House to Call HHS Secretary Sebelius to Testify on Planned Parenthood

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Feb 11, 2011   |   11:42AM   |   Washington, DC

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be called on by pro-life lawmakers in the House of Representatives to testify on the Planned Parenthood abortion business in light of the new videtapes epxosing it helping sex traffickers.

Rep. Cliff Stearns, a pro-life Florida Repubican who is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel, told the Los Angeles Times he plans to call Sebelius to the House to testify on Planned Parenthood and its taxpayer funding inlight of the new videos.

Sebelius, the Kansas governor before President Barack Obama named her as his cabinet member overseeing the federal health department, has a long record of supporting abotion, late-term abortions and taxpayer funding of abortions. She also had a close personal relationship with late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller, before his death.

Tiller escaped prosecution and accountability for allegedly repeatedly violating state abortion laws. He did so in part because of the lax standards of Sebelius and her political allies, to whom Tiller had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars. Governor Sebelius vetoed a bill  that the legislature approved that would have strengthened the state’s limits on late-term abortions. That followed by a year her veto of a bill requiring explicit medical reasons for a late abortion, which was preceded by vetoing other pro-life legislation in 2006, 2005 and 2003.

As HHS Secretary, Sebelius has attempted to cover up the abortion funding in the federal health care law.

Stearns said the videos make it more necessary to ensure the abortion business does not receive taxpayer funds.

“This is when we’re going to defund Planned Parenthood,” said Stearns. “Now is the season for us to do this.”

Congressman Mike Pence has introduced legislation that would yank the Title X family planning money Planned Parenthood receives, but he told the Times he will go further and introduce an amendment to federal spending bills that would cut all federal funding for the abortion business.

Since February 1, 2011, Live Action has released footage from New Jersey, Virginia, and New York Planned Parenthood clinics, all of which have been met by an ever-changing defense from Planned Parenthood.

The sting operations revealed Planned Parenthood center staffers were willing to provide assistance to alleged operators of a sex trafficking ring — ranging from helping them arrange abortions for the underage girls they said they were victimizing to showing them how to avoid scrutiny and skirt parental involvement laws. The videos covered Planned Parenthood centers in Richmond and also other centersin Roanoke, Charlottesville, and Falls Church. A District of Columbia Planned Parenthood also encouraged and assisted sexual traffickers, as evidenced in an undercover audio file.

Live Action also filmed Planned Parenthood staff helping sex traffickers in New Jersey — and the nurse who aided the alleged traffickers there has already been fired while the state health department is looking into the problems further.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has already received the full, unedited footage of the Planned Parenthood expose’ videos and he told CBS 6 WVTR in Richmond that they are “shocking.”

Live Action has previously released more than a dozen hidden camera videos from ten states. This body of visual evidence shows several alarming patterns of illegal Planned Parenthood activities including cover-up of sexual abuse of minors, the skirting of parental consent laws, citing unscientific and fabricated medical information to manipulate women to have abortions, and Planned Parenthood’s willingness to accept donations earmarked to abort African-American babies.