July 29, 2015 6:16 PM

Very little, if any, new information comes to light in Texas Senate hearing on Planned Parenthood

Anti-abortion activist puts state health officials in awkward position because of her claims under oath

An investigative hearing that many Capitol observers described as bizarre ended with a bang Wednesday when members of the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee called state officials back to the witness stand to ask whether they’d lied during testimony given just hours before.

Specifically, Department of State Health Services assistant commissioner Kathy Perkins was asked to respond to Abby Johnson, a former employee of Planned Parenthood and current full-time anti-abortion activist who claimed under oath that HHSC always gave abortion clinics advance notice of inspections, which would be a felony.

The answer was “no.”

It was perhaps a fittingly strange close to the tense and wandering four-and-a-half hour hearing which had a specific goal that remained unclear throughout. Ostensibly, the committee met to investigate whether any laws had been broken in Texas related to the handling of fetal remains, a concern prompted by recently released videos of Planned Parenthood officials in other states discussing providing fetal tissue for medical research.

By Emily DePrang