Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said a series of undercover videos represent a "new low" in attacks against the women's health and abortion provider, in a Washington Post op-ed published late Wednesday.

Richards emphasized how Planned Parenthood provides a range of healthcare services to women around the country, including cancer screenings and contraception, in a defensive essay that pushed back against GOP efforts to cut off federal funding to her group. It also blasted the videos' makers for making "false and absurd assertions."

She reiterated that Planned Parenthood is doing nothing illegal by helping women donate aborted fetal tissue for medical research. The series of videos, released by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, features top Planned Parenthood officials discussing the practice with actors disguised as buyers of human tissue.

She also noted that she's already apologized for the "tone" taken by leaders in her organization as they discussed extracting fetal organs and being compensated for them.

"While predictably these videos do not show anything illegal on Planned Parenthood's part, medical and scientific conversations can be upsetting to hear, and I immediately apologized for the tone that was used, which did not reflect the compassion that people have come to know and expect from Planned Parenthood," Richards wrote.

She slammed the Center for Medical Progress, saying it wasn't trying to uncover wrongdoing, but instead "create it." The group is expected to release still more videos, possibly as many as a dozen total.

"These extremists created a fake business, made apparently misleading corporate filings and then used false government identifications to gain access to Planned Parenthood's medical and research staff with the agenda of secretly filming without consent — then heavily edited the footage to make false and absurd assertions about our standards and services," Richards wrote.

Republicans won't succeed in their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, she predicted. She's almost certainly right in the short term, as President Obama has said he wouldn't sign such legislation. The Senate is expected to vote on defunding legislation next week.

She said the Republican attempt to cut off roughly $500 million in federal dollars that Planned Parenthood clinics get every year would end up hurting women's healthcare. Richards noted that clinics provide much more than just abortions to about 2.7 million women every year.

"The federal funding Planned Parenthood health centers receive goes toward preventive medicine — breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, well-woman exams — that millions of low- and middle-income women across the country rely on," she wrote.

"The extremists will not win this battle. The goal of these attacks is to get Planned Parenthood to stop providing care — and that will never happen," she added.

Republicans and abortion opponents have raised the question of whether Planned Parenthood is profiting financially from fetal tissue donations, which would be illegal. The videos also show top officials acknowledging that some doctors may change the way they perform abortions to keep certain organs intact, which could raise questions about ethical standards of care.