DOJ URGED TO PROBE BABY BODY PARTS SCANDAL AT PLANNED PARENTHOOD
By
NWV Senior Political News Writer, Jim Kouri
Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
August 21, 2015
© 2015
NewsWithViews.com
As proponents of abortion at Planned Parenthood take the offensive with the help of Hillary Clinton, her Democratic Party machine, and a major portion of the news media, GOP lawmakers are continuing to pressure the Obama administration's minions at the Justice Department to provide information from its claimed investigation of late-term abortions and the harvesting of body parts for profit. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, and Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee Chairman Trent Franks, R-Arizona, on Monday said they firmly but respectfully requested Department of Justice (DOJ) to turn over information into DOJ's prior investigations into allegations that there were changes made to abortion procedures for the purpose of collecting fetal body parts.
The letter to the DOJ is another step in the Judiciary Committee’s probe into the behavior of Planned Parenthood management and staff. It was sent on Monday as a follow up to Chairman Goodlatte's and Subcommittee Chairman Franks' original letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch demanding further investigation by DOJ into potential violations of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 by Planned Parenthood.
Besides the ban, on April 18, 2007 the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, held that the statute does not violate the Constitution. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the dissent. Kennedy argued that the case differed from Stenberg v. Carhart, a 2000 case in which the Supreme Court struck down a state ban on "partial-birth abortion" as unconstitutional, in that the Partial Birth Abortion Act defined the banned procedure more clearly.
Recent undercover journalists' videotapes feature executives from Planned Parenthood discussing the sale fetal body parts and the possible alteration of abortion procedures in order to obtain those small body parts. The House committee expecting the DOJ to take action without regard to politics and Lynch's feelings about the laws that govern such practices and their enforcement. Chairman Goodlatte stated in his letter to the DOJ states that “[N]ew evidence suggests that this disturbing practice of altering the procedure is more than an isolated instance.”
Based on the evidence presented in the videos featuring Planned Parenthood executives, Chairman Goodlatte has called upon DOJ to assess three federal laws that may be implicated by these videos, and expressed the Committee’s “interest in understanding the history of the enforcement of these laws at the Department of Justice.”
“I’d say a lot of people want livers,” an executive from Planned Parenthood stated in a video released on July 15, 2015. “And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.” She further stated: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
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In his letter to Attorney General Lynch, Goodlatte and Franks wrote a reminder of the federal laws that cover abortions: "At least three federal laws may be linked to the Planned Parenthood allegations: 42 U.S.C. § 274e, which states that '[i]t shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce'; 42 U.S.C. § 289g, which states that '[i]t shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce'; and 18 U.S.C. § 1531, which prohibits partial-birth abortions."
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