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Select Panel to HHS: Planned Parenthood and StemExpress Broke the Law
June 2, 2016 
Washington,
D.C. - Two letters have been sent to the Department of Health and
Human Services by the Select Panel on Infant Lives seeking further
investigation and remedies for violations it uncovered in the course of
its investigation into Planned Parenthood's trade in aborted baby
remains. The investigation was initiated after the Center for Medical Progress released undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood officials haggling over the price of aborted baby remains.
Committee
Chairman Marsha Blackburn notified HHS officials that it had obtained
evidence that for over a five-year period, two Planned Parenthood
organizations and a third abortion facility violated HIPAA privacy laws
by allowing employees of the organ procurement company StemExpress to
access private patient records that clearly identified women by name
and birth date.
The abortion businesses at issue are all located in California. They include:
Each patient record shared constitutes a separate violation of HIPAA, noted Blackburn.
Concerns
were also expressed that coercion may have been involved in obtaining
consents from vulnerable pregnant women for the donation of their
aborted babies' remains. Each StemExpress procurement technician
received a bonus for every organ or other body part obtained. In
addition, technicians were instructed to inform women that the remains
would be used to cure various diseases, (for which, in some cases,
researchers are not actually using fetal remains), as a means of
persuading women to consent.
The second letter focused
on evidence that StemExpress violated regulations by "fraudulently
using invalid consent forms, and misleading customers to believe it had
valid Institutional Review Board ('IRB') approval."
"The
so-called IRB used by StemExpress appeared to be phony as a
three-dollar bill," said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, who
served as a founding board member for the Center for Medical Progress.
"This gave Planned Parenthood and StemExpress' body parts business an
illusion of legitimacy that it did not possess."
The
Select Panel is asking the HHS to conduct additional investigation
into these offenses and take "all appropriate actions" if it agrees
violations occurred.
Nearly 80 pages of documentation
accompanied the letters to support the Select Panel's conclusions that
Planned Parenthood and StemExpress broke the law.
"The
Select Panel has provided irrefutable evidence that Planned Parenthood
violated the privacy of patients and that StemExpress fraudulently
portrayed its organ procurement as legitimate," said Newman. "The
Panel's investigation confirms what the Center for Medical Progress
videos showed; that this was nothing but a scheme to exploit women and
their babies for financial gain," said Newman.
Read Blackburn's Letters:
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