TownHall.com (via Baptist Press)
The congressman leading an investigation of Planned Parenthood wants it to testify at a Capitol Hill hearing after the post-abortion death of one of its clients and the organization’s failure to answer his questions the last 10 months.
Rep. Cliff Stearns, R.-Fla., told Fox News July 24 he has received massive amounts of information with no answers since he launched an investigation in September 2011 of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its affiliates. Planned Parenthood is the country’s leading abortion provider.“I would like to put them under oath,” said Stearns, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. “I would like to find out how they spend our half a billion dollars, and I would also like to explore some of the safety aspects, particularly in light of this death, of this tragedy.”
Tonya Reaves, 24, died July 20 after undergoing an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Chicago.
In a written statement for Baptist Press Friday (July 27), Stearns said, “Although Planned Parenthood has provided some 8,000 pages of documents, they have not provided some of the records requested such as internal audits and audits by state agencies.
“For far too long, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates have operated with near immunity from Congressional oversight, gladly accepting over $1 million per day in taxpayer support while claiming an exemption from the normal standards of accountability that every other recipient of public funds is expected to meet,” said Stearns, who described his investigation as the first congressional effort to hold PPFA accountable for its use of government funds. “State audit reports and admissions by former Planned Parenthood employees detail a pattern of misuse of federal funds by some Planned Parenthood affiliates, as well as ignoring state reporting laws designed to protect women and minors from sexual abuse.”
Read more on the death of Tonya Reaves from AUL’s Denise Burke.
The story goes on to talk about AUL’s The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood:
Last July, Americans United for Life (AUL) documented in a 181-page report of known and alleged abuses by PPFA over a 20-year period and called on Congress to investigate it for misuse of government funds and circumvention of state laws.
