"When a congressional panel investigating the procurement of fetal tissue from abortion clinics was formed last fall, its [conservative] leader and members made no secret of their mission to expose business" that allegedly "'sell'" fetal tissue, according to a Los Angeles Times editorial.
However, the editorial notes that despite those objectives, the subcommittee's investigation "has yet to find any proof that anyone is selling or buying fetal tissue." The editorial states, "After months of investigation and subpoenas for staggering amounts of records -- including, most troublingly, the names of people involved in performing abortions and procuring fetal tissue -- the chairman and [conservative] members of the panel released an 88-page interim report this month that is long on innuendo but remarkably short on revelation."
For example, the editorial notes that the report alleges that the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and a local abortion clinic "violated a New Mexico state law governing anatomical gifts that, the report asserts, prohibits aborted fetal tissue from being donated or received." Although the "school has categorically denied" that accusation, as well as other allegations related to its faculty, the subcommittee "formally referred the matter to the New Mexico state attorney general, whose office is looking into it," the editorial states.
The editorial continues, "The panel has also asked [HHS] to investigate whether technicians from a fetal tissue company, StemExpress, violated patient confidentiality laws by looking at medical records of patients at clinics where its technicians went to collect tissue specimens." According to the editorial, an attorney for StemExpress has informed the subcommittee that the company's "technicians did not review medical files -- and that the panel would have known this had it interviewed any of the witnesses 'repeatedly offered by StemExpress.'"
"Having found no smoking guns in the University of New Mexico and StemExpress cases, the panel has passed its allegations to other authorities to settle while it continues to search for criminality," the editorial states, adding, "[T]he report does little more than serve the panel's antiabortion[-rights] narrative" while failing to establish wrongdoing.
According to the editorial, "The real danger here is that the panel's work will chill the activities of fetal tissue suppliers and the researchers who use it to study retinal degeneration, fetal development, the Zika virus and illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease." The editorial notes that "six states have enacted bans this year on the donation of fetal tissue from abortions, and most of those also bar researchers from using such tissue."
The subcommittee's ranking liberal member, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), and other liberal lawmakers have repeatedly called on "the speaker of the House to disband the panel," the editorial states. While that "would be the best course of action," the subcommittee's final report is due in December, "which should spell the end to its existence," the editorial concludes (Los Angeles Times, 7/25).
