The U.S. House of Representatives' Select Investigative Panel released its final report detailing disturbing activities of Planned Parenthood, including the selling of babies' body parts.
The Panel has recommended that the organization be defunded and its funds redirected to more qualified health centers. It also gave 15 criminal referrals for violations of federal laws.
The Select Panel, headed by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, was formed to bring under one umbrella the investigations being conducted on Planned Parenthood. The investigations were launched after disturbing undercover videos taken by investigative journalist David Daleiden showed the organization's executives discussing the selling of fetal parts from aborted babies.
According to the report, the investigation discovered that the process of procurement for aborted baby parts could fit into one of four categories.
The "middleman model" involves a middleman who buys the parts from an abortion clinic and delivers them to the customer. The "university model" involves a university that has established a "close relationship" with an abortion clinic within its vicinity and buys fetal tissue from it for research purposes.
The "biotech company/clinic model" involves a biotech company enjoying close ties with an abortion clinic where it gets the babies' body parts. Finally, the "late-term clinic model" employs late-term abortion, an illegal process, in order to get whole cadavers that can be sold for research purposes. This model is of "particular concern," the report said.
"It is my hope that our recommendations will result in some necessary changes within both the abortion and fetal tissue procurement industries," Blackburn said in a press release. "Our hope is that these changes will both protect women and their unborn children, as well as the integrity of scientific research."
Rep. Diane Black said the investigation has exposed the "grisly reality" of the abortion industry. The findings, she said, should "incense all people of conscience."
"Over the last year, the Select Panel's relentless fact-finding investigation has laid bare the grisly reality of an abortion industry that is driven by profit, unconcerned by matters of basic ethics and, too often, noncompliant with the few laws we have to protect the safety of women and their unborn children," Black said.
Rep. Larry Bucshon said the investigation opened the way for the public to have answers regarding the abortion industry and to make everyone who participated in "horrendous practices" accountable.
Aside from the defunding of Planned Parenthood, the Panel also recommended that Congress block federal funding for research that makes use of tissue obtained through induced abortion, and that it provide funding for programs that obtain fetal tissue from ethical methods, such as during a miscarriage.
Cecile Richards, CEO of Planned Parenthood, vowed that the organization "will not go without a fight."
"We won't go without a fight," Richards said in a tweet, "and we're ready to fight in solidarity with our allies."
