Several Republican House members hosted a panel on Tuesday highlighting what they called the “horrific” organ harvesting and trafficking of aborted babies.

Hosted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, on Capitol Hill, the presentation included testimony by David Daleiden, founder of the investigative group Center for Medical Progress, and Terrisa Bukovinac, founder of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAUU).

They testified that Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics throughout the country are selling the organs and body parts of aborted babies in a lucrative biomaterial black market.

Daleiden, who has released several undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of body parts, called on the House to open a formal investigation into the abortion industry’s participation in organ harvesting. 

“At a time when powerful government and media forces are trying to silence this message, it is imperative for the people’s House to reopen formal investigations of the black market and aborted baby organ harvesting so that taxpayer-funded entities can never put a price tag on human beings,” he said.

The event can be viewed here

Selling baby body parts on the black market

Greene pointed out during the panel discussion that the abortion industry operates with virtually no federal or independent oversight, allowing it to conduct illegal activities.

Daleiden claimed that his undercover research has found a network of biomaterial companies partnering with Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers to obtain baby body parts for experimentation and other purposes.

“I’ve met with dozens of Planned Parenthood’s top abortion providers at their lavish commercial abortion trade shows sponsored by companies buying baby parts,” he said.

One undercover video shown by Daleiden during the event showed a Planned Parenthood executive in Washington state projecting her organization would make $250,000 on baby part sales to a single biotech company called StemExpress (now called CGT Global).

He also described Planned Parenthood’s partnership with the University of California and the University of Pittsburgh in which the abortion provider receives money in exchange for providing baby body parts. 

One of the experiments uncovered by Daleiden in 2020 revealed that the University of Pittsburgh was grafting aborted baby’s scalps to lab rats, enabling the rodents to grow human hair. This experiment, Daleiden claimed, was funded by federal grants from the National Institutes for Health (NIH), which is taxpayer-funded.

The NIH reports spending an average of $108 million per year on fetal experimentation, according to data gathered by the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Mentioning the ongoing budget negotiations in Congress, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, commented at the press event that House members should investigate this further and that the fetal experimentation money should be cut from the NIH’s budget.

Allegations about Kamala Harris’ involvement  

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Daleiden also alleged that Vice President Kamala Harris was involved in a “cover-up” of the abortion industry’s organ harvesting scheme, pointing to her actions as attorney general of California.  

Following the release of the Center for Medical Progress’ viral videos exposing Planned Parenthood executives, Harris ordered a raid on Daleiden’s apartment to seize “hundreds of hours of unreleased undercover footage,” he said. 

Under Harris, Daleiden said that the California justice system prosecuted him, issued an injunction to keep him from releasing the rest of the footage, and ultimately fined his group $25 million. A federal court in California found Daleiden’s undercover work violated state and federal laws.

“The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is a powerful special interest [group] in our country; they fight to silence reporting on their black market of aborted baby harvesting and the ongoing cover-up goes to the highest levels of our government,” Daleiden said.

The ‘D.C. Five’ and the FACE Act

During the panel pro-life activist Bukovinac showed members of her group finding a fully intact, third-trimester dead baby boy stored in a plastic shipping container in March 2022. Bukovinac said that based on the baby’s level of development he was 33 weeks old. She said that the fact that the baby’s body was largely intact indicates he was likely killed after being delivered alive.

The boy was found in a crate outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C. Bukovinac said he was meant, along with the remains of 114 other babies, to be shipped to Baltimore by a company called Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services to be burned “to provide renewable energy for the city.”

The 33-week-old baby was one of five late-term babies discovered outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic, which is operated by Dr. Cesare Santangelo. 

Despite outrage over these children, who have come to be called the “D.C. Five,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not announced any plans to take action. The office of the D.C. medical examiner, meanwhile, has refused to allow an independent examination of the bodies. 

Bukovinac said that one of the members of her group, Lauren Handy, was arrested in 2023 for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act in another protest. Bukovinac decried the DOJ for prosecuting Handy while ignoring the “very likely federal crimes” at the D.C. abortion clinic.

“The DOJ is spending their time instead prosecuting and jailing my friends for totally peaceful, nonviolent direct action when instead they should be going after killers who are committing federal crimes,” she said.

She called on Congress to subpoena Santangelo and order an independent examination of the babies’ bodies.

Rep. Mary Miller, R-Illinois, decried the DOJ for ignoring the D.C. Five, saying during the event: “We must call on the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to enforce federal law and stop Planned Parenthood from their illegal activities, and we must stop funding these centers of death.”

If the heads of the DOJ and HHS refuse to investigate these killings, Miller said Congress has the power to remove them from office.