In the wake of the second video from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) which documents yet another, high-level Planned Parenthood (PP) abortionist haggling over the price of aborted infants, fifty U.S. Senators joined in a letter written by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) calling for the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Sylvia Burwell, to investigate the organization. Ten members of the House also asked the Department of Justice to investigate.
The senators’ letter states that the videos, “raise a number of questions about the practices of the organization, including whether they are in compliance with federal laws regulating both the use of fetal tissue and partial-birth abortion.”
Performing a partial-birth abortion is a felony under federal law punishable by up to two years in prison. A separate federal law forbids abortionists from altering the timing or method of abortion in order to preserve fetal tissue and organs for harvesting.
Of all the claims made against it, PP has hardly mounted any defense at all to the charge that their doctors commit partial-birth abortions and alter their abortion methods in order to obtain more usable organs. These are difficult charges to deny, particularly the latter, after two, separate, high-level PP abortionists have been caught on tape offering to do exactly that.
Planned Parenthood demands that the public swallow its unbelievable narrative that although it offers to go to the extraordinary lengths of lying to women and endangering them in order to preserve organs for its other clientele, it “in no way” profits from doing so. Meanwhile, PP’s other clientele, StemExpress founder Cate Dyer, brags in the press that buying and selling human tissue has made her a millionaire almost overnight.
The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is also a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000. Under federal law, taking or giving “valuable consideration” for fetal tissue is banned; only reimbursements of reasonable, actual costs incurred by the donating clinic and relating to transportation, storage and the like are allowed. PP points to Dr. Nucatola’s recorded concerns of being “perceived” as selling baby parts as the only proof necessary to show PP is operating within the law. Utah Senator Mike Lee had a response for that in his letter to the Department of Justice and HHS, “[H]ow Planned Parenthood’s actions are perceived is irrelevant to whether the organization is in fact receiving valuable consideration and is therefore in violation of federal law.”
In contrast, four Democrats from the House of Representatives obediently took their cue from PP’s Senior Counsel and sent an absurd letter to the Attorneys General of United States and California urging them to investigate the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) for a hodge-podge of non-crimes and exercises of constitutionally protected rights.
While noting that CMP’s front corporation, Biomax, LLC, is duly organized under California law, the letter bizarrely urges that CMP may have violated some unspecified law(s) because the corporation is “fake,” and CMP actors were “impersonating” corporate officers. The Representatives profess outrage that CMP actors may have used “fake” ID’s to gain access to PP clinics, while simultaneously admitting they have no knowledge of the type of identification used or any laws that may have been violated.
The congressmen also assert that CMP may have violated California laws against recording confidential communications, but rather than look at the video themselves, their primary “evidence” is that CMP founder, David Daleiden, may know filmmaker James O’Keefe (who exposed the leftist organization, ACORN)! The letter goes on for several paragraphs about O’Keefe and the ACORN sting, but never even attempts to show that CMP violated California’s Invasion of Privacy Act.
While the Act is a concern to journalists making undercover videos because it is broadly worded, the California courts ruled long ago in favor of Dateline NBC in a case involving a sting similar to CMP’s that surreptitious recording of conversation in public, taking place within full earshot of non-participants, does not violate the act.
CMP’s, David Daleiden, responded to the letter, “They will attack me and my organization all day long, but that does not change the facts about what our investigation has uncovered and what the American people now know — that Planned Parenthood is engaged in an enterprise-wide operation that traffics and sells baby body parts.”
Fortunately, there are more investigations than those being conducted by the various branches of the virulently pro-abortion and pro-Planned Parenthood Obama administration. To date, governors in eight states have announced probes into PP’s trafficking in fetal tissue and organs.
As always, Life Legal Defense Foundation’s attorneys stand ready to defend the defenders of life.
* “Who will guard the guardians themselves?”