[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 121 (Wednesday, July 29, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         VIDEOS ABOUT PLANNED PARENTHOOD ARE GROSSLY MISLEADING

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                            HON. ZOE LOFGREN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 29, 2015

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Speaker, I wish to share with my colleagues and the 
American public this insightful editorial from the San Jose Mercury 
News, ``Videos about Planned Parenthood are grossly misleading.'' This 
editorial clearly lays out how the Republican Party's embrace of this 
video ``expose'' is really just a continuation of their War on Women, 
in particular low-income women.

       Anyone with half a brain can see through the heavily edited 
     ``gotcha'' videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood 
     officials illegally bargaining to sell tissue from aborted 
     fetuses. The videos are grossly misleading and politically 
     irresponsible.
       The research that fetal tissue makes possible at respected 
     universities across the country has produced vaccines that 
     have saved millions of lives and now targets Alzheimer's, 
     Parkinson's and other fatal, heartbreaking diseases. Planned 
     Parenthood does not profit from it. But Republicans in 
     Congress and in the presidential free-for-all are having a 
     field day with ``facts'' from Fox News.
       California Attorney General Kamala Harris fortunately is 
     investigating the videos' producers, the so-called Center for 
     Medical Progress, which may have broken federal and 
     California law in the scheme to bring down Planned 
     Parenthood. As an example, one of the interviews of a 
     California doctor may have been recorded without her consent.
       U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose is pushing U.S. Attorney 
     General Loretta Lynch to investigate as well. The 
     organization has tax-exempt status as a biomedical charity 
     but appears to be a fake limited liability corporation.
       It has never been a secret that Planned Parenthood and many 
     other clinics collect tissue for research. The unedited 
     videos show repeated attempts by Planned Parenthood doctors 
     to explain that they're only trying to recoup costs for their 
     work. Planned Parenthood likely loses money on the whole 
     thing, but the numbers are a tiny part of its budget.
       Republicans in the House and the Senate shamelessly are 
     using this supposed expose to argue that Congress should 
     defund Planned Parenthood.
       And so the War on Women continues.
       Planned Parenthood and its 800 clinics provide health care, 
     particularly family planning, for nearly 3 million low income 
     women a year. It receives more than $500 million in 
     government funding, but not a penny of that pays for 
     abortions--which make up just 3 percent of the organization's 
     work. Cutting Planned Parenthood funding means cutting health 
     care to poor women, period.
       Scientists using cultures from fetal kidney cells won the 
     Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1954 for developing the polio 
     vaccine. Fetal tissue research helped produce vaccines for 
     chicken pox and rubella. These advances alone have saved 
     countless millions of lives, particularly children's.
       The National Institutes of Health spent more than $70 
     million on fetal research in 2014, tackling diseases such as 
     Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Stem cell research is gradually 
     replacing fetal tissue research, but we can't afford to stop 
     work on these diseases while alternative methods ramp up.
       More tapes are expected this week, including possibly 
     showing the process of tissue removal. It's ugly to watch, 
     but so are most significant surgical procedures.
       The core political issue here is abortion. The Center for 
     Medical Progress and many Republican officials and candidates 
     want to eliminate the right of American women to choose to 
     end a pregnancy.
       In fact Planned Parenthood has done more to prevent 
     abortion than any other organization in this country by 
     giving poor women access to birth control and to prenatal 
     care to have healthy babies. It continues to provide safe 
     abortions because refusing will not stop abortion, it will 
     just drive women to unsafe alternatives. (Speaking of ugly 
     procedures.)
       Women's ability to control their own reproductive future is 
     the best way to prevent abortion. A Congress really concerned 
     about women and unborn children would give more, not less, to 
     Planned Parenthood.

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