Read How House Planned Parenthood Investigators Are Putting Medical Students And Patients In Danger

Marsha Blackburn, chairwoman of the Planned Parenthood witch hunt panel (image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons-Share Alike license)
Marsha Blackburn, chairwoman of the Planned Parenthood witch hunt panel (image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons-Share Alike license)

We already knew that when the Republican House leadership it formed a select panel to investigate allegations that Planned Parenthood was illegally selling fetal tissue, it was going on yet another taxpayer-funded witch hunt. After all, the videos that sparked the investigation were so heavily manipulated that they can’t be relied upon as evidence, and investigations by three separate House committees found no evidence that any laws were broken. Well, any doubt that this investigation is a witch hunt evaporated on Thursday, when it emerged that the panel is demanding information about medical students who learn about abortion–requests that could have the effect of putting patients’ information at risk.

Earlier this week, the panel’s ranking Democrat, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, got word that the panel’s Republican members had asked several health care providers to submit the names of medical students, residents, and others who have either learned about or taken part in abortions. Schakowsky hit the ceiling. Just before the close of business on Thursday, Schakowsky and the panel’s other Democrats–Jerry Nadler of New York, Diana DeGette of Colorado, Jackie Speier of California, Suzan DelBene of Washington, and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey–fired off a “what the hell is going on here?” letter to the committee’s chairwoman, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

The panel made a request for documents on December 17 and 18–just before Congress went home for the holidays. Another request came just as Congress returned on January 6. The Democrats on the panel were not consulted in either case. When the Democrats learned about what the Republicans had done, they felt outraged at these “overbroad document requests,” saying that it raised “troubling questions” about the direction Blackburn wants to take the investigation, and appeared to be “a completely unjustified attack on women’s healthcare.”

The Democrats also wrote that they had been contacted by a number of providers and individuals who were horrified at the nature of these requests. In addition to concerns about the safety of their employees, the document requests are worded in a way that the healthcare providers will almost certainly have to turn over the personal medical information of any patient who is a federal or state employee. Trying to out the identities of abortion providers, and even patients, has long been standard operating procedure for a number of anti-abortion groups.

Indeed, Mark Crutcher, one of the activists who masterminded the video project, has a history of engaging in ugly and nakedly aggressive intimidation tactics against medical students who take part in abortions. In 1993, Crutcher got his hands on a database of medical students and sent them a “joke book” about abortionists. Among the gems in this book:

Q.: What would you do if you found yourself in a room with Hitler, Mussolini and an abortionist and you had a gun with only two bullets?

A: Shoot the abortionist twice.

Crutcher openly admitted that he wanted medical students to know “there’s a hell of a price to pay” for anyone who wants to perform abortions.

More recently, when a federal judge prevented the release of footage obtained by the Center for Medical Progress, he made a limited exception to allow Congress to view them, with the presumption that Congress would be responsible in handling that footage. But a congressional staffer leaked some of the footage to right-wing pseudojournalist Charles C. Johnson. That staffer claimed that he felt “morally compelled” to leak them.

This is the very sort of behavior that made me realize I could no longer identify even as a non-traditional pro-lifer. In recent years, it became increasingly apparent that even “mainstream” pro-life groups have no regard for the privacy or safety of abortion providers. And now a congressional panel is taking pages from that playbook. Disgraceful.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.