A hearing on the sale of aborted fetal tissue quickly devolved into accusations of personal attacks and bitter fights about the validity of a series of documents Republicans say may prove abortion clinics profit from the sale of aborted baby parts.
Democrats started the hearing Wednesday of the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives by questioning the validity of a series of exhibits from Republicans detailing the business practices of an unnamed tissue procurement company.
Democrats pointed to a letter from attorneys for the biotech firm StemExpress, who claimed an anti-abortion activist might have stolen some of the documents in the exhibits. StemExpress was not called to testify before the panel.
“Is this hearing really going to proceed based on stolen and misleading documents?” asked Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif.
“Even Frank Underwood would be blushing at this point,” she said, referring to the popular cutthroat politician in “House of Cards.”
Speier said that while the panel is “focusing on what goes on inside a woman’s uterus, we are completely ignoring what happens to babies and children outside of them.”
Rep. Larry Buschon, R-Ind., didn’t take kindly to those comments.
He said that the comments inferred that “as a physician I am here to allow people to die. It is a personal attack on me as a physician.”
“You were not referenced by name,” Speier nonchalantly shot back.
Republicans released a series of documents and presentations that they say makes a compelling case that a tissue procurement company and several abortion clinics may violate federal law by profiting from fetal tissue sales.
Republicans showed a screen shot of a website for a procurement company whose name is redacted. The website said the unnamed company “fiscally rewards clinics” for providing fetal and adult tissues.
Other documents show screen shots of how to order fetal tissue parts such as brain or limbs and instructions to technicians on how to get such fetal body parts.
Taken together, the documents give proof that procurement companies sign up a lot of abortion clinics and give them “financial benefit” to provide such fetal parts, said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
“This does not sound to me like tissue donation for research — this sounds like someone who wants to make money, a lot of money selling baby body parts,” she said in her opening statement.
Democrats said that such evidence was flimsy, and questioned why the panel didn’t bring in StemExpress, the procurement company that says it is referred to in several of the exhibits.
“We don’t know what they are,” said Rep. Diana Degette, D-Colo., in a press conference after the hearing.
StemExpress’ attorneys wrote to the committee questioning the authenticity of several documents in the exhibits.
For instance, they said some of the documents may have been stolen by anti-abortion activist David Daleiden. He shot a series of undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the harvesting of aborted fetal body parts.
A former employee at StemExpress discusses the business’ practices in another video released by Daleiden, who faces federal charges related to allegedly using fake IDs to gain access to Planned Parenthood officials.
StemExpress’ attorneys noted that fetal tissue “is an exceedingly small fraction” of total revenue.
Degette tried to quash the exhibits but the panel voted along party lines 8-5 to keep them.
Blackburn said after the hearing that the committee’s work is a “fact-finding mission.” The committee plans to produce a report by the end of the year. She also didn’t believe that Daleiden provided any of the documents used in the exhibits.
When asked if the panel will call Daleiden to testify in a later hearing, Blackburn told reporters she “did not know. We’ll see.”
