A New Attack on Women's Right to Choose

So far the new Republican Congress has proved better at identifying things it doesn't like -- Obamacare, for example, or an independent ethics office -- than actually getting rid of them. On one issue, however, Congress may yet get its way: abortion.

Last week a House panel issued a report recommending that the federal government restrict or end medical science performed with human fetal tissue. With a Republican majority in Congress and a staunch abortion opponent about to take over the Department of Health and Human Services, there is a real possibility this recommendation could become policy. And the goal here, to be clear, is to limit abortion. When the federal government funds research on tissue derived from aborted fetuses, the panel report notes, it indirectly supports the practice of abortion itself.