Itemized in black and white on an invoice reviewed by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee were two gruesome purchases: $325 for the skin from an aborted baby with Down syndrome, brain from another aborted baby, and $120 for FedEx overnight priority delivery, The Christian Post reports.
The most horrific aspect of all is that this is not an isolated incident and adds credibility to the undercover investigation videos released by the Center for Medical Progress in 2015.
These two specific purchases involved Planned Parenthood and Advanced Biosciences Resources, a human tissue procurement group, according to the report.
“After paying $60 for a 20-week old fetus at a Planned Parenthood clinic in June of 2014, ABR ‘sold its brain to one customer for $325; both of its eyes for $325 each ($650 total) to a second customer, a portion of its liver for $325 to a third customer; its thymus for $325 and another portion of liver to a fourth customer; and its lung for $325 to a fifth customer,’” the report continues.
“And those costs were only for the fetal organs themselves. Before adding shipping and disease screening fees, on that one fetus alone the company charged its customers a total of $2,275, netting a $2,215 profit.”
The Majority Staff Report on Human Fetal Tissue Research issued by the U.S. Senate committee details years of controversy about the ethics of exploiting aborted babies’ body parts in biomedical research, and the 1993 passage of the National Institute of Health Revitalization Act, which was intended to prohibit all buying and selling of aborted baby body parts. U.S. 42 U.S. Code 289.2 establishes, “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.”
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“It would be abhorrent to allow for the sale of fetal tissue and a market to be created for that sale,” said Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, a lead sponsor of the legislation. “Any price is unreasonable and illegal.”
However, the Congressional report details how multiple administrations have failed to enforce the act, and the Department of Health and Human Services has failed to ever audit adherence to this federal standard. Three biotech companies have been implicated since 2010 in directly violating this 1993 provision by purchasing tissue from Planned Parenthood. However, reports of wrongdoing go back more than a decade to a Planned Parenthood facility in Overland Park, Kansas donating aborted baby body parts to research endeavors.
Planned Parenthood denies all such allegations, though calculations done by the Center for Medical Progress demonstrate how performing abortions even three days a week could yield an extra quarter million dollars annually in profit for individual locations in California and Texas.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services at Planned Parenthood, commented while simultaneously eating a salad for lunch in the first undercover video released by CMP.
“Like I said, always as many intact livers as possible. People just want – some people want lower extremities too, which, that’s simple. I mean that’s easy,” Dr. Nucatola continued.
As a result of its findings, the Senate committee recommended that Planned Parenthood and other groups face criminal charges for selling aborted baby body parts.
Chairman Grassley is referring several Planned Parenthood affiliates and companies involved in sales of aborted baby parts, as well as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.
“I don’t take lightly making a criminal referral. 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,” Grassley said. “And, unless there is a renewed commitment by everyone involved against commercializing the trade in aborted fetal body parts for profit, then the problem is likely to continue.”
Earlier this month, the House Select Panel on Infant Lives also released a list of nine criminal and regulatory referrals against abortion providers and/or fetal tissue procurement companies made as a result of their investigation into the illegal practice of selling aborted baby remains for profit. Planned Parenthood and biotech firms and universities were targets for possible criminal prosecution.
The Select Panel was created in October 2015, in response to undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress that showed Planned Parenthood officials haggling to achieve the highest price for aborted baby tissue and organs that were to be provided to a middle-man organ procurement business.
