The House of Representatives has held four hearings into the Planed Parenthood abortion business and the scandal surrounding its sales of aborted babies and their body parts. Because the abortion company receives almost half a billion in taxpayer funds, House Republicans want to investigate Planned Parenthood much more intensely than the hearings allow.
To that end, the House today approved a a Select Panel on abortion and the sale of aborted baby body parts that will spend a year thoroughly investigating the Planned Parenthood abortion business amid the brewing scandal of it selling aborted babies and appearing to break multiple federal laws in so doing. The Select Panel is being formed in response to the information revealed by the videos released by Center for Medical Progress and it will consist of eight Republicans and five Democrats. The work of this panel will be in addition to the ongoing investigations at the Judiciary Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“Our investigation has raised many more questions than we’ve been able to find answers,” said pro-life Rep. Marsha Blackburn,. a Tennessee Republican expected to lead the panel. “We need to have a national conversation about these practices. This is a discussion we cannot shy away from.”
“This is about getting answers to questions about how we treat and protect life in this country,” she added. “This is a discussion that this country must have; we cannot shy away from what is an unsettling topic. The allegations raised in these disturbing and abhorrent videos have led us to ask: What have we come to in this country? This select panel will allow us to have this conversation and help us get the facts about how infant lives are being treated.”
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
Blackburn outlined the topics this panel will investigate:
- Medical procedures and business practices used by entities involved in fetal tissue procurement;
- Any other matters with respect to fetal tissue procurement;
- Federal funding and support for abortion providers;
- The practices of providers of second and third trimester abortions, including partial birth abortion procedures that may lead to a child born alive as a result of an attempted abortion;
- Medical procedures for the care of a child born alive as a result of an attempted abortion;
- Any changes in law or regulation necessary as a result of any other findings made.
The House voted 242 to 184 in favor of the new Select Panel, with two Democrats joining House Republicans in voting for the committee and one Republican joining Democrats opposing it.
LifeNews political analyst Andrew Bair said Democratic opposition to the new committee spoke volumes: “If [there’s been] no wrongdoing, why are abortion advocates opposed to panel investigating Planned Parenthood? Isn’t it a chance to exonerate Planned Parenthood?”
In the first hearing on Planned Parenthood, James Bopp, the general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, told the House Judiciary Committee that Planned Parenthood likely broke multiple federal laws in its sale of aborted babies and their body parts for research.
He said, “Recorded conversations, released by the Center for Medical Progress reveal many legal issues with Planned Parenthood’s procedures and practices regarding fetal tissue procurement.”
During a second hearing, Democrats on the panel complained that the videos showing the abuses at Planned Parenthood were “heavily edited.” But when Republicans on the committee attempted to show the videos, they objected and refused to watch them.
At a third hearing, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards defended the sales of abortion babies. She contended that no baby has ever been born alive following a botched abortion, she essentially admitted that claims Planned Parenthood does mammograms are a lie, and she defended her exorbitantly high salary as the head of the nation’s biggest abortion business.
“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.
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are looking to use the reconciliation process to approve legislation to de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which has been caught selling aborted babies and their body parts. After the House approved the de-funding measure, Senate Democrats defeated a bill to fund the federal government that included language de-funding Planned Parenthood for one year while the Congressional investigation continues into how it allegedly violated multiple laws to sell aborted babies and their body parts.
House Republican leaders are planning to target Planned Parenthood’s funding by immediately drafting a fast-track reconciliation bill that would be able to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster and be approved on a majority vote in the Senate.
While the reconciliation process would result in getting a bill to de-fund Planned Parenthood to pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s desk, Obama has already promised repeatedly to veto any bill that revokes taxpayer funding for the abortion company. The Senate does not have enough votes to overcome such a veto, leading some pro-life groups to point out that there is little hope of de-funding Planned Parenthood until the election of a pro-life president next year.
“The Administration strongly opposes Senate passage of the Senate amendment to H.J.Res. 61, making continuing appropriations for fiscal year (FY) 2016, and for other purposes, which contains highly objectionable provisions that advance a narrow ideological agenda,” the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said before the vote. Eliminating federal funding to Planned Parenthood would “limit access” to healthcare for women, men, families and “disproportionately” affect low-income people, the OMB said.
Weeks ago, a previous Senate vote on de-funding Planned Parenthood saw Senate Democrats filibuster and block legislation to revoke $550 million in taxpayer funding.
A new Congressional report finds that de-funding the Planned Parenthood abortion business — even for one year — would save “several thousand” unborn babies from the nightmare of abortion. The report also finds de-funding Planned Parenthood would save the federal government $235 million.
The 10th video by The Center for Medical Progress features several top-level Planned Parenthood executives discussing the organization’s secretive practices around aborted fetal parts harvesting. The video includes comments from Deborah VanDerhei, the National Director of the organization’s Consortium of Abortion Providers, describing the harvesting of fetal body parts as “donation for remuneration.”
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must Investigate Planned Parenthood for Selling Aborted Baby Parts
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all ten:
- 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.
- The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies.The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must Investigate Planned Parenthood for Selling Aborted Baby Parts
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.
