Planned Parenthood Federation president Cecile Richards testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Capitol Hill in Washington on September 29, 2015.

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The series of "undercover" videos produced by the anti-choice extremists at the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) amounted to nothing more than manufactured slander against Planned Parenthood, but they provided all the fodder Republicans needed to work up their extremist base ahead of next year's election. While the attacks on Planned Parenthood dominated much of the year, it didn't get as much traction as Republicans had hoped for with the electorate, especially after it sparked a mass shooting at the clinic in Colorado Springs. That forced them to back off a bit, and they abandoned their defunding effort in the end-of-the-year spending bill.

But that doesn't mean the organization didn't sustain significant damage in the process, or that Republicans in Congress and in the presidential campaign are going to stop their attacks. Mother Jones has a round up of Planned Parenthood's very bad year, punctuated by Colorado Springs in November.

The doctored videos monopolized the abortion debate for the rest of 2015. They inspired efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in six states, investigations of the women's health provider in seven states (all have so far found no evidence of fetal tissue sales), and the creation of a special investigative committee in Congress. In October, Planned Parenthood announced it would stop taking any reimbursements for fetal tissue donations and would pay for their storage and transport instead. Fetal tissue donation is legal in the United States, and it's critical for medical research. The next month, a shooting attack at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood killed three people and injured nine. The alleged gunman, Robert Lewis Dear, said "no more baby parts" during his arrest. When he appeared in court, he shouted, "I am a warrior for the babies," but authorities still hesitate to confirm the widespread suspicion that Dear's actions were connected to the controversial videos. "One of the lessons of this awful tragedy is that words matter, and hateful rhetoric fuels violence," Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement after the shooting. "It's not enough to denounce the tragedy without also denouncing the poisonous rhetoric that fueled it."

The primary perpetrator of that poisonous rhetoric is presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, has refused to back down and admit that her claims about what she saw on the video were total lies, or that her over-the-top language spurred on the Colorado Springs killer. Don't expect her, or her Republican primary counterparts, to give up the issue now.

Likewise, the Republican congressional leadership isn't going to give up their "investigation," despite the fact that there's nothing to investigate and even after the national embarrassment they made of themselves in their ham-handed efforts to smear the organization. And if their continuing to whip up hatred against Planned Parenthood creates even more violence, more clinic killings? That's not going to stop them. Because their "culture of life" only applies to forced birth.