The House Oversight Committee that is investigating Planned Parenthood seems to have no problem calling the head of the women’s healthcare provider before their witch hunt–I mean committee–yet when the Democrats on the committee recently requested David Daleiden of the anti-abortion organization, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) also appear, they were shot down by the GOP chairman, Jason Chaffetz.
Chaffetz has said that he will not allow Daleiden to testify before the committee until he has a chance to review the complete, unedited videos that CMP filmed covertly. Which begs the question: Why did he have Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood appear before he had reviewed those videos? We’re still waiting for a reply to that query.
The Democrats on the committee released a list of 21 questions for Daleiden, whose heavily edited videos have led to calls for Congress to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding which is used for women’s health services such as mammograms and Pap smears.
Congressman Elijah Cummings remarked:
“Mr. Daleiden and his group engaged in a host of potentially illegal activities, including filing false documents with government agencies, falsely impersonating a legitimate business concern, soliciting charitable contributions under false pretenses, and secretly recording Planned Parenthood officials without their consent.”
The videos have also become a major focus of 2016 Republican Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, who said in a debate last month that she had seen a video from Planned Parenthood showing:
“A fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
When asked to produce the video, the Fiorina camp had a political action committee (PAC) supporting her assemble a video showing footage that was not taken at any Planned Parenthood facility. Since then, Fiorina has continued to rise in the polls, proving that the GOP electorate is not seeking truth from its candidates, just gory imagery which reinforces their own misinformed beliefs.
Representative Chaffetz, meanwhile, is trying to turn his 15 minutes of fame into being elected Speaker of the House.
This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.