The pro-life organization Center for Medical Progress must be feeling vindicated today. The House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), yesterday released a report that seems to corroborate CMP’s investigative findings into Planned Parenthood: “Planned Parenthood and their business partners like StemExpress are engaged in a rampant, illegal, and horrific enterprise that harvests, trafficks, and sells aborted babies’ hearts, lungs, and brains for profit,” the CMP declared in a press release.
With release of this evidence, Republicans say, they have enough documentation to show that several abortion clinics and middleman procurement businesses may have violated federal law.
“It is just horrifying,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who leads the House’s investigation of the fetal tissue industry, told The Daily Signal. “They are putting a dollar value on these organs from these children—unborn children that have been aborted. It is just beyond belief.”
According to Republicans involved in the investigation, a researcher paid a middleman procurement company $3,340 for a fetal brain, $595 for a “baby skull matched to upper and lower limbs,” and $890 for “upper and lower limbs with hands and feet.”
Middleman procurement businesses are companies that obtain tissue and other body parts from aborted babies and provide them to institutions or other organizations for research. Under federal law, the transportation of fetal tissue is based on a nonprofit model.
Republicans on the panel today presented evidence of what Rep. Blackburn called “clear HIPAA violations” during a hearing in which she broke down the prices of each aborted baby body part.
Democrats on the panel tried their best to block or at least slow down the release of the potentially damaging information.
.@ppact defender Rep. DeGette trying to keep evidence on fetal organ pricing from being discussed at hearing on fetal organ pricing.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 20, 2016
DeGette’s attempt to filibuster these documents means they must be VERY vindicating to those critiquing fetal profits.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 20, 2016
.@ppact defender Rep. DeGette trying to keep evidence on fetal organ pricing from being discussed at hearing on fetal organ pricing.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 20, 2016
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) used her time during the hearing to demand the panel’s disbandment:
“This panel was formed with political motivations,” Shaheen insisted. Blackburn and her fellow panelists have “little interest in unbiased investigation” and are only using the committee as an opportunity to attack health care providers, she continued.
The senator wasn’t quite done, accusing the panel of “undermining women’s access to health care” and being an “inappropriate, misuse of federal resources.”
Here is CMP’s full statement on today’s hearing:
What we learned from today’s hearing is that Planned Parenthood and their business partners like StemExpress are engaged in a rampant, illegal, and horrific enterprise that harvests, trafficks, and sells aborted babies’ hearts, lungs, and brains for profit. The undercover video admissions by senior level Planned Parenthood officials only scratch the surface of this barbaric trade—the financial documents uncovered by the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives prove that Planned Parenthood profited from trafficking fetal organs and tissues. We now know the criminal trade in body parts is spread nationwide throughout the abortion industry, with nearly 1 in 5 abortion clinics selling baby parts to StemExpress. Even the pro-Planned Parenthood witnesses called by the Panel minority agreed that a robust investigation should seek testimony and accounting documents from Planned Parenthood. We applaud the Select Investigative Panel for their excellent work on this important issue and encourage all levels of government and law enforcement to move forward quickly and decisively to ensure that those who sell aborted baby parts for profit are brought to justice under the law.
Two state level investigations have shown no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood; meanwhile a Texas grand jury recently indicted CMP activists on felony charges in January:
The grand jury in Harris County indicted David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record.
The California Department of Justice, led by state attorney general Kamala Harris, raided Daleiden’s home earlier this month as part of its ongoing investigation of Daleiden and his colleagues.
Planned Parenthood’s allies in the Democratic Party are terrified of investigations into their grisly human organ-harvesting activities. That’s why they’ve pulled out all the stops to try to shut them down.
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