It’s great to know that in a time when millions are unemployed, millions more are in debt up to their eyeballs, increasing questions over the health of our economy and the world’s at large, natural disasters occurring with greater frequency and power, our steadily worsening situation abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now the political controversy of a Palestinian bid for statehood within the UN, that the Republican Party is truly focused on the big issue of our time:

Snuffing out Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organization whose clinics provide health services and discounted medications for women across the country.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican-led House panel has asked the Planned Parenthood Federation of America to hand over more than a decade’s worth of documents in a probe of whether the organization improperly spends public money on abortions.

Democrats and Planned Parenthood supporters say the 90-year-old group is audited regularly and publicly and that the probe is the latest Republican run at shutting it down.

At issue is whether American taxpayers are unwittingly underwriting elective abortions, in violation of federal law. Absolutely not, says Planned Parenthood. But congressional Republicans are not so sure.

“Why,” you might ask, “is this investigation being run when there are more pressing issues on Congress’ plate?”

“The American taxpayer does not want to be in the business of abortion, and this investigation is an important first step toward ending public funding of the nation’s largest abortion provider,” said Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, which earlier this year conducted and presented to Stearns’ committee its own study on Planned Parenthood.

There’s a lot of things that this American taxpayer does not want to be in the business of, but throwing poor and working class women to the gutter in the name of religious fundamentalism is towards the top of the list.