Wednesday, the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives submitted two letters to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regarding alleged offenses of federal law by Planned Parenthood and StemExpress.
The first letter, both of which were penned by the panel’s chairwoman, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), alleges “systemic violations” of the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act. The complaint is specific to Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific, and Family Planning Specialists Medical Group, which are referred to collectively as “the abortion clinics.”
The letter documents evidence gathered by the panel that showed Planned Parenthood shared patients’ medical charts—including the age of the patient, gestational age of the baby, and general health of the mother and the baby—with StemExpress employees, who then used the information to decide which patients to approach and obtain consent to harvest the fetal tissue. StemExpress employees had daily orders from researchers for particular organs at certain gestational ages, and with access to all the patients’ medical charts, they knew which patients’ wombs contained the desired tissues.
“These violations occurred when the abortion clinics disclosed patients’ individually identifiable health information to StemExpress to facilitate the [tissue procurement business]’s efforts to procure human fetal tissue for resale,” it states. “This complaint is against each of these entities, and we request a swift and full investigation by the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services.”
The second letter accuses StemExpress of “fraudulently using invalid consent forms” to mislead customers in believing it had valid Institutional Review Board approval. The forms did not meet federal requirements for “informed consent,” and did not prevent patients from being coerced into the research programs.
“The key to understanding the HIPAA and consent violations that we’ve referred to HHS is that there’s a business contract between StemExpress and the abortion clinics under which both sides make a profit from the baby body parts inside the young woman’s womb,” Blackburn said after making the letters available to the public. “The contract changes the way both entities view the young woman: her baby is now a profit-center. This betrayal of a young woman’s trust should disgust us all. It takes financial advantage, obtains consent through coercion and deceives the woman, all in violation of federal privacy laws.”
The Center for Medical Progress, which provided the impetus for the congressional investigation with its undercover investigation of both Planned Parenthood and StemExpress, responded to the news Wednesday night with a brief official statement. It said the panel’s documentation show they “engaged in a five-year-long scheme to profit off aborted baby body parts” in direct violation of HIPAA and other federal laws.
“Now we know why Planned Parenthood and their allies have fought so hard to oppose any scrutiny of their barbaric aborted baby body parts business: the violations in Planned Parenthood and StemExpress’ illegal baby body parts trade goes far deeper than anyone ever realized,” it said. “CMP’s videos only scratched the surface of the systematic profiteering off the private health information and baby body parts from pregnant women that Planned Parenthood and their business partners like StemExpress relentlessly pursued.
“Elected officials at all levels must now act immediately to hold lawless entities like StemExpress and Planned Parenthood accountable for their atrocities against humanity.”
CMP founder David Daleiden is now being sued by Planned Parenthood, StemExpress, and the National Abortion Federation. Life Legal Defense Foundation is representing him in all three lawsuits, and issued its own statement Wednesday night.
“In addition to violating federal laws prohibiting the sale of tissue from aborted babies, now we discover that Planned Parenthood has violated federal laws protecting patient privacy,” Life Legal Executive Director Alexandra Snyder said. “Planned Parenthood and its media allies claim that none of the government investigations spurred by our client David Daleiden’s work have uncovered any wrongdoing by the abortion giant. This is manifestly untrue, and today’s letters from the Select Panel are the latest proof.”
Daleiden also faces a number of criminal charges brought by California Attorney General Kamala Harris. But in the future, some members of the California General Assembly want similar undercover investigations to be dealt with much more harshly.
Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles)—a 2015 winner of Planned Parenthood’s “Champion of Choice” award—has introduced Assembly Bill 1671. If adopted and signed into law, it would effectively ban journalists—professional or otherwise—from reporting on their own recorded conversations and video footage without the permission of those who were recorded.
To do so would result in up to $10,000 in fines and a state prison sentence of two to three years, if the bill becomes law.
