Thursday the House Judiciary Committee held its second hearing on Planned Parenthood, the first since the select subcommittee on Planned Parenthood was announced. Witnesses included an ex-abortion doctor, a former director of a Planned Parenthood affiliate and a woman who suffered irreversible damage to her fallopian tubes after three abortions, one performed at Planned Parenthood.

Both Republicans and Democrats showed videos. In one Orwellian chapter of the proceedings, a physician showed a Live Action video to illustrate the dangers of late-term abortions; it was then struck from the record by Democrats while Republicans were out voting; then it was reinstated by Republicans after many of them returned to the hearing room.

But the main focus was on the Center for Medical Progress sting videos. As Chairman Goodlatte said in his opening statement, “Today’s hearing is about the content contained within the videos, including admissions made by Planned Parenthood officials that raise serious questions about the treatment of our nation’s children who may be born alive following a failed abortion.”

Chairman Goodlatte showed a graphic clip from the CMP video featuring Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde, the one where she goes in the back of the lab and displays the “specimens,” including arms, legs, heart, liver and eyes. This is the one where she says, “It’s a boy” as she finds the aborted child’s gonads.

Randy Forbes (R-Vir.) then asked the expert witness for the Democrats, former NARAL lawyer Caroline Fredrickson, if the description of the procedure in the Nucatola video (“crush above, crush below”) “was too brutal” for her.

Fredrickson refused to acknowledge that there would be anything disturbing about the scene, the description or the images.

Forbes responded, “They won’t say that any procedure is too far or not enough or too brutal, and that’s the purpose of these hearings … I think what we heard on these tapes was wrongdoing.”

What It Means to Protect Women

The other expert witnesses testified against Planned Parenthood, drawing on personal experience. These included a former Planned Parenthood doctor, a former Planned Parenthood clinic manager and a former Planned Parenthood patient.

The former clinic manager, Susan Thayer, testified that Planned Parenthood overbilled Medicaid and exploited the low-income women who came to her clinic.

“I want to share with you just a little of my own experience about how Planned Parenthood is focused more on its bottom line than the women it claims to serve,” Thayer said, recounting how abortion quotas were a routine part of Planned Parenthood’s profit-focused business.

Luana Stoltenberg, a former Planned Parenthood patient, testified to the damage her abortion did to her life and her body. After three abortions, she was infertile and angry that clinic workers never told her the risks of her abortions. “I am asking you to please consider these stories and mine when you make legislation and when you make decisions about defunding Planned Parenthood and about abortion,” she said.

Stoltenberg also had words in response to Democrats who said they wanted to keep abortion safe and legal. “I’ve heard a lot here today about ‘safe’ abortion, and all of these women’s stories,” Stoltenberg gestured at the binders, “refute ‘safe’ abortion. We are not having safe abortion in this country. Women are being maimed, they’re being harmed, they are not being able to have their own children because of it, their children are dying on tables. They are turning to alcohol and drugs and suicide.”

“I do post-abortion counseling, and I just counseled a woman who had an abortion in the prior months and has tried to kill herself three different times … this is not safe.”

“I’m just begging you, for you people to protect women,” Stoltenberg pleaded, looking over to the Democrats on the committee. “This is not a good choice for women. Protect us. Do the right thing.”

Moments later, Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) responded, “I tell the women of America, you are safe. You are safe because Obama will veto legislation” that defunds Planned Parenthood.

Zoe Lofgren (D-Cali.), also unmoved by the testimony of women harmed by their abortion experiences, told the chairman, “I hope this is the end of the persecution of Planned Parenthood.”

In response, Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) said, “It is certainly disappointing that we have to hold a hearing like this about an organization that every year brutally kills hundreds of thousands of unborn, innocent human babies and sells their body parts and does it for profit.”

Chabot went on to express the frustration that many feel after watching the undercover Planned Parenthood videos. “Destroying little innocent unborn lives and selling their body parts for profit: If that’s not against the law, then we damn well better change the law and make it against the law,” he said. “Because we’re supposed to be a civilized society, a civilized country. And to think that that kind of behavior is occurring in these modern times, it makes one wonder what the hell is going on with this country. It’s disgusting!”

Those Who Have or Perform Abortions Aren’t Lost Causes

Stoltenberg showed up to testify with stacks of binders, each full of stories from women who have had abortions and been damaged by them. These are the voices of the women who have suffered at the hands of Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics. Those voices do not often accompany the voices of the doctors performing abortions, but they did at this hearing.

The hearings also featured a former abortion doctor whose life was changed forever after he lost his own child. Dr. Anthony Levatino testified before the committee as an OB-GYN that had performed over 1200 abortions before a tragedy changed his life. He lost his daughter in a car accident, went back to work, and couldn’t do it anymore.

“I showed up to perform my first second-trimester abortion,” he said. “I reached in, literally pulled out an arm and a leg, and I got sick,” Levatino explained. “When you do an abortion, you need to do an inventory … for the first time in my life I really looked at that pile of body parts and all I could see was somebody’s son or daughter.”

The Status of the Center for Medical Progress Videos

The videomakers were the focus of the Democrats’ comments. Ranking Member John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) contended that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. “These investigations have little to do with the videos – which the Majority went to great lengths not to discuss at our last hearing. They have everything to do with appeasing the most extreme elements of the Republican Party during an intraparty leadership crisis and a fractious presidential primary.”

But according to House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who subpoenaed the videos earlier, “The videos have now been sent to Congress.” The raw video will likely come up in the 13-member select Energy and Commerce subcommittee investigating Planned Parenthood.