House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has insisted that Republicans “do not want to raise taxes on anyone” because the American people demanded: “stop tax hikes.” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has said that, in a time when the government is trying to spur private businesses to create jobes, Republicans “don’t believe that tax rates should go up” at all. However, as the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo notes, “House Republicans are evidently getting over their allergy for tax increases, at least when it helps them restrict a woman’s right to choose.”

Today, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on H.R.3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, which would “prevent women from using itemized medical deductions, certain tax-advantaged health care accounts or tax credits included in last year’s health care law to pay for abortions or for health insurance plans that cover abortion.” Doing so would force both women and small businesses that provide health insurance that covers abortion to pay more in taxes than they would otherwise. As Bloomberg News’s Richard Rubin points out, under “common Republican definitions,” this can be “viewed as a tax increase — which is anathema to the House majority.” Even economic conservative Grover Norquist was “concerned” that the policy, “however well-intentioned or virtuous,” would “mask a net tax increase.”

When asked about this apparent hypocrisy today, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told ThinkProgress that the GOP bill is “nothing short of a tax increase.” Noting that 87 percent of small businesses offer health insurance plans that include abortion coverage, she slammed the GOP for pushing an “outrageous” “anti-women” tax increase to “reach deep into the personal lives of all American women, of all small business owners and twist the Republican nose” into people’s privacy:

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: This is nothing short of a tax increase, I mean we have to call it exactly what it is. The Republicans are proposing a tax increase on all women because in their anti-women legislation H.R.3, they would take away the tax benefit from all small businesses if their health insurance offers abortion coverage which 87 percent of them do. So essentially they are saying if you are a small business owner and you offer your employees insurance and that policy covers abortion, then you will not be able to benefit from the tax credits that the Affordable Care Act allows you and also that you can already take by offering insurance to your employees.

It’s outrageous. The Republicans are maintaining and proponents of this legislation are maintaining that all they are doing is codifying the status quo and prohibiting federal funding of abortions. This legislation goes much further. It reaches deep into the personal lives of all American women, of all small business owners and twists the Republican nose into the business of people who need insurance and also small business owners who want to provide coverage for their employees.

Watch it:

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) told ThinkProgress that this is both a war on the “reproductive health of American women and men,” because “if a man was to buy an insurance policy that included a provision that might cover abortions, he would not be able to participate in the exchanges that are being set up.” “This is the most ridiculous, frivolous, but also mean-spirited anti-health care legislation that we’ve seen,” she added.

In their comprehensive war on a woman’s right to choose, conservatives have contorted the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood into the epicenter of anti-family villainy. Conservative anti-choice advocates have attacked Planned Parenthood for running an “abortion factory,” increasing the STD rate, and aborting African Americans. But this year, the right tagged Planned Parenthood with a new evil: sex trafficking.

Yesterday, Tony Perkins, the radically conservative head of the Family Research Council (FRC), held a online event to explore the issue of child sex trafficking in the U.S. According to the Department of Justice, more than 250,000 American youth are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation, with the average age of entry for female prostitutes in the U.S. around 12 to 14 years old. But instead of attacking the roots of this terrible problem, Perkins took the opportunity to push his narrow agenda.

Titling his event “Sex Trafficking in America: from The Boulevard to Planned Parenthood,” Perkins predictably blamed the breakup of the traditional family, pornography, and “the post-modern view of morality”:

PERKINS: What’s fueling this epidemic? A number of factors contribute to the increase in sex trafficking. The breakup of the family is a major contributor. The best protection against being lured into sex trafficking for a young girl is a father in the home who is married to the child’s mother. The explosion of obscenity and pornographic material on the internet and an apparent indifference from federal law enforcement officials — all facilitated by the post-modern view of morality that essentially says there is not right or wrong. My friends, what you will see in here today is wrong.

Perkins then quickly pivoted to LiveAction President and “anti-abortion propagandist” Lila Rose, who garnered attention recently for her undercover video stings targeting Planned Parenthood. As she has before, Rose accused Planned Parenthood of being complicit in sex trafficking and actually “furthering the victimization of these girls.” Using her heavily manipulated videos as evidence, she said the organization demonstrates an “immediate willingness to cover up abuse on repeated occasions, and to go beyond that to actually work with the abusers.” Watch it:

Regardless of Perkins’ social agenda, actual causes of to sex trafficking include poverty, “being sold into the sex trade by parents husbands, boyfriends,” or “being kidnapped by traffickers.” Meanwhile, despite Perkin’s claim that law enforcement organizations don’t care about sex trafficking, the truth is they lack the coordination and tools to effectively address the issue, and attempts to solve this problem have been stalled by the GOP. By muddling the issue with his “post-modern view of morality” theory, Perkins not only ignores the real root causes of sexual trafficking but shields them from much-needed scrutiny.

But elevating Rose’s politically-driven and false accusations is particularly destructive. After all, Planned Parenthood does a lot more to stop child sex trafficking than does the FRC. The organization actually “alerted federal authorities to a potential multistate sex trafficking ring” only to learn that the ring was in fact Roses’ “sting” operation. As Planned Parenthood’s Stuart Schear said, “when Planned Parenthood learns of an operation that exploits young women, we vigilantly work with law enforcement authorities to uncover and stop this abhorrent activity.” Rose even admitted the purpose of her sting operation was “to create controversy within the organization, keep them on their toes” and “help them feel that fear.”

Last year, former Speaker Newt Gingrich offered his vocal support for the ultimately successful campaign to oust three of the nine Iowa Supreme Court justices who had unanimously ruled in favor of marriage equality. As Gingrich courts social conservatives while exploring a possible presidential bid, new disclosures from his camp indicate that he and his associates bankrolled more than one-third of the $850,000 campaign to remove the Iowa justices.  

ThinkProgress previously reported on $200,000 that Gingrich funneled from an anonymous donor to the anti-marriage equality group Iowa for Freedom, which was also being funded by AFA Action, the political arm of the virulently anti-gay American Family Association. The Associated Press revealed yesterday that one of the cogs in Gingrich’s vast network of business enterprises and front groups, ReAL Action, provided $125,000 to AFA Action. The Des Moines Register reported this morning that ReAL Action also contributed $25,000 to yet another Iowa anti-LGBT group, the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

AFA is not only of the nation’s most prominent anti-LGBT groups, it has been officially labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  As ThinkProgress has reported, the AFA is known for making incendiary comments about gays, including blaming gays for crop failure and various other biblical plagues, claiming that Hitler was gay, saying lesbians can’t be justices, equating gay sex with domestic terrorism, and equating gay sex to heroin, just to cite a few examples.

Gingrich’s tacit support for these radical views would not seem to be in question, as his spokesman went to great pains to explain that the grant to AFA Action was for “general support,” noting:

“We leave up to the groups receiving the money to determine how they would spend the money.

While those who fought to retain the Iowa justices question why Gingrich had previously kept his financial support for the anti-LGBT groups secret and is only now acknowledging it as his possible 2012 bid ramps up, Gingrich’s spokesman said that there was no connection between his support for the Iowa groups and his possible presidential ambitions.  This assertion seems highly questionable considering the leader of last year’s anti-marriage equality campaign against the three justices, Bob Vander Plaats, is an Iowa political kingmaker who now heads the FAMiLY Leader, a radical anti-LGBT organization that is hosting an ongoing Presidential Lecture Series that ThinkProgress has been attending and reporting on.  Gingrich himself is scheduled to appear before the group on July 11.

And while some have pointed out that Gingrich’s multiple patriotism-inspired adulterous affairs might present a problem for socially conservative GOP primary voters, Gingrich-funded Vander Plaats seems unconcerned.  He told the Los Angeles Times that Gingrich “had won over pastors in [Iowa] with his ‘open and transparent’ approach” and that Christian conservatives “understand that we all fall short of the standards” they set for themselves.

It remains to be seen whether Gingrich’s funding of virulently anti-LGBT hate groups will pay political dividends outside the small group of overwhelmingly white, socially-conservative voters that determine the winner of the Iowa caucuses.