Abortion Rights Activists Condemn Congressional 'Witch Hunt' against Medical Researchers

An anti-abortion Congressional committee created to investigate medical research dependent on fetal tissue is planning to issue 17 subpoenas seeking names of “researchers, graduate students, laboratory technicians and administrative personnel” involved in such research, reported the New York Times on Thursday.

Women’s health activists fear that publicly listing the names of these medical researchers could result in deaths such as those in 2015, when a gunman murdered three employees at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado. The critics were swift to denounce the subpeonas.

“It’s deplorable that Chair Blackburn is continuing her partisan, taxpayer-funded witch hunt with these subpoenas,” said NARAL president Ilyse Hogue. “What the committee is doing is targeting students, researchers, and healthcare providers in a way that opens them up to violence and harassment.”

“And in the months after the act of domestic terrorism at Planned Parenthood in Colorado,” Hogue continued, “We can all agree that this is exact opposite of what members of Congress should be spending their time on. No one should have to fear for their safety when seeking health care or conducting vital research, but that’s the position the GOP members of this committee have put these individuals in.”

“It’s one step further than McCarthyism, because McCarthy just threatened people’s jobs,” said representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, to the New York Times. “They’re threatening people’s lives.”

The committee’s demand for the names of researchers is completely unfounded, critics say.