House judiciary committee will hear from ‘experts on the issues surrounding Planned Parenthood’ but representatives from the organization are not invited

Conservative lawmakers who demanded Planned Parenthood executives answer for “alleged atrocities” are holding the first in a series of congressional hearings on Wednesday on the video controversy that has rallied anti-abortion Republicans, and could become the flashpoint in a partisan shutdown battle.

Noticeably absent from the hearing, however, is Planned Parenthood itself.

The House judiciary committee will hear from “experts on the issues surrounding the alleged acts of Planned Parenthood”, including two women described as “abortion survivors”, but declined to invite representatives from the women’s healthcare organization.

The anti-abortion activist group behind the videos, the Center for Medical Progress, claims they show Planned Parenthood illegally profited from its fetal tissue donations. Planned Parenthood has said the videos were heavily altered, and represent the latest attack in a decades-long campaign by culture conservatives to undermine the organization.

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“For 15 years anti-abortion activists have been trying to manufacture public outrage, and for 15 years their attacks have fallen apart upon closer inspection,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice-president for Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The Center for Medical Progress may have a different name, but this is the same cast of characters and follows the same script. There’s a reason those who oppose women’s access to health care have had to resort to lying and inventing false claims to make their case: the vast majority of the American public wants to ensure women have access to safe, legal abortion.”

Requests for comment from the committee and its ranking members about why Planned Parenthood was not invited were not returned.

The series of nine sting videos – surreptitiously recorded, heavily edited and released weekly this summer – has triggered several state-level investigations into the health organization as well as into the group behind them. It has also revived Republican efforts to defund the organization, especially among presidential contenders eager to galvanize religious conservatives.

“In light of recent and horrific revelations that Planned Parenthood is trafficking in fetal tissue and body parts from abortions,” wrote GOP presidential candidate and Texas senator Ted Cruz in a draft letter addressed to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, “we urge you not to schedule or facilitate the consideration of any legislation that authorizes or appropriates federal dollars for Planned Parenthood.”

The senator’s letter, circulated to Senate Republicans for signatures last week, stoked fears that some Republicans would force a government shutdown in an effort to defund the organization. McConnell said the party doesn’t have the votes to defund Planned Parenthood, especially as the White House has promised to meet any such legislative efforts with a veto.

“We just don’t have the votes to get the outcome that we’d like,” McConnell said in an interview with WYMT-TV last week. “ ... The president’s made it very clear he’s not going to sign any bill that includes defunding of Planned Parenthood so that’s another issue that awaits a new president hopefully with a different point of view.”

Republican leadership is wary of tying the issue to the upcoming spending bill, which must be passed by the end of the month to avert a shutdown. If the spending bill fight forces a shutdown, Republicans worry their party may get blamed for the shutdown, and that Democrats would use the moment to shift the focus from Planned Parenthood’s conduct to GOP extremism.

“It’s bad enough that Republicans are once again attacking Planned Parenthood and women’s health, but it’s even more disappointing that some Republicans still haven’t learned their lesson and are threatening to shut the government down if they don’t get their way,” Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, said in a statement to the Guardian.

“Women don’t want the Tea Party telling them what doctors they can and can’t go to, and families across the country don’t want another completely unnecessary crisis. Democrats are going to be fighting to make sure women and families come before Republican political pandering and not the other way around.”

The House judiciary is just one of four congressional committees that have launched investigations into the organization since the release of the secretly recorded videos.

“For the past two months, the House Judiciary Committee has been investigating the alleged acts of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates,” said House Judiciary committee chairman Bob Goodlatte and subcommittee chairmen Trent Franks in a joint statement ahead of the hearing. “Now the American people will have a chance to understand just how horrific these practices are to the unborn.”

The “panel of experts” asked to speak at the hearing titled “Planned Parenthood Exposed: Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices at the Nation’s Largest Abortion Provider”, includes the two women who will recount the story of how their mothers attempts to abort them failed.

“I have long believed that if my birthmother’s abortion would have taken place at a Planned Parenthood, I would not be here today,” Melissa Ohden will tell lawmakers on Wednesday. “Completing over 300,000 abortions a year provides them with the experience to make sure that ‘failures’ like me don’t happen.”

Other panelists include James Bopp, a lawyer for National Right to Life and a champion of conservative causes and Priscilla Smith, director of the program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at Yale’s law school, who argued and lost a case before the supreme court to overturn a federal law banning partial-birth abortions.

The hearing ignores Democrats’ request that congressional committees either suspend their investigations into Planned Parenthood or also investigate the actions taken by the Center for Medical Progress.

“As more information has come to light about Planned Parenthood’s involvement in fetal tissue research, it has become apparent that the allegations against the organization are without merit,” Democratic representatives Elijah Cummings and John Conyers wrote in a letter last week.

The letter notes that the Center for Medical Progress “may have violated numerous state and federal laws in their clandestine effort to roll back the rights of millions of women” who depend on Planned Parenthood for health services.

With Planned Parenthood poised to take center stage in the spending bill fight, women’s groups have warned that threatening to defund the organization is a “losing strategy” that will have repercussions come election day.

“If leaders in the Republican party think they can keep pursuing their dangerous agenda and there won’t be a price to pay with women voters, then they have another thing coming,” said Jessica O’Connell, executive director of Emily’s List, in a joint statement with Laguens of Planned Parenthood. “Women voters are watching – and so are we.”

Earlier this year, Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul successfully pushed for a vote to strip funding from Planned Parenthood but failed to get enough support for a bill.

Abortions only represent a small fraction of the health services Planned Parenthood provides to women nationwide. As such, supporters have argued that it is counterproductive to defund contraceptive services in a debate over abortion, with one senator likening the strategy to “attacking Brazil after Pearl Harbor: it’s a vigorous response but it’s the wrong target”.

Despite reluctance from Republican leadership, it remains unclear how close to the edge Cruz and other Republicans are willing to push the defunding fight. Though given Cruz’s recent rhetoric – and his record – it’s perhaps best not to underestimate the senator’s commitment.

“It’s a question of to what extent Republican leadership can control the Tea Party side of their caucus, which is pushing toward the brink of another crisis,” a Democratic aide told the Guardian. “It’s a very open question on how this will play it out.”