POLITICO - Two female Democratic lawmakers walked out of a House hearing on the Obama administration’s contraception compromise Thursday morning to protest the fact that only male witnesses were testifying.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) left the hearing when House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) refused to seat a female witness among the five men scheduled to testify.
UPDATE: Friday on Morning Joe, Committee Member, Representative Elijah Cummings said “seeing the panel of men discuss women’s reproductive issues was like seeing a panel of all women discussing prostate cancer.”
“Let one woman speak on this panel right now,” Maloney said before the walkout, requesting that Issa seat a Georgetown University law student who would testify on the rule’s impact.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton told reporters after leaving that the hearing was being run like an “autocratic regime.”
A second panel of witnesses is scheduled to testify later Thursday, and there are two women on that panel.
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