In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released several videos that had been secretly recorded.  These purported to show that Planned Parenthood (PP) was engaging in the illegal sale of fetal tissue. 

The videos attracted massive media coverage.  Congressional Republicans immediately started pushing bills to strip PP of Federal family planning funding. 

Officials in Indiana, South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Georgia and Massachusetts investigated the charges and found no evidence that Planned Parenthood had broken any state laws concerning the collection of fetal tissues.

On October 8, 2015, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), stated that the GOP investigation found no evidence of any wrongdoing.

In fact, all of the videos were found to be altered, according to an analysis by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research company. Members of CMP have since been indicted by a Texas grand jury on felony charges for tampering with governmental records.

None of this, however, prevented Republican candidates for President from claiming that the videos were, in fact, legitimate. 

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, falsely claimed in the second GOP Presidential debate that the videos showed “a fully formed fetus on the table…while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

Although Fiorina claimed to have seen that footage, she never produced any copy of it.  Nor has anyone else found evidence to sustain her claim.

 Carly Fiorina

Nor was Fiorina the only Republican candidate making this false claim.  Others included Texas U.S. Senator Eduardo “Ted” Cruz, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio.

On November 27, 2015, Robert L. Dear, armed with a rifle, attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  He killed one police officer and two civilians, and wounded five more officers and four civilians. 

After a five-hour standoff, SWAT teams crashed an armored vehicle into the lobby and rescued several people trapped inside. At that point, Dear surrendered. 

After his arrest, he gave a rambling interview to police. At one point, he said, “No more baby parts”–a direct reference to the false and inflammatory charges made by GOP members.

The latest case of Republican irresponsibility on the abortion issue came in March.

That was when the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives subpoenaed a list of names of doctors and researchers involved in fetal tissue research.  

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who chairs the panel, claimed that her investigation had uncovered evidence that StemExpress, a bio-medical company, and three abortion clinics, violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

In early June, Blackburn sent two public letters to the Obama administration.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn

These contained the names and contact information of researchers at StemExpress, university and hospital researchers, and Planned Parenthood staffers.

The unredacted letters were also posted on the select panel’s website. In an interview with Rewire, a representative for Blackburn said that the “staff just made a mistake.”

At the panel’s first hearing on March 2,  Rep. Jerrod Nadler (D-NY) had warned Blackburn: 

“The committee has no rules in place to protect the names of those subpoenaed–raising the possibility of Congress effectively painting targets on the backs of scientists and researchers for no particular reason other than the Republicans’ desire for a culture war.”

In another letter sent to Blackburn, House Democrats charged that Republicans on the panel may be feeding sensitive information to anti-abortion groups who wish to harm members of the reproductive rights community.

They noted that the panel had publicly released the name of a doctor who had previously been threatened by anti-abortion groups, along with the specific information about when he would appear before the panel.  

“Assurances that you take seriously individual privacy and security concerns are insufficient,” the letter read.

“You reneged on promises to protect the individual privacy and security of a deposition witness. Just last week, Panel Republicans leaked letters to FOX News and posted documents on your website that contained names, contact information, and other personally identifiable information of doctors and researchers.”  

Initially, some schools and organizations blacked out the names of researchers in documents provided to the committee to protect their researchers’ safety. But recent subpoenas issued by the committee didn’t allow for that security measure.

Scientists have warned that targeting fetal tissue research–and the researchers who work in that field–poses national security risks.

Fetal tissue research is invaluable for developing cures to diseases like Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. It could lead to a vaccine for the Zika virus, which poses a serious risk to pregnant women.  

Yet it is “desire for a culture war” that takes top priority for Republicans.  

And Republicans know exactly what constituency they are arousing: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who can be easily manipulated by inflammatory rhetoric. 

Those men and women who stockpile weapons–and believe that God has empowered them to use violence to enforce their religious beliefs on others.  

Essentially, Republicans are calling upon this constituency to achieve with bullets what the party hasn’t been able to achieve in court or at the ballot box.