Senate Judiciary Chairman Recommends Criminal Investigation Into Planned Parenthood

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today applauded Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) decision to refer the Planned Parenthood Federation of America to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution. The Committee today released a detailed report about Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of human tissue and its potential failed or lack of compliance with the law. 

“I am pleased that Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley has asked the Justice Department and the FBI to do a criminal investigation into the tissue harvesting operation of Planned Parenthood,” said Lankford. “The findings in this detailed report are staggering. Planned Parenthood has engaged in inhumane and barbaric procedures that are possibly illegal, and they must be held accountable. It is also past time for their taxpayer federal funding to be redirected to other entities that provide woman’s health care without doing abortions. While our nation is divided on abortion, we shouldn’t force the taxes of Americans who strongly oppose organ harvesting or abortion to continue to fund an organization that carries out these inhumane practices.”

In July 2015, Lankford joined Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) to introduce a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and redirect its taxpayer funding to other entities that provide women’s health care services. Shortly after videos revealed Planned Parenthood’s practice of harvesting human body parts from abortions, Lankford delivered a passionate speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. In January 2016, Congress passed a law to defund Planned Parenthood, but President Obama vetoed the bill.

The Judiciary Committee Report Concludes:
• Despite the clear legislative history of the 1993 NIH Revitalization Act, the executive branch across multiple administrations has failed to enforce the law’s safeguards.

• Since 2010, three companies – Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc.; StemExpress, LLC; and Novogenix Laboratories, LLC (Novogenix has since gone out of business) – have paid affiliates of Planned Parenthood Federation of America to acquire aborted fetuses, and then sold the fetal tissue to their respective customers at substantially higher prices than their documented costs.

• The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) initially had a policy in place to ensure its affiliates were complying with the law, but the affiliates failed to follow its fetal tissue reimbursement policy. 

• The cost analyses provided by affiliates of Planned Parenthood Federation of America lack sufficient documentation and rely on unreasonably broad and vague claims of costs for “the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control or storage of” fetal tissue. 

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