A new official in the Trump administration is rankling abortion activists because of his work investigating whether Planned Parenthood illegally sold aborted baby body parts.
March Bell, the new chief of staff for the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services, used to work for the Select Panel on Infant Lives, a U.S. House panel that investigated the abortion industry’s trafficking of aborted baby body parts.
The Washington Examiner reports pro-abortion Democrats are accusing Bell of secretly coordinating with the Center for Medical Progress, which exposed the body parts scandal in a series of undercover videos.
On Thursday, they sent a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, urging him to recuse Bell from any cases involving abortion or the sale of aborted baby body parts.
“It is clear that Mr. Bell is not an impartial investigator on those topics, and we do not believe he can be trusted to fairly adjudicate any related cases,” they wrote.
U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a pro-abortion Democrat from Illinois who was on the Select Panel and attempted to thwart the investigation, is one of the letter signers. The other letter signers also served on the panel; they are Jerrold Nadler of New York, Diana DeGette of Colorado, Jackie Speier of California, Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, and Suzan DelBene of Washington.
Here’s more from the report:
“Mr. Bell’s reported statements and actions call into question his conduct, judgment, and ability to meet professional standards of impartiality and fairness,” the Democrats wrote in a letter to Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary.
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They raised instances of statements Bell allegedly made at the Law of Life Summit, in which he stated that the panel relied on “lots of phone calls with David Daleiden” and also noted that he spoke with anti-abortion activists Troy Newman of Operation Rescue and Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics during the Select Panel’s investigation.
Each of the letter signers has received campaign donations from the abortion chain Planned Parenthood.
In 2015, Degette was exposed as one of the biggest Congressional recipients of Planned Parenthood donations. She ranked fifth on the list, having received a total of $41,485 from Planned Parenthood for her election campaigns, LifeNews.com previously reported.
Despite complaints from pro-abortion Democrats about the Center for Medical Progress and Congressional investigation, authorities did find strong evidence of wrong-doing, and investigations continue.
Late last year, the Orange County District Attorney in California shut down two bioscience companies that sold aborted baby body parts and worked with Planned Parenthood. And in 2015, South Carolina authorities fined Planned Parenthood for illegally dumping aborted baby body parts in landfills.
In December, the U.S. Department of Justice said it is investigating whether the abortion chain illegally sold aborted baby body parts.
