The GOP campaign to destroy Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with the videos

It's about abortion, plain and simple

Cecile Roberts testifies on Capital Hill.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

With the Republican-controlled House in an uproar this week over the Planned Parenthood videos — which purportedly show the organization's officials engaging in the illegal sale of fetal organ tissue — it has become clear what has animated this months-long frenzy. It isn't what the videos claim to reveal. It isn't any illegality on Planned Parenthood's part. It's the GOP's implacable opposition to abortion, which existed long before the videos came to light.

To be sure, Republicans have been goaded by the videos themselves. They do not actually show what anti-abortion activists claim, but they contain a lot of graphic material that was dribbled out week after week, which succeeded in grabbing the media's attention. The story got considerably bigger when GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina mentioned it during the most recent Republican debate. She said, "As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes... Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.'"

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.