The coordinated attempt to block women’s access to health care
Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)—November 13, 2015. Since July 2015, anti-abortion activists have leveled a new series of false claims against Planned Parenthood. Using heavily edited videos, extremists made now-widely-discredited-and-debunked accusations about our practices to facilitate fetal tissue donation at a small number of Planned Parenthood affiliates.
These attacks may have hit a new low, but they aren’t new tactics — in fact the activists behind this smear campaign have made these same false claims before, and each time they have been discredited and debunked. Their agenda is becoming increasingly clear — they are pushing for legislation to prevent patients who rely on federal funds from accessing care at Planned Parenthood or that would ban safe, legal abortion. So far, we’ve defended against this harmful legislation, but opponents of women’s health continue to introduce new attacks every chance they get.
There are now five separate congressional committees investigating Planned Parenthood and abortion in the U.S., including a newly created select committee created for that sole purpose. Congress has continued to investigate Planned Parenthood, despite public statements from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz that he has uncovered no wrongdoing after examining more than thousands pages of material provided by Planned Parenthood to his committee, which is conducting one of the investigations.
To date, Planned Parenthood has produced over 25,000 pages of documents to the five congressional committees. Several states have launched investigations into Planned Parenthood, as well, and every state that has concluded an investigation has found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood.
Throughout these political attacks, Planned Parenthood has made three central facts exceptionally clear
- Fetal tissue donation for medical research has led to lifesaving scientific breakthroughs that have saved millions of people’s lives, and this research has long had bipartisan support.
- Planned Parenthood affiliates in just two states, representing one percent of the organization’s health centers, are involved in fetal tissue research. They are involved in this work because it can improve public health and because their patients have requested it.
- Planned Parenthood has had clear guidance in place for more than a decade to ensure that this work, like every other service Planned Parenthood provides, follows high ethical and medical standards and complies with all laws. Planned Parenthood’s guidance in this area goes above and beyond the legal requirements.
Tissue Research
Fetal tissue research has broad support in the research community. If not for the polio vaccine, which was developed from human fetal kidney cells in the 1950s, UNICEF estimates that polio would kill 640,000 people every year. The discovery was so transformative that the 1954 Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to American immunologists who contributed to its development. In 1993, Congress passed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act in 1993, which permits all tissue to be used for fetal tissue research, with overwhelming support from the House (290 – 130) and Senate (94-3).
Today academic institutions and teaching hospitals across the country receive federal or private grants to support groundbreaking research using human fetal tissue on a wide range of conditions including diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injuries, hemophilia, leukemia, sickle cell anemia, cortical blindness, fetal aneuploidy, ALS, and others.
- Read 1988 Commission Report on fetal tissue donation
- Read a letter from Janet Heinrich, director of health care – public health issues, at the Government Accountability Office to the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education on the use of fetal tissue in research (10/4/00)
- Read Frequently Asked Questions on Fetal Tissue Research from the Congressional Research Service (7/31/15)
- Read the letter from Jim Esquea, assistant secretary for legislation at the Department of Health and Human Services, to Senators Joni Ernst and Roy Blunt explaining the current legislation and federal funding for fetal tissue research (8/14/15)
- Read an open letter signed by 41 leading scientists who conduct research using fetal tissue offering support for the patients, physicians, and researchers that contribute to this vital work (10/14/15)
- Read an open letter signed by over 50 of the nation’s leading research institutions expressing grave concerns over attempts to restrict fetal tissue research (11/3/15)
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood has continued to focus on providing high-quality, compassionate health care, thereby retaining its position as one of the nation’s top charities.
- Read from experts about the essential role Planned Parenthood plays in providing care across America
- Read more about the vast majority of Americans who support Planned Parenthood
- Read more about Planned Parenthood’s services in its annual report, and find its audited financial statement and IRS 990 forms
- Read more about the services Planned Parenthood provides and the communities we serve
Additional key documents on this issue and ongoing investigations
- Letter from Roger Evans, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Counsel, to Congress regarding the second heavily edited and misleading video released by anti-abortion opponents (7/21/15) (5/2015)
- Letter from Cecile Richards to congressional leadership detailing the forensic report on the deceptively edited videos attacking planned parenthood (8/27/15)
- Democrats request committees suspend their “one-sided” investigations into Planned Parenthood (9/3/15)
- Cecile Richards’ Written Testimony before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee (9/29/15)
Source: www.plannedparenthood.org