House Republicans advanced a recommendation for legal proceedings against a California company that contracted with Planned Parenthood for fetal tissue, after their Democratic colleagues walked out of the hearing in protest.
Democrats and Republicans spent the hearing arguing over whether the House Select Panel on Infant Lives has the legal authority to hold StemExpress in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents that could show whether the company illegally profited from the tissue.
After Republicans blocked several attempts by Democrats to table the recommendation and end the hearing, the Democrats left the hearing in protest.
“We refuse to sanction or endorse this excercise by continuing to participate,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, the leading Democrat on the panel.
Republican Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee insisted the special panel, created last year in the wake of undercover vidoes targeting Planned Parenthood, does have the authority to advance a resolution of contempt. Republicans advanced the resolution, 8-0, after Democrats left the hearing room.
“The panel is entitled to this information so we can answer the question … did companies improperly profit,” Blackburn said. “A subpoena is not a suggestion. It is a lawful order and must be complied with.”
The House parliamentarian will decide whether the recommendation must next go before the full Energy and Commerce Committee or whether it can go directly to the House floor.
House Republican leaders established the special committee last year to centralize investigations into groups involved in procuring aborted fetuses and making them available to medical researchers. The sharp disputes Wednesday were part of ongoing, partisan discord over the panel’s work, which Democrats have asked Republicans to end, saying it amounts to little more than a political witch hunt.
“This illegal meeting is a political sideshow with devastating consequences for anyone who cares about women’s healthcare,” Schakowsky said.
Anti-abortion activist David Daleiden brought the issue into the public spotlight last year by releasing undercover videos showing how some Planned Parenthood clinics supplied aborted fetal tissue to human tissue companies.
The footage provoked broad outrage from Republicans and caused Planned Parenthood to ban its clinics from receiving any compensation for the tissue, although the women’s health and abortion provider says it had only previously been reimbursed for overhead costs, which is legal.
While StemExpress says it has responded to subpoenas from the committee, Republicans charged Wednesday that StemExpress hasn’t fully supplied accounting documents allowing them to see whether the company illegally profited off the tissue.
But StemExpress insists it has provided hundreds of documents in response to subpoenas from the committee and said it has offered to testify before the panel but was turned down.
“StemExpress offered to testify before the select panel, but this offer was ignored,” a spokesman for the company said.
If the full House votes to hold StemExpress and its CEO, Cate Dyer, in contempt, it would be the first time since 2014, when the chamber held IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress.
Republicans on the special committee released a report in July that raises questions about whether suppliers of fetal tissue profited, but doesn’t prove they did. They plan to release another report at the end of the year summing up their work.
The panel initially planned an additional vote Wednesday allowing it to publicly release a May 11 deposition of Dr. Eve Espey, chairwoman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of New Mexico, but canceled the vote.
