Earlier this month, the United States House of Representatives Select Panel on Infant Lives released findings in which they referred several Planned Parenthood affiliates for prosecution, including Houston’s Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. This week, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee followed suit. The committee referred Planned Parenthood Federation of America, four Planned Parenthood affiliates, and several fetal tissue procurement companies to the FBI and the United States Department of Justice for further investigation and possible prosecution.
The referrals result from the ongoing investigation of Planned Parenthood’s selling the body parts of babies killed in abortion. The Center for Medical Progress released undercover videos with evidence of Planned Parenthood illicitly altering abortion procedures to harvest body parts and selling the organs of aborted babies for profit. These shocking allegations rocked the nation and prompted criminal investigations into the violent, profit-driven abortion industry.
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) stated in a letter to Attorney General Lorretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey that several entities were being referred for investigation and potential prosecution, including:
StemExpress, LLC;
Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc.;
Novogenix Laboratories, LLC;
Planned Parenthood Mar Monte;
Planned Parenthood Los Angeles;
Planned Parenthood Northern California; and
Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest.
Perhaps the most shocking part of the committee’s findings is that the illegal profiting from trafficking baby body parts has been widespread and well documented. Grassley’s letter states that “evidence is contained entirely in those entities’ own records [the entities being referred for investigation], which were voluntarily provided to the Committee and are detailed in the report.” In other words, the records of Planned Parenthood affiliates and fetal tissue procurement agencies list specific organs with prices paid for transfer—prices that far exceed the supposed costs to the organizations, as they had previously claimed. The money listed for each tiny human liver and brain was not reimbursement for “shipping costs” and other innocuous expenses, as Planned Parenthood claimed over and over. The money is profit, pure and simple.
Far from these sales representing rogue Planned Parenthood affiliates, there is evidence in the report that these practices were implicitly endorsed by the national organization. The National Review states:
Though Planned Parenthood had an initial policy to ensure that all affiliates were complying with federal law on the transfer of fetal tissue (in other words, not accepting financial compensation for those transfers), several affiliates failed to follow the fetal-tissue reimbursement policy. According to the report, Planned Parenthood learned in 2011 of these violations but cancelled the policy rather than requiring affiliates to comply. The group not only turned a blind eye to these violations but also altered its oversight procedures in order to enable those violations to continue.
“I don’t take lightly making a criminal referral,” Grassley said in a release. “But, the seeming disregard for the law by these entities has been fueled by decades of utter failure by the Justice Department to enforce it.” The disturbing findings confirm what many Pro-Lifers have long suspected: America’s largest abortion business has operated with impunity for years. While receiving half a billion dollars in federal funding, Planned Parenthood sold the body parts of babies killed in abortions for even more profit.
Texas Right to Life and Pro-Lifers across our nation hope that the referrals by the House Select Panel and the Senate Judiciary Committee mark the end of an era in which Planned Parenthood is given a pass to act outside the law. The Judiciary Committee’s referrals come with an analysis of “more than 20,000 pages of documents provided by the organizations and companies involved.” Anti-Life activists claimed repeatedly that the undercover video of Planned Parenthood and their partners in crime was “deceptively edited.” Somehow, abortion activists were able to convince themselves that Planned Parenthood executives did not condemn themselves with their words caught on camera. While the videos were undeniably edited for length, there was nothing deceptive and the Center for Medical Progress released the full-length videos with transcripts. The investigative journalists did not force executives to say the shocking and heinous statements they made about callously profiting off the destruction of innocent human life.
Now that the Senate Judiciary Committee has released Planned Parenthood’s own, voluntarily surrendered documents condemning themselves, how can anyone claim there is deception? The only deception is on the part of Planned Parenthood and their criminal associates who repeatedly broke the law, betraying women and profiting from the corpses of the innocent victims of abortion.