The Patriot Post® · Fetal Tissue Sold for Profit? House Committee Investigates

Last year Americans got a harrowing glimpse at Planned Parenthood’s behind-the-scenes methods after the Center for Medical Progress began releasing undercover videos of fetal harvesting. By law, fetal tissue is allowed to be used for research, but the law also bars any financial incentives — money can only be used to cover expenses. The question is whether procurement companies are actually following the rules. The U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives is working to determine how big of an issue this is. Its findings were revealed during a hearing today. And the details are troubling.

The Daily Signal reports, “According to Republicans involved in the investigation, a researcher paid a middleman procurement company $3,340 for a fetal brain, $595 for a ‘baby skull matched to upper and lower limbs,’ and $890 for ‘upper and lower limbs with hands and feet.’” Moreover, “Over the span of a year, one research institution paid a middleman company $42,535 to obtain 38 fetal brains, 12 fetal hearts, three fetal upper/lower limbs, five fetal livers, and 12 fetal pancreases, according to the select House panel’s documents.”

One company whose name was redacted by the committee said it “promotes global biomedical research while also providing a financial benefit to your clinic.” And former U.S. attorney Brian Patrick Lennon believes an “ethical federal prosecutor could establish probable cause that both the abortion clinics and the procurement business violated the [federal] statute (42 U.S.C. § 289g-2), aided and abetted one another in violating the statute (18 U.S.C. § 2), and likely conspired together to violate the statute (18 U.S.C. § 371).”

The investigation will hopefully pay off. But until the law changes, companies will continue to bend the rules to cushion their bottom line. Morally, aborting babies and then auctioning their body parts is sickening and abhorrent. But before we can change the law, we have to change the culture.