WASHINGTON — The conflict over abortion flared anew Wednesday as two Republican-led House committees said they will investigate whether Planned Parenthood is selling organs from aborted fetuses.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized the group and said President Barack Obama should condemn and end the practice. Other GOP lawmakers and 2016 presidential hopefuls joined in, including some who said Congress should end federal aid to the organization.
The GOP offensive came a day after an anti-abortion group circulated a video it made secretly showing a Planned Parenthood official discussing the disposal of body parts from aborted fetuses.
“When an organization monetizes an unborn child — and with the cavalier attitude portrayed in this horrific video — we must all act,” Boehner said. He said Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell should “denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices.”
Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other reproductive health services, says it legally helps women who want to make not-for-profit donations of their fetus’ organs for scientific research. It says it makes no money by donating the organs to science and says the video was heavily edited.
“These outrageous claims are flat-out untrue, but that doesn’t matter to politicians with a longstanding political agenda to ban abortion and defund Planned Parenthood,” Planned Parenthood spokesman Eric Ferrero said Wednesday. He said women donating fetal tissue for research “should be honored, not attacked and demeaned.”
