In a passionate speech on the House floor on Tuesday morning, Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler provided an update on the findings of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives.
Hartzler discussed a tissue procurement business which offers customers the option to order fetal body parts via an online order form. The form provides the customer with options including selection of body parts (baby brains, baby tongue, scalp, reproductive organs, etc.), quantity, range of gestational period, and even shipping options.
“This is online shopping for baby body parts, and this procurement business has made it easy as possible,” she said.
In a display entitled “Exhibit B2,” Hartzler revealed a brochure from the procurement business, which uses the words “financially profitable,” fiscally rewards,” and “financial benefit,” as it markets the company’s services to abortion clinics. She explained:
The Select Panel’s investigation revealed that the Procurement Business technician performs every conceivable task in the harvesting process, immediately after an abortion. For this, the procurement business is charged a fee by the clinic—even though the clinics are not incurring any additional costs in the process. Thus, they are making money off of this horrific act.
In 1993, Democratic former Rep. Henry Waxman, who wrote current statutes prohibiting the sale of fetal tissue into law, stated that the restrictions would serve as “safeguards… to prevent any sale of fetal tissue 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.”
Hartzler argued that such a “market” has now been created, citing instances in which abortion clinics charged $11,365.00, $9,060.00, respectively, for harvested body parts and blood.
“This is the very market Congressman Waxman called abhorrent,” said Hartzler. “And he was right. It is abhorrent. How callous does one have to be to rob a baby of life and then charge others for the pieces of the corpse? This is beyond disturbing.”
Hartzler went on to call attention to the apparent violation of women’s privacy rights during the process of human tissue sales. She stated that the Select Panel’s findings have revealed that technicians of a for-profit procurement company allegedly review medical files of women scheduled to have an abortion – without their consent – in order to assign body parts orders to babies who match the requested gestational age and sex.
“No woman should be used in this way,” said Hartzler. “No woman should have her private medical records given to a for-profit company so they can use her for a financial gain. These practices are deplorable.”
Near her conclusion, Hartzler submitted that the findings of the Select Panel already indicate that abortion facilities are allegedly turning the sale of fetal body parts into a business, and in doing so, are reportedly turning a profit. More information regarding the Select Panel and its findings thus far can be found here.
