Rep.Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) expressed strong chagrin for Wednesday's congressional hearing on fetal tissue pricing, likening it to a "bad episode of House of Cards," the popular Netflix show about a corrupt, power-hungry Washington couple.
The Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), looked into "whether abortion clinics and middleman businesses were making a profit from the transfer of human fetal tissue," a federal violation.
"This hearing belongs in a bad episode of House of Cards," Speier said. "I'm sure Frank Underwood is lurking somewhere here in the room. In fact, this hearing is literally based on a house of cards, and the exhibits being used as a foundation are, in all likelihood, the product of a theft carried out by someone who is now under indictment in Texas and whose home has been the subject of a court-ordered search in California.
"Is this hearing really going to proceed based on stolen and misleading documents? Even Frank Underwood would be blushing at this point."
Underwood is a Democrat and murdered two people in the show's first two seasons. One of these was committed by pushing an ex-flame in front of a Washington Metro train.
The issue of fetal tissue sales came to the forefront last summer with undercover videos by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress showing officials at Planned Parenthood, a recipient of federal funding and the country's largest abortion provider, discussing fetal organ harvesting practices.
Liberals fumed that the Center for Medical Progress "edited" the videos and an effort to defund Planned Parenthood by congressional Republicans failed when they could not override President Obama's veto.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday that the Select Panel on Infant Lives revealed Planned Parenthood profited from the sale of aborted infant organs:
The U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives released a preview of its findings after a months-long review of internal documents obtained from the nation’s top abortionist, as well as organ procurement companies and buyers. The panel concluded that abortion clinics incur no additional costs in harvesting organs obtained from an already-aborted baby and that the sale or transfer of those organs represented "pure profit" for the clinic.
"The [abortion clinic] has no costs so the payments from the [procurement business] to the [abortion clinic] are pure profit," the report concludes. "All costs are born by the [procurement business] or the customer. The payments from the customer to the PB exceed its cost by a factor of 300 to 400 percent."
Speier called the hearing a "kangaroo court" with "real consequences."
"While we are focusing on what goes on inside a woman's uterus, we are completely ignoring what happens to babies and children outside of them," she said. "How else can you explain why this panel is holding this hearing while children go hungry and research on pediatric cancer is desperately in need of more research dollars?"