Members of Congress have been quick to jump on board with calls to investigate Planned Parenthood after the release of several videos purporting to show the group’s officials talking about selling fetal tissue.
Of less concern, it seems, are the means employed by the Center for Medical Progress to produce the videos, including grossly misrepresenting itself and apparently coordinating the videos’ release with abortion foes in Congress.
Given the outcry over the videos, investigations into whether Planned Parenthood followed federal law regarding fetal tissue donations are a certainty. In order for an investigation to be fair, however, Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King are right that it must be done by the Department of Justice in order to remove political taint from the review.
But any such investigation must also turn to the Center for Medical Progress and its affiliates to see if they broke federal or state laws. Unfortunately, the calls for that examination haven’t been nearly as loud as the calls to look into Planned Parenthood. So far, four House Democrats have officially called for such a review.
“I believe the Center for Medical Progress may have broken the law in developing and executing this unbelievably elaborate and troubling scheme, and all Americans should have concerns about that,” Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking for a review of the group.
Although Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree did not sign the letter, she is supportive of efforts to have the Department of Justice investigate the source of the videos, which she called “deceitful, coercive, and not to be trusted.”
King is also supportive. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican, wants an accounting of Planned Parenthood’s funding from the Department of Health and Human Services because “of serious allegations … including performing partial birth abortions, in order to harvest and sell body parts for profit.”
The first potential problem is the Center for Medical Progress’ formation. To obtain tax-exempt status, it registered with the IRS as a biomedicine charity.
A cached copy of the center’s Web page from Feb. 4 says: “The Center for Medical Progress is a nonprofit organization dedicated to informing and educating both the lay public and the scientific community about the latest advances in regenerative medicine, cell-based therapies and related disciplines.”
The group’s current website site no longer has this language or any other about biomedical research. Under the heading “ Human Capital Project,” it details its two and a half years worth of work to investigate Planned Parenthood.
The group never informed the public or scientific community about “the latest advances in regenerative medicine, cell-based therapies.” Instead, by its own admission, it spent years tracking Planned Parenthood, primarily using “undercover footage.”
Collins said groups like Planned Parenthood should know that conversations are frequently recorded and shared widely these days. It happens to politicians all the time. However, she said, if the Center for Medical Progress “misrepresented themselves in a way that caused the IRS to wrongly give them nonprofit designation,” that should be investigated as well.
The real problem, Collins said, is Planned Parenthood’s heavy involvement in politics, including its endorsements of and donations to mostly Democratic candidates through its political action committee. The group endorsed Collins in 2002, but not in 2008. It didn’t endorse either Collins or her Democratic challenger, Shenna Bellows, in last fall’s Senate race, though Planned Parenthood publicly emphasized Collins’ past support for keeping its federal funding intact.
Planned Parenthood’s “excessive political nature” detracts from the important medical services it provides to women across the country, Collins said.
She also said the group should stop harvesting fetal tissue because it makes the organization a target and jeopardizes its core mission.
In a column this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Alta Charo, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and one of the country’s top bioethicists, wrote that researchers have “a duty to use this precious resource in the hope of finding new preventive and therapeutic interventions for devastating diseases. Virtually every person in this country has benefited from research using fetal tissue.”
Fetal tissue research has helped advance vaccine development and Parkinson’s disease treatment. Collins said it would be better to use stem cells and unused embryos because these don’t raise the same ethical issues.
Blaming Planned Parenthood for being the target of a two-and-a-half-year sting operation apparently coordinated with members of Congress intent on punishing the group is akin to blaming a stalking victim for being stalked.
Abortion remains a divisive issue, so Planned Parenthood will continue to be a target of those seeking to outlaw abortion. There will be other extensive attempts to smear and defund the group, as well as to stop fetal tissue research. To guard against this, the public and lawmakers must be skeptical of what we see and hear in misleading videos meant to play to emotions and fear. We must be especially wary of this propaganda from groups that believe the end justifies the means.