The House Committee on Energy and Commerce will use its Select Investigative Panel to investigate late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart.
Public reports show at least almost half-a-dozen women have been hospitalized since December while seeking an abortion at his Germantown, Md., abortion clinic. The clinic is one of the few in the country that performs abortions during the third trimester.
“Reports regarding the Germantown clinic are deeply troubling, both for the sake of babies whose lives are ended so close to — and possibly even after — birth and for the sake of the women who have been rushed from that clinic to the hospital with increasing frequency,” Committee Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a statement Wednesday.
The panel issued nine subpoenas seeking further information about the abortions to: Carhart, Germantown Reproductive Health Services, Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center, Holy Cross Germantown Hospital, Montgomery County Police Department, Montgomery County Department of Fire and Rescue Services, Montgomery County Emergency Communications Center, Butler Medical Transport, and the Maryland Board of Physicians.
Blackburn said the subpoenas were issued because “time is of the essence.”
According to reports, an underage girl was transferred to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital after starting an abortion procedure on March 20 at the Germantown clinic. At that time, she was the fourth woman in four consecutive months to be transported by ambulance due to medical emergencies related to a late term abortion.
The panel’s specific mission is to “gather information and get the facts about medical practices of abortion service providers and the business practices of the procurement organizations who sell baby body parts.” Its jurisdiction includes reviewing the practices of providers of second- and third-trimester abortions, as well as the care of infants born alive as a result of attempted abortions.
Read the subpoenas here.
