WASHINGTON — A congressional panel has referred its investigation surrounding Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for possible criminal prosecution.
Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, outlined the development, among others, on the House floor on Thursday as she discussed information uncovered by the Select Panel on Infant Lives.
“There is so much that we the American people didn’t understand and still don’t understand about this industry,” she said. “However, since then, the panel’s investigation has uncovered alarming revelations about the fetal tissue industry.”
“Recently, the panel learned that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast violated both Texas and U.S. law when it sold baby body parts to the University of Texas,” Love advised.
She provided seven other cases where it appears that abortion facilities and/or their business partners have violated the law, including the University of Mexico’s alleged violation of the state’s Anatomical Gift Act, Stem Express’ alleged violation of HIPPA to increase the harvesting of body parts for profit, and DV Biologics’ alleged receipt of revenue for the body parts of aborted babies.
As previously reported, the matter began last year when the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a series of undercover videos showing abortion facility representatives and others discussing their work with procurement companies, as well as the process of carefully harvesting the organs of aborted babies.
In February, CMP released a video featuring Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Director of Research Melissa Farrell outlining how the organization creatively receives reimbursement specifically for the babies themselves, above and beyond any administrative costs.
It also provided images of invoices sent to the University of Texas medical branch to show how the organization divides the costs into two categories, with the $25 “per specimen” fee being craftily labeled as “per consent.”
“We had two levels of invoicing for them,” Farrell explained in the footage, stating that the organization charged for obtaining consent from the mothers. “We had it worded as ‘per consent,’ because the consent process was the administrative part that we had to do. Then we had an overall ‘administrative fee’ for basically working it into the clinics themselves. And at the time, ‘per consent’ was 25 dollars.”
She then, however, acknowledged that “per consent” really means a charge per “specimen,” but that Planned Parenthood had to word the invoice a certain way due to ethical boundaries.
“[W]e technically can’t—ethically..,” she said, trying to find the words to explain. “Based on what I’m reading here, I think it’s paying for the specimen itself.”
The documents obtained by CMP also showed that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast charged the University of Texas over $3,700 for what it wrote on paper as a “consent payment” for 25 babies, but what Ferrell noted is “paying for the specimen itself.”
“We had two levels of invoicing for them,” Farrell explained in the footage, stating that the organization charged for obtaining consent from the mothers. “We had it worded as ‘per consent,’ because the consent process was the administrative part that we had to do. Then we had an overall ‘administrative fee’ for basically working it into the clinics themselves. And at the time, ‘per consent’ was 25 dollars.”
The Select Panel on Infant Lives soon looked into the matter themselves and now have decided to refer the case for potential prosecution.
“The Select Panel is the only official, comprehensive, nationwide investigation of Planned Parenthood’s harvesting and sale of aborted fetal organs, and their findings confirm the criminal activity at Planned Parenthood that CMP’s videos documented and show that the wrongdoing goes even deeper than anyone first suspected,” CMP Director David Daleiden said on Thursday.
“Operation Rescue’s Texas attorney, Briscoe Cain, received evidence of this illegal conduct through a FOIA request and referred the evidence on to investigators. The Select Panel referred the case to the Texas attorney general,” Operation Rescue also remarked in a statement.
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