Planned Parenthood Faces the Grinder

Stately Progress

It is an ancient saying: "Millstones of Justice turn exceedingly slow, but grind exceedingly fine."
(John Bannister Gibson (1780-1853), American jurist, Pennsylvania Supreme Court.)  A similar sentiment has been attributed to Sun Tzu--the Chinese master strategist of war.  It has also been attributed to Euripides.

Whatever the source, the sentiment still rings true.  And so it is turning out for the legal cases against Planned Parenthood, the US federally funded abortion company.  This is the outfit over which the forgettable President Obama pronounced a divine blessing on all their work.  This is the outfit that was exposed as selling body parts of killed unborn children for profit.  This is the outfit that has attempted to persecute the whistle blowers.

Meanwhile, the wheels of justice continue slowly to grind.  It turns out that the US House of Representative has an investigative panel on infant lives.  It has quietly been going about its work.  The upshot is that the criminal case against Planned Parenthood is slowly increasing in size and weight.

This from National Review:

About a year and a half ago, a series of horrifying undercover videos emerged online, depicting workers at Planned Parenthood clinics casually discussing the transfer and sale of the body parts of unborn children. Few people seemed to pay attention to the issue after the initial shock of the videos wore off, but one group of U.S. congressmen — the House Select Panel on Infant Lives — is still uncovering evidence, confirming the truth of what was shown in the videos: Planned Parenthood was indeed involved in this illegal activity.

The latest news on their investigation came on Thursday, when Utah congresswoman Mia Love announced on the House floor a list of eight criminal referrals — recommendations that local law enforcement further investigate the groups in question. Among the referrals was one made to the Texas attorney general’s office regarding Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast, after the panel discovered evidence indicating that the group sold body parts of aborted babies to the University of Texas, an activity that is illegal under both Texas and federal law. The investigation is ongoing, and more referrals are expected as the committee continues its work.

When the undercover videos were first released, the howls of indignant outrage included shouts that the interviews recorded with Planned Parenthood staff were deceptively spliced and diced.  The videos were thus fabrications.  That deflection is now null and void.

The bipartisan select panel was established over a year ago specifically to address the evidence presented in the undercover video campaign of the Center for Medical Progress, which alleged that several Planned Parenthood affiliates were illegally profiting from the sale of the body parts of aborted babies, often with the aid of tissue-procurement organizations (TPOs) such as StemExpress. Despite repeated claims from Planned Parenthood and its allies that the videos were “heavily and deceptively edited,” further examination has shown this argument to be false, and the panel’s investigation has marshaled evidence confirming that the practices shown in the videos do take place.

In fact, the panel released an interim report in mid July on its findings, detailing the methods used by Planned Parenthood and several TPOs to profit from the distribution of fetal tissue. The evidence included the fact that at least one TPO explicitly advertised itself to Planned Parenthood as “financially profitable” and “a financial benefit to your clinic.” The investigation also yielded evidence that these groups violated additional federal laws in the course of this trafficking, including some meant to protect vulnerable women from exploitation.

Thus the wheels of justice grind on, ever more finely.

The criminal referrals Love listed yesterday were made over the course of the past year to state or local authorities in the jurisdictions where the suspected violations occurred, and provided evidence to local officials so that they could determine how best to proceed. In most cases so far, the referrals have resulted in ongoing law-enforcement investigations into the organizations in question. In one case, Orange County has filed a lawsuit against two medical-research companies that allegedly sold the fetal tissue of aborted babies. (These companies had a close affiliation with Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, from which they received the tissue in question.)

Among the other groups that the panel has referred to state law-enforcement agencies for further investigation are the University of New Mexico, for violations of the state’s Anatomical Gift Act; a university in Ohio, for trafficking in fetal body parts; and StemExpress and Advanced Bioscience Resources, for several violations of state and federal laws. And in late September, the panel voted to hold StemExpress in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with repeated requests for documents related to fetal-tissue transfers. The documents in question would likely illuminate the specific figures that were exchanged between the biotech firm and Planned Parenthood — at the moment, it is clear that some funds were exchanged, but they have not yet been itemized, because pertinent documents have been withheld. The subpoena issued to StemExpress now over four months ago is just one of at least 41 subpoenas issued throughout the course of this investigation. Many have yet to be answered.

This was one of the things at stake in the recent US presidential election.  Hillary Clinton remains one of the most extreme abortion advocates in the world.  She has deliberately joined herself at the hip to Planned Parenthood, which, in turn, was an ardent advocate for Clinton's candidacy.  Had Clinton won, the millstones of justice might well have stopped in this case.  At the very least the Federal government would have animatedly interfered with the investigations and eventual prosecutions.

As it stands now, there is a fair chance that eventually Planned Parenthood will eventually be indicted as a criminal organization.