Democrats In Congress Call For Shutting Down Planned Parenthood Panel

On Tuesday, the six Democrats on the House Select Investigative Panel on Planned Parenthood issued a letter calling for it to be disbanded.

Rep. Suzan K. DelBene of Washington told Elite Daily:

It’s unclear why we needed the committee in the first place.

The committee was created in October by then-Speaker John Boehner to investigate the heavily-edited videos released this summer about Planned Parenthood and fetal tissue research. He said:

At my request, three House committees have been investigating the abortion business, but we still don’t have the full truth.

Indeed, this isn't the only committee the House created to supposedly investigate Planned Parenthood.

It's not the same as the one that hosted Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards in a five-hour hearing in September, which was riddled with inaccuracies and a lack of understanding of women's healthcare from the participating Republicans.

The Democrats wrote the letter in light of last week's attack at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York told Elite Daily that the language used by Republicans about abortion and Planned Parenthood, including "sale of baby parts" and "killing babies," incites violence:

The anti-choice extremists are going to deny that their anti-abortion rhetoric has anything to do with this, when it obviously does.

Robert Dear, the Colorado Springs shooter, used the phrase "no more baby parts" after he was taken into custody, according to the Washington Post.

DelBene echoed Nadler's point, saying:

Words do matter. We have to be aware that words matter.

Ultimately, the Democrats are unclear on what need this new committee serves. Nadler said:

I don’t see any purpose other than political grandstanding at the cost of perhaps increasing the body count.

Nadler said the committees were part of a broader fight from Republicans to reduce abortion access, as they don't have the ability to actually make abortion illegal.

Fetal tissue research has been legal since 1993, when a law was passed with support from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is now the Senate majority leader, and Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, who is the chairman of one of the Planned Parenthood investigation committees, the New York Times noted.

DelBene argued that Congress should be focusing on making sure that women have safe, affordable access to healthcare, and that the hearings on Planned Parenthood are doing the opposite:

This has not been focusing on any type of investigation. It’s really been more of an ideological attack on a woman's right to make her own reproductive healthcare choices.