Opinion writer Catherine Rampell discusses the implications of the Politics in the Exam Room: A Growing Threat report.

“It’s an unprecedented coalition, and I think that really speaks to the depth and breadth of this growing problem we’re seeing,” said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, the director of reproductive health programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families, the organization that spearheaded the new report. “We thought it was really important to come together and expose what was happening here.”

According to the report, written jointly by the National Partnership for Women & Families, National Physicians Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, more than 15 million Americans live within a mile of a fracking well that was recently drilled.

Planned Parenthood supporters voiced outrage over the hearings, calling them “callous” and “mean-spirited.” Said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, in a statement.

“Today, extremists pushed an unconstitutional national 20-week abortion ban, and tomorrow they threaten to continue holding the federal budget hostage to their dangerous agenda,” said Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership for Women & Families, via statement. “It’s past time politicians exit the exam room. Women in this country need and deserve access to comprehensive reproductive health services, including abortion care.”

“It would absolutely catastrophic for women’s health – that’s not an overstatement,” says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, the director of reproductive health programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that focuses on access to health care and reproductive rights. “There’s nothing about this legislation that’s actually about protecting or enhancing or even maintaining health care services for women,” she says. “It’s about playing politics with women’s health.”