A second Congressional hearing into the Planned Parenthood abortion business will take place next week after nine videos have exposed how the abortion company sells aborted babies and their body parts for research.
This week, a House committee held an extensive hearing into the practices at Planned Parenthood and heard from an attorney who indicated the abortion business is likely breaking multiple federal laws to sell aborted babies for a profit for research. James Bopp, the general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, told the House Judiciary Committee that, “Recorded conversations, released by the Center for Medical Progress reveal many legal issues with Planned Parenthood’s procedures and practices regarding fetal tissue procurement.”
“These procedures and practices of Planned Parenthood, and their tissue procurement partners, show that federal laws when applicable, have been and are continuing to be violated during the procurement and sale of human fetal tissue,” Bopp explained.
Now, the Subcommittee on Health, chaired by pro-life Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA), has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, September 17. The hearing is entitled, “Protecting Infants: Ending Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Providers Who Violate the Law.”
During the hearing, members will discuss two bills to strengthen enforcement against providers who violate Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. They will also discuss the need to end taxpayer-funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which receives approximately $528 million annually from the federal government.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has been investigating the disturbing and abhorrent acts brought to light by a series of videos released over the past several weeks. The videos raise questions about whether Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) or its affiliates are profiting from or altering abortion practices in order to obtain and sell fetal tissue. The committee is also questioning whether or not women are giving adequate and appropriate consent. The investigation will include a thorough review of the laws surrounding these practices.
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“As the investigations into the despicable actions demonstrated in the series of videos continue, these bills take an important step forward in protecting human life,” said Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts (R-PA). “Banning taxpayer funding is a powerful enforcement tool that will ensure the vital laws established in 2002 and 2003 are enforced with every tool available. No human life should be talked about or treated with the disrespect and disregard demonstrated in the recent videos. As we move these bills forward, our investigation continues.”
These bills will bolster the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban of 2003. These bills will ban any provider proven of violating either of these existing laws from participating in Medicare. Additionally, these bills will allow states that suspect any violation of these existing laws to ban those suspected from the state’s Medicaid program.
In the course of this investigation, the committee has sent five letters since the release of the first video and conducted six interviews to date. The committee has interviewed Dr. Reagan McDonald Mosley, the Chief Medical Officer of PPFA, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services at PPFA, representatives from StemExpress, Novogenix, and Advanced Biosciences Resources, Inc. The committee has also interviewed the Associate Director for Science Policy at the National Institutes of Health. The committee will use every investigative tool available to get to the facts.
During his testimony, Bopp told the House Judiciary Committee that Planned Parenthood is illegally altering abortion procedures to get better body parts from aborted babies to sell:
One of the concerns, if abortion clinics “could profit financially from procuring fetal tissue,” was that they would change their practices to facilitate procurement. This would include performing an abortion “by an alternate method entailing greater risk to the pregnant women.” As a result, when federal law was amended to allow federal funding of transplantation research, it prohibited a physician from altering the timing, method or procedures used to terminate a pregnancy solely for the purpose of obtaining tissue.
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Regardless of whether this federal law applies to procurement of fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood promises its patients that it will not alter the abortion procedure. However, comments made by Planned Parenthood’s employees suggest that Planned Parenthood affiliates are willing to alter their abortion procedures in order to get suitable fetal tissue.
The pro-life attorney concluded: “Comments made by employees of Planned Parenthood and tissue procurement employees raise credible concerns that infants are born alive after an induced abortion at Planned Parenthood . . . While it is not clear from the videos whether or not Planned Parenthood kills babies born alive after an induced abortion to harvest fetal tissue, this is an area that needs further investigation.”
“Not only is Planned Parenthood jeopardizing their patient’s health, it is also violating a commitment made to them,” Bopp said. “Is Planned Parenthood really protecting women or are they trying to protect their bottom line by ensuring they can get the most money they can out of each abortion?”
Bopp says Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of abortions – at least one-third of all abortions in the U.S. are performed at Planned Parenthood-affiliated facilities. According to their most recent annual report, Planned Parenthood received at least $528 million annually from the federal government or other levels of government. Based on data from their own annual report from 2013-2014, nearly one in eight women walking through the door of a Planned Parenthood clinic has an abortion.
Following the hearing and additional hearings on the issue, Congress is expected to vote on Planned Parenthood. The House of Representatives is planning a vote on legislation in a couple weeks that would de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business. The two votes would follow one the Senate had weeks ago, which saw Senate Democrats filibuster and block legislation to revoke $550 million in taxpayer funding. The Senate is expected to vote soon on a second attempt to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
The Center for Medical Progress recently released its most recent video — the 9th in its series of videos catching the Planned Parenthood abortion business selling aborted babies and their body parts. This latest video catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
The Center for Medical Progress also released the full, uncut video of the conversation between undercover investigators form CMP and top officials with StemExpress, which buys aborted babies and their body parts from Planned Parenthood. The full footage is of a shorter video that summarized the meetings earlier this week.
In Congress, two committees in the House of Representatives have already launched investigations of Planned Parenthood. One committee is looking into whether or not the abortion business is breaking federal law by altering abortion procedures to better obtain aborted baby body parts for sale. Another committee, among other things, is investigating the Obama administration and whether there is any connection between it and the abortion giant.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants to know if the Obama administration, via the Department of Health and Human Services, provided any federal grants to Planned Parenthood that ultimately went to pay for the sales of aborted baby body parts and if they were used by Planned Parenthood to “support transactions involving fetal tissue.”
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all nine:
- In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
- In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
- In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
- In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
- In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
- In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
- In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
- In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
- The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
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So far, 12 states have responded to the Planned Parenthood videos and launched investigations into their abortion and organ harvesting business including South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Kansas, Missouri, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana. The district attorney in Houston Texas is also investigating after the Houston-based Planned Parenthood abortion facility was caught selling aborted babies.
Congress has expanded its investigation into the Planned Parenthood abortion business and five states have revoked taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood’s abortion business, including Utah, Arkansas, Alabama, New Hampshire and Louisiana and Iowa’s governor has ordered a review of Planned Parenthood funding.
The full, unedited videos have confirmed that revelations that some aborted baby remains sold by Planned Parenthood go to biotech companies for the purpose of creating “humanized” mice. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood has been exposed as having sold body parts from aborted babies for as much as 15 years.
The federal law that technically prohibits the sale of aborted babies and their body parts was written by a pro-abortion Congressman decades ago and essentially spells out a process by which sellers of aborted baby body parts can meet certain criteria that allows the sales to be legal. That’s why a Colorado congressman has introduced legislation to totally ban the sales of aborted baby body parts.
