WASHINGTON — The special House committee that was formed in the wake of a Planned Parenthood fetal tissue procurement debate has begun a broad investigation of the matter, issuing document requests to more than 30 agencies and organizations, including a closely scrutinized abortion clinic and some of the nation’s most prominent research institutions.
Critics have raised concerns about the breadth of the Republican-led inquiry and are worried about the privacy implications of the wide-ranging requests. The investigation is moving ahead quickly despite recent legal setbacks for the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-abortion group that produced the undercover videos that sparked the scandal.
Two of the people involved in producing the videos were indicted by a Texas grand jury in January, and earlier this month a federal judge in California issued a second restraining order preventing CMP from publicly releasing more of their work.
But Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the chairman of the panel, said in an interview last week that the questions the videos raise still persist.
“You have these precious children that are aborted and then these parts are being sold,” she said. “People want to give this a good and thorough look.”
Blackburn announced Thursday that the panel would issue subpoenas to three organizations that “failed to fully cooperate with document requests.” The burst of activity made clear that the panel, which emerged from last year’s turmoil inside the House GOP, is not planning to shy away from some of the country’s most polarizing issues in a presidential election year.
The subpoenas went to StemExpress, a California firm that prepares human specimens for researchers; Southwestern Women’s Options, an Albuquerque abortion clinic; and the University of New Mexico, whose Health Sciences Center conducts medical research using fetal tissue.
The panel’s Democrats sharply objected to the subpoenas in a letter Friday, calling them “abusive and unjustifiable.” The requests have generally sought materials across more than a dozen categories, according to people who have reviewed the letters.
Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, the panel’s ranking Democrat, said she was concerned that the names of researchers or clerical employees could be leaked or inadvertently released, making them targets for anti-abortion extremists, saying, “I’m not suggesting that they want to put these people at risk, but they could be made to be at risk.”
Blackburn on Friday defended the breadth of the document requests and said the names are necessary to develop a “complete picture” of the fetal tissue trade.
One group that has not been subject to the panel’s inquiries is Planned Parenthood. But Blackburn did not rule out that a request might be forthcoming, and Schakowsky said she expected one.
“They have an agenda, which is to discredit this kind of activity,” she said. “They want to find something that documents what they’ve already concluded — that fetal tissue research, that the whole process involved with that is illegitimate in some way.”
