Action Group Set to Deliver Petition Protesting Planned Parenthood Probe

The following is a press release on behalf of CREDO Action:

Washington, DC –Members of CREDO Action will deliver a petition to the office of Rep. Cliff Stearns on Thursday, calling for him to end his right-wing crusade against Planned Parenthood.  Rep. Stearns, of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has called for a massive investigation of Planned Parenthood based on the anti-choice smear campaign asserting that the organization misuses federal funds to pay for abortion services.

CREDO is delivering petitions on the same day that Planned Parenthood is being forced by Rep. Stearns and the members of his oversight committee to submit documents from its 85 affiliates as part of the sham investigation.

“Anti-choice members of Congress are using this investigation to launch yet another attack on Planned Parenthood,” said Becky Bond, political director of CREDO Action.   “If they can't defund the organization, they want to tie up its staff and resources in a politically motivated investigation. This is an unfair and unjust political assault, and we can't let them win.”

More than 130,000 CREDO Action members have signed the petition, and have also made nearly 500 calls in the past two days to the Energy and Commerce Committee, asking them to take a stand against the investigation.  Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Dianne DeGette (D-CO) have also written a letter to Rep. Stearns, asking him to stop the investigation of Planned Parenthood, asserting that this investigation appears to be “designed to harass and shut down an organization simply because Republicans disagree with the work that it does” and that Rep. Stearns’s “Fervent ideological opposition to Planned Parenthood does not justify launching an intrusive investigation.”  The Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General, along with state Medicaid programs, already audit Planned Parenthood, and have discovered no pattern of behavior that would warrant Congressional investigation, particularly of the scope that Rep. Stearns has called for. 

PETITON URL: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/investigation_ppfa/

Eleven U.S. senators, including Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), have called for an end to the "witch hunt" into Planned Parenthood.