Hogan Works the Speculum and Holds a Behind Stirrups News Conference at Takoma Park Planned Parenthood

Maryland's Republican Senatorial nominee Larry Hogan manned the speculum at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Takoma Park today before staging an impromptu news conference, answering questions behind examination table stirrups.

As reporters and aides watched, an employee showed Hogan how to insert a speculum, apply numbing medicine, and use small dilators to allow the suction device to pass inside.

“It requires great expertise, actually, to do it right and to do it fast,” Hogan said with a grimace, putting away his suit jacket and wearing a surgical gown over his shirt and tie.

The visit came as he tries to counter Democratic nominee Angela Alsobrooks’ account that Hogan would support a nationwide ban on abortion if elected to the US Senate. Hogan says he has been on the record opposing a federal ban for over three decades.

A large crowd lined the street outside the Planned Parenthood in Takoma Park in Montgomery County, a notoriously progressive area just outside Washington, DC. The clinic itself was closed to the public for Hogan’s visit.

After passing out heating pads to people in the recovery room, Hogan sat behind the stirrups, still wearing the gown, to take questions from media staged in the procedure suite. The former governor said abortion is settled law in Maryland and pledged to respect the results of next month’s vote on Maryland Question 1, “if it’s a fair election.”

Hogan joked about getting one reporter condoms and did not directly answer a question of whether he might support universal Medicare coverage for abortions after seeing Planned Parenthood employees in action but said, “These people work hard. They’re great.”

He added that “I just saw something … a process that’s beautiful.”

When aides finally urged him to wrap things up so he could hit the road to his next event, Hogan offered, “Wasn’t that a strange place to do a news conference?”

Hogan’s visit created a spectacle in Takoma Park. Police closed the busy streets around the Planned Parenthood during the event.

“It is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Takoma Park community,” the Planned Parenthood location’s manager, Candace Park, said in a statement. “That’s why I accepted former Governor Hogan's request to observe the transformative life experience that 1 in 4 American women are likely to have."

While his motorcade exited the community, horns honked and music blared as Hogan supporters waved flags, held signs and prayed their Takoma Park neighbors didn't see them.