Much of the Congressional support for the 1993 NIH revitalization act was premised on the idea that the ban on buying or selling fetal tissue would be a safeguard against the development for a market for human fetuses. Tragically, the executive branch has either failed or simply refused to enforce that safeguard. As a result, contrary to the intent of the law, companies have charged thousands of dollars for specimens removed from a single aborted fetus; they have claimed the fees they charged only recovered acceptable costs when they had not, in fact, conducted any analysis of their costs when selling the fees; and their post hoc accounting rationalizations and vote interact and tenuously-related costs in an attempt to justify their fees. With no executive branch oversight or enforcement of the law, there are no consequence to these actions. Unless there is a renewed emphasis on enforcement or changes in the law to clarify the exception to the ban on payments, the problem is likely to continue. Accordingly, the Justice Department should fully investigate the fetal tissue practices of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; the individual Planned Parenthood affiliates involved in paid fetal tissue transfers; Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc.; StemExpress, LLC; and Novogenix Laboratories LLC in order to enforce this law.

Majority Staff Report, prepared for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate (114th Congress, December, 2016), 7