Senator Elizabeth Warren shot down Republicans this week over plans to cut funding for women’s healthcare organization Planned Parenthood.
She criticized her rivals in Congress by asking, “Do you have any idea what year it is? Did you fall down, hit your head and think you woke up in the 1950s or the 1890s?”
Last month, the Center for Medical Progress released video of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the cost of extracting fetal tissue. Republicans have alleged it proves the staffers were selling fetal tissue for profit. Planned Parenthood has said the videos were taken out of context and edited, TIME reported.
Senator Joni Ernst introduced a bill to defund the organization, striking back at what he and Senators James Lankford and Rand Paul called “callous actions that strike at the moral fabric of our society.”
[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Elizabeth Warren” author_title=”Senator”]
The Republicans have had a plan for years to strip away women’s rights to make choices over our own bodies. Just look at the recent facts.
[/quote]
“Just to be clear,” Warren said in her electric defense of the organization, “even though abortions performed at Planned Parenthood are safe and legal, the federal government is not paying for any of them. Not — one — dime.”
Warren concluded her speech: “Women have lived through a world where backward-looking ideologues tried to interfere with the basic health decisions made by a woman and her doctor, and we are not going back. Not now, not ever.”
The Center for Medical Progress, the group behind the videos, is an anti-abortion organization set up by David Daleiden. Daleiden formed a fake biomedical research company called Biomax Procurement Services as a cover so group members could pose as buyers of fetal tissues and secretly record meetings.
Activists posing as representatives of the research company met with Planned Parenthood director of research, Melissa Farrell, and asked how many intact fetal cadavers were available.
Centers for Medical Progress has already come under fire for misrepresenting itself, being affiliated with an anti-abortion activist who has harassed providers in Kansas, and potentially deceiving the IRS, according to The Guardian.
