House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has picked six strong abortion rights supporters for the GOP-led panel on Planned Parenthood, setting up a showdown over the already-controversial probe.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leading member of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, was picked as the top Democrat on the panel.
{mosads}She will join five other abortion rights supporters on the panel, including Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Diana DeGette (Colo.), Jackie Speier (Calif.), Suzan DelBene (Wash.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
In a press release announcing the lineup, Pelosi vowed that the Democrats would “stand up against the latest Republican assault on women’s health.”
“As Republicans try to take affordable family planning and lifesaving preventive care away from millions of American women, Democrats will be in the room to fight for the truth,” Pelosi wrote in the statement.
The Republican members of the panel — led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) — were picked last month by then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as one of his final acts before retiring.
Pelosi said each Democrat represents a committee with jurisdiction over women’s health: Energy and Commerce, Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform.
Each of the committees has launched its own investigation into Planned Parenthood in the wake of a series of undercover videos accusing the group of wrongdoing related to fetal tissue donation.
No criminal charges have been brought against Planned Parenthood since the anti-abortion group, The Center for Medical Progress, first released the videos in July.