WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the abortion giant Planned Parenthood and several of its business partners for possible criminal prosecution.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa issued a letter and report on Tuesday to both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey, outlining the findings of the Committee that point to unlawful sales of baby body parts between both Planned Parenthood and three of its buyers. He scolded the government for not doing its job.
“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,” he said in a statement. “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.”
Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, Planned Parenthood Northern California and Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest are all named in the referral, as well as StemExpress, Advanced Bioscience Resources and Novogenics Laboratories.
Grassley notes that not only does he believe the entities are culpable, but that when the national Planned Parenthood Federation of America learned that its affiliates were not in compliance with federal law, “instead of exercising its oversight procedures to bring them into compliance, it contacted the affiliates involved and then altered those oversight procedures in a manner that allowed the affiliates’ conduct to continue.”
Specifically, the Committee notes in its report that StemExpress, Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) and Novogenics Laboratories purchased the bodily organs of aborted babies from the Planned Parenthood locations, and then resold them at substantially higher prices. The organizations are also accused of hiking the prices above costs for “transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control or storage of” the body parts.
“[I]n June of 2014, an ABR technician obtained a 20-week-old fetus at a Planned Parenthood clinic, for which it paid $60,” the report outlines. “From that one fetus, 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 its liver for $325 to a fourth customer, and its lung for $325 to a fifth customer.”
In addition to making over $2,200 from just one baby, ABR also charged shipping and disease screening fees, making over $6,000 from a single child. A technician from ABR would go to Planned Parenthood and personally collect the aborted babies on site the day of the procedures.
StemExpress is accused of similar actions, paying Planned Parenthood $55 for a baby and then selling his or her body parts for $250 each, making $1000 from just one child.
The Committee also noted that despite Planned Parenthood’s “constant statements to the media that [its] affiliates had merely been recovering their costs” in receiving payment from ABR, StemExpress and other companies, its attorneys told the investigative Congressional panel that the Planned Parenthood offices only sought to determine their costs after-the-fact in light of national scrutiny.
“Around that time, Planned Parenthood announced it would no longer accept any payments in connection with its fetal tissue transfer programs,” Grassley wrote.
The criminal referral is now the eighth to be announced by Congress. As previously reported, earlier this month, Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) announced that the Select Panel on Infant Lives had referred Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for possible criminal prosecution for allegedly selling bodily organs to the University of Texas.
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