The United States House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel today announced that they are referring Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for criminal prosecution.
Along with PPGC, the group recommends prosecution for: StemExpress, DaVinci Biosciences, and Advanced Bioscience Resources by their respective local and state law enforcement. All of the groups were subjects in videos released over a year ago by the Center for Medical Progress.
In the videos, pro-life activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt went undercover posing as interested buyers of fetal tissue. In the videos, many of PPGC’s employees are seen casually negotiating the prices and conditions of aborted fetal tissue that they would provide.
Following the release of the videos Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, tasked with investigating Planned Parenthood, chose to indict the journalists instead. After an extensive fight the charges against them were finally dropped.
The House panel conducted a year-long investigation into the videos and the role Planned Parenthood played. They said the findings resulted in evidence of legal breaches by the facility and the tissue companies. Among those violated were medical privacy laws.
Of today’s recommendations, the Center for Medical Progress said, “The Select Panel is the only official, comprehensive, nationwide investigation of Planned Parenthood’s harvesting and sale of aborted fetal organs, and their findings confirm the criminal activity at Planned Parenthood that CMP’s videos documented and shows the wrongdoing goes deeper than anyone first expected.”
