InsideSources

At an Independence Day celebration, a Republican friend asked me about our starting a third party. Then he said it might not work because we disagree on one big issue…abortion.

Surprised, I asked, “You are pro-choice?”  He replied, “Yes, I don’t think we should take a right to abortion away, but I don’t think we should pay for it.” He clarified his position further by declaring his support both for parental consent and for a ban on abortion after 12 weeks. So, while he considers himself pro-choice, his clarifications show that “pro-choice” doesn’t always mean what you think.

In many ways, my friend represents the voters of New Hampshire, which is called a pro-choice state, but when you look deeper, the views on abortion are not so clear. The majority may not want abortion to be illegal, but many people support regulation.

The nuances of abortion are not stopping gubernatorial candidate Steve Marchand from taking one of the most extreme positions in the nation.

Marchand’s extremism contrasts with moderate New Hampshirites’ positions on life. His plan promotes abortion through nine months (most of Europe restricts abortion after the early second trimester), eliminates the Hyde Amendment (which prohibits federal funding of abortion), and abolishes reasonable restrictions of abortion.

Marchand advocates overturning a 2017 law that recognizes children at 20 weeks of pregnancy as eligible to be considered victims of crime. Ask any mother or father who has lost a preborn child as a result of a crime, and she or he will tell you that this law is a good thing. The law has nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with justice for grieving families.

The hostility of Marchand’s plan is frightening and will not win against a Republican incumbent who in recent polls showed a 25-point lead.

To win, Marchand should expand his base of support and recognize that abortion-on-demand is not what most women want. Most women who seek an abortion feel as if they have no choice. They are most often poor, in unhealthy relationships, and/or pressured to abort their unborn children by the fathers or other family members.

Marchand should replace his abortion-expansion plan with a woman-centered plan that whole-life voters would support.

First, he should advocate for paid maternity leave, so that a woman doesn’t have to choose between an abortion and keeping a job she needs.

Second, Marchand should support the thirty-plus pregnancy centers in New Hampshire, which provide diapers, cribs, strollers, clothing, and other necessities for mothers, free of charge.

Third, Marchand should promote perinatal hospice, which supports mothers and families who receive a diagnosis that the child in utero has a life-threatening disease and will likely not survive.

It matters that New Hampshire, which carries symbolic weight when it comes to picking the leader of the country, is seeing a frightening hostility to life in its gubernatorial race.

New Hampshire prides itself for being “first in the nation.” But will it lead the way for life or for hostility?

An Iowa Senate bill banning abortion upon detection of a “fetal heartbeat” at approximately six weeks has gained ground, after passing a subcommittee last week. This is the second abortion bill in two years that the legislature has fought to get passed. Last year, a 20-week abortion ban was signed into law and has been tied up in court cases for the last six months.

A provision in the ban required that women wait 72-hours before being allowed to seek an abortion upon first seeing a doctor. The bill provided exemptions for abortions for the health and life of the mother. Before that bill’s passage, an amendment was filed that would ban abortions after conception, but was voted down.

Senate Study Bill 3143 would ban all abortions after six weeks, which is around the time that a heartbeat could be detected via an “abdominal ultrasound,” with the only exception dependent on the medical emergencies. The physician examining the pregnant woman would have to notify her in writing that a heartbeat is detected, and the woman would then have to confirm via signature that she had heard the information. Any physician that would then proceed with an abortion in a non-medical emergency situation would be committing a Class D felony in Iowa, punishable by no more than five years imprisonment, and a fine of $750-$7,500.

“This bill would jeopardize maternal healthcare for every women across state especially those in rural Iowa,” said Subcommittee Member Janet Petersen (D-District 18) at a public meeting on the legislation. “This bill is dangerous and unconstitutional. It doesn’t only go after women, it goes after doctors, girls, moms, grandmoms, and goes after Iowa families.”

Petersen argued that should the bill be signed into law, then Iowa would stand to lose its only OB/GYN residency program.

“One-third of University of Iowa OB/GYN graduates remain in the state for practice,” Petersen said. “Iowa is ranked last in the amount of OB/GYNs per capita, with two-thirds of Iowa counties not having OB/GYN physicians, we are second to last from Arkansas.”

The bill explains that the woman who receives an abortion would not be criminally punished for having the procedure, and that physicians could appeal their decision to perform an abortion in front of a board.

Lisa Banitt, an OB/GYN with the Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, argued to the subcommittee that the bill is too broad in its definitions of heartbeat, and doesn’t take into account the varying conditions that allow physicians to detect a heartbeat and at what time period that heartbeat can be detected.

Banitt expressed that a woman’s weight can hinder the ability to detect a heartbeat through abdominal ultrasound, as well as each woman’s inner-organ construction and placement in the body. She also argued that there are some women who have irregular menstral cycles, and would not even know they were pregnant by six weeks. Banitt said that if the bill were to become law, it would be hard to account for all the circumstances to align for the bill’s outcome.

Subcommittee Member Jason Schultz (R-District 9) expressed that being a believer in “life at conception,” and having gone through the failed process of proposing such an amendment last year, the current bill was something he could support, as it is a step in the right direction.

“As the culture still moves toward a pro-life view which is what I believe has been happening statistically for decades,” Schultz said, “ever since I believe the horrible Roe v. Wade decision, which even the authors have admitted was bad law. As the culture moves towards a life position, affirming the fact the killing is never healthcare. We find ourselves in a situation where even those who are seeking to end the holocaust of death that we find ourselves in, and it’s a culture of death that permeates all the way through, even moving to the point where so called death with dignity laws are actually just ending life prematurely in the end. We find ourselves in a culture where because of abortion and because of the a la carte death that the industry has brought us, that the culture is being repulsed by that, saying ‘no, life does matter.”

A member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told the subcommittee that the bill was unconstitutional. The ACLU is heavily involved with the current suits against the 20 week abortion ban that await State Supreme Court decisions, now.

Last year, former Governor Terry Branstad approved a budget deal that cut Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood in the state, because of its association with providing abortions. Four clinics have since closed their doors, while the state allocated approximately $3.3 million in funding to other family planning clinics that do not perform abortions.

New Hampshire lawmakers only have until Thursday to finalize what the final state budget will look like for the next biennium, but there are two issues that could hurt its chances of getting passed in the full House.

One of the policies is not even related to monetary funds, it’s about a family planning contracts provision that was hotly contested in the Senate version of the state budget last month.

The Senate added language to its budget prohibiting the state from giving money to health care facilities to provide abortions. Republicans argued the language simply codifies current practice under the federal Hyde Amendment, but Democrats called it an attack on women’s health.

“The decision by House conferees to accept the Hyde amendment as part of the state budget proposal is a completely unnecessary attack on women’s health,” said Rep. Mary Jane Wallner, D-Concord, ranking Democrat on the House Finance Committee and a budget conferee.

“Because federal law already prohibits the use of tax dollars on abortion services, this amendment is a political statement, not a budget statement,” she added.

A conference committee is working to compromise on differences between the $11.8 billion budget passed in the Senate and an $11.9 billion spending plan proposed by the House Finance Committee that was eventually rejected by the full House after conservatives voted against the budget with Democrats.

Wallner blasted Republicans for sneaking the provision into the budget without public input.

“These provisions never received a public hearing in either the House or Senate, in direct violation of the legislative process,” she said. “If Republican lawmakers are going to turn the budget process into a partisan debate over social issues, the least they can do is follow their own rules and be transparent about it.”

Budget writers began hammering out the details in the conference committee on Friday, with less than a week to submit a budget report by Thursday, so both legislative chambers can vote on the final version of the state budget by June 22. The current fiscal year will end on June 30.

The move to include the abortion provision signals that House GOP leadership is looking to work with conservative members, instead of Democrats, to get a budget passed. Several Democrats in the House have reportedly called the provision a “deal breaker” and if it’s included in the final version, they will vote against it.

The Senate, since it’s a smaller body of 24 members, is not as politically divided as the 400 legislators in the House. The House has several different caucuses, all wanting something different out of the state budget.

In April, the House failed to pass its version of a budget for the first time since records were kept in 1969. Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus sided with Democrats to defeat the plan crafted by House GOP leadership citing that spending was too high and there weren’t enough tax cuts.

The Senate version included cuts to the state’s business profits tax and business enterprise tax. House Speaker Shawn Jasper took to Twitter to indicate his support for these cuts.

I support biz tax relief for NH job creators. I urge House colleagues to support our budget that will contain responsible cuts. #NHPolitics

— Speaker Shawn Jasper (@NHSpeaker) June 12, 2017

But the House Freedom Caucus and one of its members, Rep. Victoria Sullivan, R-Manchester, asked if those were the only tax cuts planning to be included in the final version.

Looking forward to more information. Are biz tax cuts the only cuts?

— Victoria Sullivan (@VSullivan4NH) June 12, 2017

With more, or other, tax cuts in the state budget, conservatives could be more inclined to support the GOP-led spending plan. Yet, if the abortion provision and no tax cuts are included in the final version before the House next week, there might not be a budget passed before the end of the fiscal year, which means lawmakers would need to pass a continuing resolution to fund the state government at its current levels and then come back to negotiate a budget again in the fall.

A lot could still happen in the final negotiation days.

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In a 10-hour marathon session, the Republican-led Senate approved an $11.8 billion state budget, defeating all Democratic attempts to increase spending in mental health, social services, and education. The budget ultimately passed on a 14-9 party line vote.

The spending plan changed very little from what the Senate Finance Committee put forward, but concerns and praise for the budget fell on party lines. Republicans applauded the money going to help the mental health crisis in the state, but Democrats disagree, saying the budget doesn’t fund critical social services.

Some of the budget’s highlights include expanding mental health treatment beds, creating a new student scholarship program, and cutting the state’s business taxes.

“What we’ve developed is a budget that serves the citizens of New Hampshire, but lives within our means,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Gary Daniels. “I believe we have achieved an appropriate balance between the two and we’ve done a lot to get us to this point.”

Democrats put forward more than two dozen amendments to increase funding for child protective services, adding nurses to New Hampshire Hospital, making Medicaid expansion permanent, funding full-day kindergarten, and increasing the budget for the state university system. They argue that the state can spend an additional $45 million since the budget’s revenue estimates are too low.

“It creates an artificial, trumped-up surplus to sell the biggest Republican ruse of all, that slashing taxes for the rich will grow revenues and improve lives for poor, middle-class people,” said Senate Minority Leader Jeff Woodburn.

“I recognize and respect my colleagues who think it’s not enough or some would suggest even never enough, but on the other hand, Mr. President, you know there are people like me who are always very concerned that maybe it’s always too much,” responded Sen. Andy Sanborn, R-Bedford.

On a few amendments, a couple of GOP senators sided with Democrats, but it was not enough for the measure to be adopted. For example, Republican Sens. Sanborn and Ruth Ward of Stoddard voted with Democrats to roll back proposed health care premium increases for state retirees, but it failed on a 12-11 vote. In another 12-11 vote, GOP Sens. Regina Birdsell of Hampstead and Harold French of Franklin voted with Democrats to add $6 million in additional education aid grants to public schools, but that measure also failed.

Heated debate between the two parties occurred, as expected, on the business tax cuts in the budget blueprint. An old debate flared up over abortion policy, though, when an eleventh-hour Republican amendment was introduced to block state and federal funds from going to centers that offer abortion services.

“This is about controlling women’s health choices, plain and simple, and this is about merging church and state,” said Sen. Martha Hennessy, D-Hanover.

Tensions remained high as Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua, raised his voice in response to Hennessy.

“Forcing people to violate their conscience with their tax dollars, that is hateful,” he said. “I challenge anyone in here to tell me in any constitution where I am forced to pay for somebody’s abortion, show it to me.”

Hennessy said the amendment was an attack on her rights, while Republicans argue it’s just codifying what’s already happening.

“Could you imagine the men in this room if we snuck in some amendment about how the government shouldn’t pay for Viagra?” Hennessey said.

The amendment ultimately failed, 17-6. Democrats also tried unsuccessfully to eliminate a reference to the so-called Hyde Amendment that outlaws spending public dollars on abortions, in order to prevent any future cuts to Planned Parenthood.

With the Senate’s approval, the biennium budget is sent to the GOP-led House. Yet, there are some concerns from conservatives who are threatening to oppose the plan because it spends too much. The chamber is likely to call for a conference committee of senators and representatives to compromise on various issues within the budget, despite the House failing to pass their own plan earlier this year.

Red flags that House conservatives were not entirely pleased with the budget were first raised during a Tuesday budget information session.

“I’m opposed to this budget as it currently stands, and I am going to work to defeat it,” said Rep. James McConnell, R-North Swanzey, who is also a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

The House Freedom Caucus helped sink the chamber’s budget this year, making it the first time since at least 1969 that the House failed to produce a spending plan.

Yet, it’s still too early to tell if the caucus will try to defeat the Senate budget. In an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio, Rep. J.R. Hoell, R-Dunbarton, and co-chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said the Senate proposal is an improvement.

“They’ve made some great changes in terms of improvements — cutting the business taxes is a good example, funding the charter schools is another good example, so there are positive steps forward,” he said. “Some of us are still concerned that it spends more than we’re comfortable with and that’s…put us in a stalemate almost. The overall increase in government size is bigger than a number of us are conformable with.”

Hoell sent an email to caucus members after a meeting this week, saying the group is hopeful that their needs will be met in the conference committee.

Republicans only hold a slim majority in the House and a handful of defections could defeat the budget if Democrats also oppose it. They have largely criticized the GOP-budget, but some could side with Republicans out of fear of not getting anything passed.

The budget process needs to be over by June 30 before the start of the next fiscal year. If a budget is not passed by then, lawmakers would need to pass a continuing resolution, which would fund the government at its current levels until a full budget is passed.

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While House leadership said that bills restricting abortion rights would not be a priority for the Republican majority, there are still some bills before the New Hampshire Legislature tackling the contentious issue.

After the November election, House Speaker Shawn Jasper outlined his top priorities for the 2017 legislative session, which included concealed carry and right to work, but not any abortion bills.

However, that didn’t stop several state representatives from putting them forward. With a Republican-controlled State House, some bills that seek to restrict abortion rights could quietly make it far in the legislative process. While pro-life and pro-choice groups are paying attention to the issue, most eyes will be on the budget, right-to-work legislation, or other bills dealing with election laws.

Rep. Keith Murphy, R-Bedford, is hopeful his bill, which would ban abortions after “viability,” passes the House. He introduced a similar version of the bill last year, when it was deemed “ought to pass” in the House Judiciary Committee, but failed by three votes in a House session.

Murphy blamed the defeat on the fact that it was “the end of a long day and a lot of people already left.” He also thought some of the representatives did not fully understand the bill.

“I have vowed this year to be different,” he told NH Journal.

House Bill 578 would prohibit any person from performing or inducing an abortion on a woman when it has been determined that the age of the “unborn child” is 21 weeks or older, unless there is a medical emergency in order to save the woman’s life or stop physical harm. The bill also sets penalties for doctors who perform abortions in violation of the law.

New Hampshire is one of eight states that does not place a specific restriction on abortions at a certain point in pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health.

“New Hampshire tends to be a fairly moderate state on the question of abortion,” Murphy said. “I think this bill has an excellent chance [of passing] because it protects children who are viable, who will live if they are removed from the womb. There is no reason to kill these children because they will survive.”

Kayla Montgomery, director of advocacy and organizing for Planned Parenthood NH Action Fund, said the bill would criminalize doctors and make “it impossible for women who face complex pregnancy complications or severe fetal abnormalities to access abortion as currently provided in New Hampshire.”

“Equally as problematic, the bill requires an intrusive data collection system which would create a registry of women who obtain abortions and doctors who provide them and store this information at the Board of Medicine and the Department of Health and Human Services,” she told NH Journal.

While Murphy understands that his legislation might not be a priority for the House leadership, he said he has spoken to House Majority Leader Dick Hinch about the bill and “Speaker Jasper has indicated in general that he will go where the House takes him.”

“I don’t think he is dictating the outcome of the bill,” he said. “If the House passes it, it will be supported.”

If enough Republicans rally behind the bill, it could make it to Gov. Chris Sununu’s desk, and Murphy said he is optimistic that the Republican governor would sign it.

Sununu describes himself as a pro-choice Republican and said he stands by his vote to approve of state funding for Planned Parenthood last year. But he also said he opposes late-term abortions. He has not been specific about what that means.

“We can generally say third trimester, but some say 20 weeks,” he told the New Hampshire Union Leader in October. “I think we can look at those options, but I am not going to put a timeline on it now.”

Planned Parenthood, though, is expecting Sununu to protect women’s health.

“We will be watching the budget process closely to ensure that women’s health programs are protected and fully funded,” Montgomery said. “Gov. Sununu campaigned as someone who supports abortion rights and pledged to stand up to his party to protect women’s health, and that’s what we are expecting of him. New Hampshire has a long bipartisan tradition of respecting individual privacy. Support for access to safe, legal abortion in New Hampshire is among the strongest in the country. Defeating attacks has always been accomplished by bipartisan efforts, and we expect no different this year.”

There are two near-identical bills in the House and Senate that would allow prosecution of a person, such as an impaired driver or abusive domestic partner, whose actions cause a woman to lose a pregnancy that she has chosen to carry. It does not apply to abortion or to any act performed with the mother’s consent.

Senate Bill 66 specifies a “viable” fetus, which is a “developing human” that has basic human qualities. House Bill 156 is just a fetus, which is defined as after the eighth week of a pregnancy until birth.

The House Bill is known as Griffin’s Law, which has been introduced in the Legislature before by former Rep. Leon Rideout, R-Lancaster, whose daughter lost her baby in 2013 after another driver ran a stop sign and crashed into her. His daughter suffered serious injuries and despite an emergency C section to keep the child alive, he succumbed to injuries from the crash.

Rep. Jeanine Notter, R-Merrimack, is the prime sponsor of Griffin’s Law in the current legislative session. But the future of the bill remains unclear. It has failed in the Legislature before, so it will remain to be seen if it has more widespread support this time. The House bill will hear public testimony in the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.

Montgomery said the House and Senate bills do not have a “direct impact on the health services that Planned Parenthood of Northern New England provides.”

“We do share concerns that have been raised regarding implications of recognizing fetal rights prior to viability,” she said. “There are examples of similar bills in other states which have led to the prosecution of women for their own behavior during pregnancy.”

Montgomery said Planned Parenthood would also be watching House Bill 589, which would repeal the “buffer zone law,” which was passed in 2014, allowing for a 25-foot zone outside abortion facilities where no one would be allowed to protest or impede anyone from entering the facility.

“Now, more than ever, health centers need the flexibility to adapt buffer zones if they feel the privacy and safety of patients are at risk,” Montgomery said. “Undoing this law would be a step backwards and removes an important tool from the toolkit.”

Sununu has indicated during the campaign that he would support repealing the law.

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Some of America’s leading anti-abortion activists are struggling to embrace presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, a politician who ostensibly converted to their cause but continues to praise the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Speaking to InsideSources at a Wednesday demonstration outside the Supreme Court, the activists reacted to Trump’s comments from one day earlier, when he said Planned Parenthood “has done very good work … for millions of women.”

The Manhattan business mogul, who called himself “very pro-choice” and even supported late-term abortion in 1999, has said he now opposes the controversial procedure and government funding for it. But that didn’t stop him from defending Planned Parenthood on Tuesday, dismissing criticism from “so-called conservatives.”

“I’ve had thousands of letters from women that have been helped,” he said. “And this wasn’t a setup. This was people writing letters. I’m going to be really good for women. I’m going to be good for women’s health issues.”

Trump’s stance was met with a mix of apprehension, distrust and outright demoralization on the part of pro-life activists, gathered outside the nation’s highest court as it considered a major case on regulation of abortion clinics.

Asked if she was confident the mogul would oppose abortion rights in the White House, National Right to Life Political Director Karen Cross initially said only, “I pray that he would. We have to take him at his word.”

When InsideSources noted that she didn’t sound particularly confident, Cross replied, “I don’t know how to answer that. I’m sorry.”

Another Right to Life staff member then intervened in the conversation, reminding his colleague that Trump had pledged to sign anti-abortion legislation if it arrived on his desk. “Absolutely,” Cross said quickly, turning back to InsideSources. “I feel confident in that, so you could change that.”

Other activists on the courthouse steps made no effort to mask their concern.

“We’re not comfortable with Trump, because we don’t believe he’s really pro-life,” said Missy Stone, national field director for Students for Life.

Stone talked openly about coworkers agonizing over the Trump, whose Planned Parenthood support infuriates them. Acknowledging her candor about the situation, she smiled and said, “These are not the talking points.”

Stone’s predicament is easy to understand. Supporting a pro-abortion rights Democrat is a nonstarter, but sitting out an election isn’t an option. She’s telling her voters “to do what they’re comfortable with morally.”

“It’s just going to be tough no matter how it goes,” Stone said. “There’s not a good answer on this, and it’s very unsettling.”

Among Wednesday’s demonstrators not formally affiliated with advocacy groups, there was evidence that both sides of the abortion debate see Trump as dishonest.

“I think he’s actually pro-choice,” said Washington, D.C., resident Lauren Haigler, who supports abortion rights.

“He’d probably do whatever benefited him most, which is the opposite of what you want in a leader,” said Jessie Sebbo of Atlanta, Georgia, a fellow abortion supporter who came dressed in a pink and purple uterus costume.

The question is whether Republican voters will actually punish Trump for his position. He frightens Washingtonian Donna Bethell, but she’s more scared of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Bethel said she believes the former first lady is a criminal. Given the choice between the two, in spite of the abortion issue, Bethell told InsideSources she’ll support Trump.

“A madman or a crook,” she said with a look of bemusement. “What a choice.”

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In a debate dominated by female voices from both parties, Republican and Democratic lawmakers sparred Wednesday over the ethics surrounding the procurement for medical research of fetal tissue from abortions.

The first public hearing of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, created by House Republicans in response to last year’s undercover videos of abortion providers discussing the harvesting of tissue, offered a glimpse into how the issue will play out on the campaign trail this year.

For pro-life Republicans, the lengthy, four-hour hearing presented an opportunity again to put a spotlight on Planned Parenthood, the nation’s top abortion provider, and the processes associated with procuring fetal hearts, brains, lungs and other organs for medical research.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who chairs the panel, opened the hearing with an attempt to head off Democratic criticism, telling colleagues, “We did not invite our guests here to debate election-year politics or journalism ethics.”

The videos that prompted the hearing, she said, “revealed that something very troubling is going on related to fetal tissue and research.”

But Democrats focused their questioning on Blackburn’s handling of the panel and on the ethics of the undercover sting operation that brought some of the Planned Parenthood practices to light.

The self-described “citizen-journalist” behind the videos faces charges in Houston and is under investigation in California, accused of using falsified documents to pull off his anti-abortion group’s investigation.

The ranking Democrat on the panel, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, dismissed Wednesday’s hearing as a “partisan and dangerous witch-hunt” and compared Blackburn to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

California’s Jackie Speier picked up on the McCarthyism theme: “I feel like a time-traveler, not a member of Congress … maybe we’ve been transported back to the Red Scare.”

But first-term congresswoman Mia Love, a black Republican from Utah, rebuffed Democrats who accused Republicans of attempting to overturn established law regarding abortion.

“There are times in our history in this country that we thought … the terrible treatment of some human beings OK. I am here because we’ve looked back at behavior that we thought was unethical and we’ve changed it. I hope that we live in a country where we are able stand up and say, ‘The treatment is unethical and we are going to change it.’”

The four witnesses invited to appear before the committee by Republicans were critical of the use of tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research, while the two witnesses called by Democrats credited advancements in the treatments of disease to research based on fetal tissues and stem cells.

“We gain nothing when we turn our backs on the benefits of this research for people who are sick today, or will be sick tomorrow,” testified R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin professor of law and bioethics.

Democrats, who called for the panel to be disbanded after the indictment last month of anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, criticized Blackburn’s decision to issue subpoenas recently against three organizations — StemExpress, the University of New Mexico and Southwestern Women’s Options — as heavy-handed.

But Democrats are also gearing up for a prolonged fight, hiring former Planned Parenthood staffer Vanessa Cramer to help plan their defense of the organization, according to LegiStorm.

Asked if hiring a former Planned Parenthood staffer to work on a congressional investigation into the organization’s practices might constitute a conflict of interest, Blackburn’s office told InsideSources the Tennessee Republican would not comment on staffing decisions of other offices.

The clash between House lawmakers on fetal tissue came as hundreds of protesters on either side of the abortion debate gathered across the street at the Supreme Court Building where eight justices heard arguments on restrictive new laws in Texas.

The vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Antonin Scalia has already become a key issue in the presidential race, with Donald Trump’s top GOP rivals questioning the New York billionaire’s commitment to conservative justices – particularly on the issue of abortion.

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowing to leave the opening to the next president, the Supreme Court and the abortion issue are expected to figure heavily in this year’s Senate races as well, especially in states where moderate Republicans are seen as vulnerable.