Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas) confronted an abortion activist during a Tuesday hearing with a graphic, undercover recording that purportedly shows her discussing late-term abortions in a cavalier manner.
Addressing pro-abortion activist Talcott Camp during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the FACE Act, Roy read back a transcript of a conversation Camp allegedly had while working as a deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Health Freedom Project in 2015.
In the recording, captured by the Center for Medical Progress, Camp can allegedly be heard casually discussing the gruesome details of a late-term abortion procedure in which an unborn child’s skull is crushed and removed from its mother’s womb.
“I’m like — Oh my God! I get it! When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp! I get it! I understand why people are talking about getting that skull out, that calvarium,” Roy said, reading a transcript of the recorded comments.
After reading Camp’s words back to her, Roy asked, “When abortionists crush the skulls of babies to kill them, what physical risks are there for the baby?”
Camp, who now serves as chief legal and strategy officer for the National Abortion Federation, thanked Roy for the opportunity to correct the record, proceeding to question the authenticity and editing of the undercover video, which she claimed led to violence and even the murder of abortion activists. After pushback from Roy, Camp ultimately conceded that it was “impossible to know” if she said anything about the crushing of babies’ skulls.
The FACE Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1997, prohibits activists from blocking access to or otherwise disrupting the operation of any facility that deals with reproductive health, be it a crisis pregnancy center or an abortion clinic.
Throughout the hearing, House Republicans slammed the Biden Justice Department for applying the law in a biased manner, failing to prosecute the many examples of vandalism and attacks on crisis pregnancy centers that occurred in the wake of the Dobbs decision, while overzealously applying the law to pro-lifers who protest outside abortion clinics.
Republicans called pro-life activist Mark Houck as a witness. In his opening statement, Houck recounted how FBI agents raided his home in 2022 with long guns drawn, arresting the father of seven for shoving a pro-abortion activist outside of a Pennsylvania abortion clinic as the man allegedly harassed his 12 year old son.
While a local prosecutor declined to bring charges against Houck over the 2021 incident, the Biden administration charged him with a felony violation of the FACE Act, which prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.”