmoil, a colleague of hers
said in very interesting ways, I am being helpful. You have
choices. You do not have to go through this. We were a young
couple back then. She was just starting teaching, and I was
working.
Yes, there are life choices made, Ms. Smith. But as you go
along and as you look at this, my wife finally figured out what
she was trying to tell her. She said you can go kill your
child, and you will not have to worry about it anymore. When my
wife understood that, she said you are talking about my baby.
Not a fetus, a baby.
Today I think we miss this, and this is what gets lost in
this debate about quality of life and other issues of when they
are born and how they are not born. But the two of you have
lives that are so productive. You are not a failure. You are a
failure of a misguided person who would want to kill you before
you could say you are killing me, but you are not a failure.
Cerebral palsy, I love you how you said that, ``my blessing.''
I never thought that I would have a chance to think that the
first steps my daughter would ever take was rolling in a
wheelchair.
She texted me earlier today, and she was just asking how
your day was going. I said it is a pretty hard day. I did not
tell her what I was doing. She is at a place getting job skills
and life training to be independent. And she said, well, Dad,
whatever you are going through, I am praying for you.
My child has a life, and there are many in the abortion
industry that are willingly telling people that if you have a
child that has the most debilitating condition or even up to
spina bifida or other issues, you do not have to go through
with this. We forget in this argument today, and I am so over
context, I am so over clinics, and we like our clinic better
than the other clinic, Ms. Smith. There are other clinics that
are out there that can help women and help meet issues. You
know that. You may not like them. That is your choice.
But I am so over the fact that we miss a fundamental issue
here, and that is life. For me, I commend the hearing. I think
it is something because I just do not see a context it can be
actually explained away. We want to, and if I was you, Ms.
Smith, I would want to as well. But at the end of the day, let
us stand up and ask the hard questions, and remember that life,
and remember those, as you said, Ms. Jessen, even those who do
not really have a voice. If we do not let them have a voice,
then they are silent. And for many of us, we will never be
silent because life is precious, and for me, they deserve a
birthday.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair thanks the gentleman, and
recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Peters, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It has been a long day
for the witnesses in particular. I want to thank you all for
being here and spending the time.
I do observe that there is a sad and a cruel irony in those
who say they are against abortion and trying to defund an
organization that works so hard to prevent them. And one of the
core missions of Planned Parenthood is to prevent unwanted
pregnancies, and my colleagues apparently want to shut it down.
We are late in the day, and a lot of people have said a
number of things, but I would emphasize a couple. We were
called out as taxpayers here, and I am a taxpayer, too. And I
want you to know that I appreciate what Planned Parenthood has
done to prevent STDs, to give cancer screenings to low-income
women, and to provide contraceptive care. All those things save
us money as taxpayers, and I think that should be not lost on
us.
People have commented that the person who made the video is
not here, and in my experience in law, that would be an
important witness, but that has been covered.
And I would say, too, that I acknowledge and I agree that
the discussion of these issues on these videos was somewhat
disturbing, and at least insensitive. The issue for us, though,
in the Judiciary Committee is to look at what is legal, and
just on that point, I do not think anything today has shown
that there has been something illegal here.
And if you wanted to test that, you could ask the opponents
if they would agree that there was a schedule of the amounts
that they would agree was reimbursement as opposed to profit.
And they would never agree that $30 was the right number or $50
was the right number because that is really not what is at
issue here. The legality of this is not at issue. This is an
issue about abortion, choice, contraception, and everything but
legality.
I would also observe that Planned Parenthood has not been
accused of committing fraud, violating licensing laws,
violating the Medicaid statutes, so there is a legal issue with
respect to carving them out for Medicaid. And that has been
litigated in a number of States because any provider may
provide these kinds of care unless they are found to have
violated these laws. Planned Parenthood has not been, and
attempts to cut them off in Tennessee, Indiana, Arizona, and
North Carolina have all been fruitless for those reasons.
So I think it is illuminating in many ways to have this
hearing. I think it has not really been about legality. It has
been about a much broader issue, an issue I think we all
thought would have been settled 40 years ago, that these are
decisions that are very, very difficult for families.
And my colleague just shared his, and, gosh, what a thing
to have go through. But they are not decisions ultimately that
should be made by our government. They are decisions that
should be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor and
in consultation with her family. And it is not for the
Judiciary Committee or the United States government or any
government to say how families should handle that very tough
issue.
So with respect to the issue of legality, I hope we have
run our course. We have certainly had enough time to discuss
it. I do not think we found legality would justify any further
discussion on this, and I hope we can move forward. And I yield
back.
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Gohmert, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gohmert. Thank you. And, Mr. Chairman, you did not
deserve to be called ignorant by Mr. Nadler. I think you made a
very informed decision when you called this hearing, and I
appreciate your doing so. And falling last or near the end as I
apparently have, I get a chance to address some of the things
that have been raised.
First of all, my friend from New York, Mr. Nadler, said
these people who did the videos were liars because if they were
otherwise, the videos were legitimate, they would have gone to
the prosecutor to get these matters prosecuted. But I can
answer that because I have advised people that came in as
whistleblowers about things that this Administration cared
about as they do Planned Parenthood, where they defend them at
all cost, as they have even after the videos were made public.
Unfortunately, if you go to a prosecutor as a whistleblower
on an organization or a group that this Administration
protects, they prosecute you. I have seen that over and over,
and that is why at times I have advised people you get a
lawyer, and we go a different route. But if you go to the
Justice Department, you will find it is a Department of
injustice because we have seen it over and over with this
Administration.
And as far as cutting and being selective, they did take
excerpts and put them online, but also put the long video just
so that people would not be able to come in here and honestly
say what has been dishonestly said, that they were only trying
to show a portion. They cut straight to what they felt was
important, but they put the whole thing up there.
And then as far as the continued statement that the first
hearing this Chairman called after the August recess was to
launch an attack on women's health, I see this as a hearing to
protect the health of females. I see this Fox News show,
Outnumbered. That has been my life for many years now. I have a
wife for 37 years, thanks to her, and I have three wonderful
daughters. And our first was born 8 to 10 weeks prematurely.
She got down to three pounds before she started gaining weight
again. I know what it is to hold a 3-pound child in my hand.
And I did not know whether to stay with my wife in Tyler or
to follow the ambulance. My wife said, go do anything you can
for our child. I followed the ambulance. The doctor said she
cannot see you. Her eyes are not good enough, but she hears
you, she knows your voice. You talk to her. You caress her. She
grabbed the end of my finger. She held it. They said I could
stay for 2 hours at a time. After 8 hours after they had noted,
she is pulling strength and life from you. I could not leave. I
stayed for hour after hour.
But the thought that somebody could take that little 3-
pound child and rip her leg off, or rip her arm off, and not
consider that inhumane, or the thought that if we take this
little child's heart, or liver, or organs and use it for a
productive purpose for somebody else's life, then it is okay.
And what really came home was a couple of nights ago, I am in
the Old Testament right now, and was reading about a woman that
came complaining to the prophet. And she was in a city that was
under siege, and she complained that another woman had talked
her into a deal where the first time they would boil her little
baby and eat the child, and then after that they would boil the
second woman's child and eat that child.
Well, let us face it, come on. This hearing we have heard
over and over if it is to save lives it is okay. I could not
believe how reprehensible that was, how immoral, and that seems
to be happening. But I can tell you I want my girls to have
mammograms, and whether they have money or not, I want them to
have mammograms. So does it not make more sense to give that
money for those of us who deeply care about women's health,
give it to facilities that actually do the mammograms so
Planned Parenthood does not take their cut?
And when anyone says, oh, but it does not go to fund
abortion, listen, I have been a judge, I have been a
prosecutor, I have been a chief justice. And if somebody says,
well, look, we paid all the rent and all the utilities for this
facility, knowing that a crime was being committed in there,
you have aided and abetted, and you are as guilty as the
principle for what happens in that facility.
And I see my time is up, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
your indulgence.
Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Goodlatte. The Chair thanks the gentleman. For what
purpose does the gentlewoman from California seek recognition?
Ms. Lofgren. I would like to ask unanimous consent to put
in the record a letter from the California Primary Care
Association indicating they do not have the capacity to pick up
the Planned Parenthood casework.
Mr. Goodlatte. Without objection, it will be made a part of
the record.
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__________
Mr. Goodlatte. This concludes today's first hearing as part
of this investigation. I want to thank all of our distinguished
witnesses for attending. We will soon announce the date of the
next hearing.
And without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative
days to submit written questions for the witnesses or
additional materials for the record.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:16 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
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