Blackburn-chaired Republican abortion investigators issue final report
Republicans on a congressional panel investigating the medical and business practices of abortion providers are calling on the federal government to defund Planned Parenthood and limit the use of fetal tissue for scientific research, reports Michael Collins.
In their final 471-page report, made public Wednesday, Republicans who make up a majority on the 14-member panel made nearly two dozen recommendations that they argued would protect women and unborn children while allowing scientific access to human fetal tissue when warranted.
“It is my hope that our recommendations will result in some necessary changes within both the abortion and fetal tissue procurement industries,” said the panel’s chairwoman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
But the panel’s Democrats blasted the report as flawed and charged it had been drafted in secret without any input from them.
“The panel’s so-called ‘final report’ is illegitimate,” said its top Democrat, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.
Schakowsky said the panel “leaves behind a legacy of lies, intimidation and procedural misconduct” and will be remembered “like the House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthy hearings for its excesses and abuses of power.”
The report brings to a close the work of the panel, formally known as the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, which spent the past year and more than $1.5 million investigating how abortion providers handle fetal tissue.
… Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., a member of the panel, said the investigation showed the abortion industry is driven by profit and “unconcerned by matters of basic ethics.”
“The findings of this panel should incense all people of conscience,” Black said.
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