July 29, 2015      6:16 PM
Very little, if any, new information comes to light in Texas Senate hearing on Planned Parenthood
Anti-abortion activist puts state health officials in awkward position because of her claims under oath
An
investigative hearing that many Capitol observers described as bizarre
ended with a bang Wednesday when members of the Texas Senate Health and Human
Services Committee called state officials back to the witness stand to
ask whether they’d lied during testimony given just hours before.
Specifically,
Department of State Health Services assistant
commissioner Kathy Perkins was asked
to respond to Abby Johnson, a former
employee of Planned Parenthood and current full-time anti-abortion activist
who claimed under oath that HHSC always gave abortion clinics advance notice of
inspections, which would be a felony.
The
answer was “no.”
It was perhaps
a fittingly strange close to the tense and wandering four-and-a-half hour hearing
which had a specific goal that remained unclear throughout. Ostensibly, the
committee met to investigate whether any laws had been broken in Texas related
to the handling of fetal remains, a concern prompted by recently released
videos of Planned Parenthood officials in other states discussing providing
fetal tissue for medical research.
By Emily DePrang
|