Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) led Republicans this week in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood for a practice he supported and voted for in Congress.

The campaign came after doctored videos were released purporting to prove that Planned Parenthood offered fetal tissue for sale. The videos, made by an anti-abortion group, were proven to have been edited to deceptively show Planned Parenthood offered the tissue for sale. California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, is now investigating those who produced the videos.

Planned Parenthood does legally offer fetal tissue for research, but recovers only its costs in providing it. In 1993, Congress approved the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act, which authorized the donating of fetal tissue for research, including samples from legal abortion procedures. McConnell, along with other Republicans, voted for that bill and others that allowed fetal tissue research.

A Republican proposal to cut all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, supported by McConnell and the rest of the GOP, failed to pass the Senate on Monday.

McConnell now claims Planned Parenthood is “selling aborted baby parts.” McConnell has said the videos of the organization’s fetal tissue donations “absolutely shock the conscience.” There’s been no word on how McConnell’s conscience deals with his hypocrisy.  

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

Republicans Repeatedly Voted To Use Aborted Fetuses for Scientific Research (by Tara Culp-Ressler, ThinkProgress)

McConnell Voted In 1993 to Legalize Fetal Tissue Donations after Abortion (by Laura Bassett, Huffington Post)

Republican Effort to Strip Planned Parenthood Funding Stalls in Senate (by Mike DeBonis, Washington Post)

Kamala Harris to Investigate Group’s Video Sting of Planned Parenthood (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)

Bush Administration Spied on Planned Parenthood (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)