By Penna Dexter Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee really did her homework in preparing for hearings before the committee she chairs: the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives. This committee is looking into revelations that Planned Parenthood is likely profiting from the sale of the body parts of aborted babies, in violation of federal law. The Committee is also inquiring into whether the companies procuring the parts from abortion centers — including many Planned Parenthood clinics — and selling them to research institutions are also violating the law. Billing information, consent forms, advertising, accounting and marketing materials, and several other exhibits were presented at the hearing titled, “The Pricing of Fetal Tissue.” Charts listing the pricing of fetal parts are nausea-producing. A research institution paid a middleman procurement company $3340 for a fetal brain. A baby skull matched to upper and lower limbs went for $595. Upper and lower limbs with hands and feet went for $890. Videos obtained undercover and released last summer and fall by the Center for Medical Progress show Planned Parenthood officials, the organization’s lead doctors, admitting they alter the abortion procedure, which makes it riskier to the mother, to obtain parts as intact as possible. Now Congress has this evidence showing the prices these large sections of baby bodies command. The videos even hinted at the sale of intact babies. The evidence did not show prices for those. One thing the hearing revealed is that more Planned Parenthood clinics and more middleman procurement businesses than just the ones covered in last summer’s videos are now suspected to be involved in this grisly business. A law passed in 1993 makes it illegal to profit from the sale of fetal tissue. It is legal to provide and accept payment to cover reasonable costs associated with transporting and preserving human fetal tissue. Under federal law, the transportation of fetal tissue is based upon a non-profit model. But these documents appear to suggest that abortion clinics bore none of these costs. And yet they received fees from procurement companies. Now Planned Parenthood says it will no longer accept these fees. Chairman Marsha Blackburn suspects that, “it is more than likely that payments to the abortion clinics and to the procurement businesses have exceeded reasonable cost.” Three former federal prosecutors testified before the committee that a criminal probe is warranted. In written testimony to the committee, Ben Sasse, U. S. Senator from Nebraska, wrote: “Babies are not the sum of their body parts. Babies are not meant to be bought. Babies are not meant to be sold.” Rep. Dianne Black, another stalwart pro-life congresswoman from Tennessee, a nurse during her pre-congress career, asked, “Have we reached a point in our society where there effectively is an Amazon.com for human parts including entire babies?” There’s no chance the current U.S Justice Department will act on this information. But let the investigation continue.