House Republicans are seeking to hold a firm that procured aborted fetuses from Planned Parenthood, and its president, in contempt of Congress.
A special panel set up to investigate how medical researchers obtain fetal tissue from abortion providers announced Monday it will meet on Wednesday to consider whether Congress should hold in contempt StemExpress and its executive Cate Dyer.
A report by Republicans on the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives says StemExpress and Dyer failed to comply with subpoenas requesting documents related to its business practices in fetal tissue procurement.
“Ms. Dyer refused to comply with the subpoena and failed to turn over a single document in response to the subpoena,” the report says.
StemExpress was featured prominantly in undercover footage released last year by abortion opponent David Daleiden for contracting with several Planned Parenthood clinics to obtain tissue, which it in turn sells to researchers and universities.
Outraged by the videos, which didn’t prove the law was broken but raised questions about tissue procurement, Republican House leaders convened the special committee last November to look into the process of how tissue is collected and transferred. Democrats have asked Republicans to disband the committee, which is led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, lead Democrat on the committee, said Tuesday that Republicans have “manufactured” a controversy, saying it was unfair of them to demand that StemExpress release the names of all its employees and noting the company has turned over about 1,700 pages of documents.
“Chair Blackburn’s apparent goal is to harass, intimidate, and ultimately drive companies away from fetal tissue work in an effort to end this important research,” Schakowsky said in a statement.
Blackburn announced that her panel will meet Wednesday afternoon. In addition to considering whether Congress should hold Dyer and StemExpress in contempt, the panel will also consider a resolution authorizing Blackburn to release a deposition conducted as part of an investigation into the University of New Mexico.
