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WASHINGTON, D.C., May 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Ninety-eight congressmen have signed a letter asking House Speaker Paul Ryan to dissolve the special panel investigating allegations that the abortion industry is illegally profiting from the sale of human body parts.
“It is clear that this panel serves no other purpose than to carry out politically-motivated attacks on Planned Parenthood, and it should be dissolved immediately,” the congressmen, all Democrats, said in the letter written on April 28.
“The only surprising thing about this letter is how few members of the House signed it,” Jim Sedlak, vice president of the American Life League (ALL), told LifeSiteNews. “There are 435 members of the House, which means that the 98 signers represent only 22.5 percent of the membership.”
“There was a time when members of the House would be tripping all over themselves to sign a letter like this in support of Planned Parenthood,” he said. “Apparently, not any more.”
The members accused the House Select Panel on Infant Lives of “doing the bidding of the National Republican Congressional Committee,” an apparent admission that the hearing's optics do not favor supporters of abortion-on-demand in this November's elections.
They were clearly incensed that the panel's Republican majority, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, had issued a dozen subpoenas against abortion-linked organizations that had not cooperated with the investigation to date.
That move, the letter states, was aimed at “personally intimidating the scientists who are engaged in this life-saving work.”
The panel's work has been excoriated by Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women, and the Feminist Majority Foundation, among others.
“This witch hunt, led by Chairman Blackburn and Speaker Ryan, is arguably worse than McCarthyism,” said Dana Singiser, Planned Parenthood’s vice president for public policy.
She apparently lifted that comparison from Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, who said at the most recent set of panel hearings last month, “This committee is worse than McCarthy investigations, because McCarthy endangered…people’s jobs. This committee is knowingly endangering people’s lives.”
Congressman Nadler said his fellow committee members had consciously acted to facilitate the potential murder of people involved in fetal organ and tissue procurement.
“In their subpoenas for names, it is being used very deliberately to endanger the lives of the people who work there at these organizations,” he said.
Nadler was not among the letter's signatories.
The panel's discoveries have undoubtedly caused embarrassment, and heartburn over potential legal issues, to all parties involved. StemExpress even asked Democratic congressmen to suppress documents it believed had been procured by the Center for Medical Progress during the most recent hearings.
Invoices the panel's pro-life members uncovered revealed that the organ procurement industry paid up to $11,365 a month to some abortion facilities.
One of the panel's charts showed the phenomenal growth of StemExpress, the procurement agency that pays Planned Parenthood and abortion facilities for the limbs, organs, tissue, and blood of aborted babies and in turn supplies it to purchasers.
But it hasn't all been good news for the abortion industry, despite skyrocketing revenue, including Planned Parenthood receiving $553.7 million from U.S. taxpayers in 2014.
“Planned Parenthood has closed 300 clinics in the last 20 years,” Sedlak told LifeSiteNews. “As the clinics close, fewer and fewer members of the House have Planned Parenthood facilities in their district. Obviously, these closures are translating into a lessening of support for Planned Parenthood in the House.”
“This is just more evidence that Planned Parenthood’s days are numbered,” he said.