As a public health and medical researcher, I feel compelled to address the ongoing attacks against Planned Parenthood.

Since the attacks began in July, Planned Parenthood has been the subject of seven investigations in states, a federal investigation, a federal probe and a House Judiciary Committee Hearing.

The federal investigation found no violations, and just recently, the chairman of the House Judicial Committee, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R, Utah), admitted he uncovered no wrongdoing.

Planned Parenthood has been a trusted nonprofit provider of women’s health care for nearly a century. One in five women has turned to Planned Parenthood for high quality, nonjudgmental care at some point in her life, and the majority of the care offered is preventive.

Despite this, politicians and anti-abortion activists are doing everything in their power to defund Planned Parenthood. However, their efforts failed last month, just like in 2011.

While politicians keep the rhetoric going in Washington, D.C., and various state legislatures, scientists across the country have been using donated fetal tissue for decades toward lifesaving medical advances. They have been used to develop vaccines for diseases like chicken pox, rubella and hepatitis A — and they offer promise in the treatment of numerous conditions, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, HIV/AIDS, diabetes and muscular dystrophy, to name just a few.

In my experience seeking informed consent for research studies, I have seen patients agree or disagree to participate in research — whether it be to complete a survey, enroll in a clinical trial, or donate tissue that would otherwise be incinerated — for a wide variety of reasons. Patients commonly express a desire to help advance medical knowledge that may help other people in the future. Women who have abortions are no different.

One percent of Planned Parenthood health centers offer this service, and that does not include Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands. Fetal tissue donation is done with fully informed consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards. The opportunity to donate toward research that may lead to medical breakthroughs has been a source of comfort for many women who have chosen to donate.

Just last week, Planned Parenthood announced that it will stop accepting reimbursements for supplying fetal tissue for medical research, in a letter to the National Institutes of Health.

The announcement is an effort to move beyond the controversy, move beyond the deceptively edited, widely discredited videos. We all know what these attacks are really about. They are about eliminating Planned Parenthood and making it more difficult for women to access high-quality health care. This is a deeply unpopular agenda.

Life-saving tissue donation programs must be protected to ensure that researchers’ efforts to cure disease and improve quality of life continue unabated.