[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5582-5583]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        BABY BODY PARTS FOR SALE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to the 
research that the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives is 
conducting. I encourage everyone to examine the exhibits from the 
Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives' investigation on their Web 
site: energycommerce.house.gov/select-investigative-panel.
  On April 20, 2016, Chairman Marsha Blackburn held a hearing on the 
``Pricing of Fetal Tissue'' and found broad consensus among witnesses 
that Federal law may have been violated when abortion clinics profited 
from the sale of baby body parts.
  This grave circumstance has caused considerable concern because one 
of the underpinnings and so-called safeguards of the statute that 
allowed for the donation of fetal tissue for transplantation and 
research was that this tissue would not be sold.
  The author of the statute, former Congressman Henry Waxman, stated 
during floor debate in 1993:
  This amendment would enact the most important safeguards to prevent 
any sale of fetal issue for any purpose, not just the purpose of 
research. It would be abhorrent to allow for a sale of fetal tissue and 
a market to be created for that sale.
  Yet this is what is happening today.
  As seen on Exhibit B2, the ``Procurement Business''--the name is 
redacted--markets itself in its brochure as a way for clinics to make 
additional income by allowing procurement business technicians to 
collect fetal tissue and organs from aborted babies immediately after 
an abortion is completed. The brochure uses the words ``financially 
profitable,'' ``fiscally rewards,'' and ``financial benefit.''
  The Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives' investigation 
revealed that the procurement business technician performs every 
conceivable task in the harvesting process immediately after an 
abortion occurs. However, procurement businesses--essentially the 
middlemen between the abortion clinics on the one hand and the end 
users, the experimenters or researchers, on the other--still pay 
abortion clinics a fee, even though the clinics are not incurring any 
additional costs in the process.

[[Page 5583]]

  Exhibit D1 shows the abortion clinic charged the middleman $11,365 
for harvested baby parts--called POCs--and blood.
  Exhibit D2 shows the abortion clinic charged the middleman, again, 
this time $9,060 for harvested baby parts, or POCs, and blood, even 
though the clinic did not incur any additional expense in the 
harvesting process. After obtaining the organs from the clinic, the 
middleman then made it easy for end users to purchase baby body parts.
  Exhibit C3, the procurement business order form, or drop-down menu, 
for baby organs, illustrates just how easy this is. On the left side of 
the menu, one can choose: What type of tissue would you like to order? 
And under a multitude of options--a few of which are listed on the 
right--one could choose up here at the top, brains. These are little 
baby brains. Next you must select the number of specimens. And I 
suppose one could say six baby brains. Continuing down the list of 
questions, gestational range from start to end? One can select 16 to 18 
weeks.
  Then it asks: Add another tissue type? One could answer yes and 
scroll through the numerous options and have the opportunity to pick, 
for instance, female reproductive system and ovaries. You could then 
ask for five of those at 15 to 16 weeks. Then you could add, down at 
the bottom here, tongue.
  So these are the options.
  For crying out loud, this is the Amazon.com of baby body parts, a 
market for baby body parts. It is repulsive, outrageous, and I urge you 
to go to the Web site to see the exhibits.
  This is a market for baby body parts where you get what you pay for.
  This is utterly repulsive. Absolutely outrageous. Each one of these 
baby tongues or baby brains belongs to a little human baby. This 
business is nothing more than a fetal corpse market. How can anyone 
defend such an abhorrent practice?
  These exhibits illustrate that, in both intent and practice, these 
clinics make money well above any actual costs they incur. They are 
making a profit. Go to the Select Panel's website 
energycommerce.house.gov/select-investigative-panel and see for 
yourself the revealing exhibits that show how these organizations may 
have broken the law and profited from this gruesome, inhumane practice 
of baby body part harvesting and trafficking.

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