By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is urging the FBI and Justice Department to investigate Planned Parenthood and three tissue-specimen companies over allegations of improperly selling tissues from aborted fetuses.
The call for an investigation came as the Senate Judiciary Committee discovered that three companies charged unlawfully high prices for fetal tissues, the Des Moines Register reports.
“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,” the Iowa Republican 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.”
The Des Moines Register wrote:
At issue in the Judiciary Committee report is a 1993 law governing human fetal tissue research that bans buying or selling such tissue — with the narrow exception that suppliers can charge for the cost of transportation, processing, preservation, storage and other costs associated with a transfer.
The law means, in short, that fetal tissues may be transferred for research purposes so long as no one profits from that transfer.
In reviewing transfers from four Planned Parenthood organizations to three specimen companies, however, Grassley’s committee says it has uncovered evidence of profit-making.
