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Koenig, Franklin announce Planned Parenthood investigation

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Two Missouri House committees will begin investigations against Planned Parenthood based on viral video footage alleging that the reproductive health care organization illegally traffics the body parts of aborted fetuses.

Reps. Andrew Koenig (R-Ballwin), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and a candidate for state senate in 2016, and Diane Franklin (R-Camdenton), chair of the House Children and Families Committee, will investigate Missouri’s two Planned Parenthood affiliates starting next week.

The announcement comes just one day after Lt. Gov Peter Kinder and state senator Mike Parson, both candidates for governor, publically called on Missouri lawmakers to investigate the claims. State senator Kurt Schaefer, a candidate for attorney general, penned a letter to sitting AG Chris Koster asking him to investigate the abortion provider.

“The biggest thing is that we want to make sure that these things aren’t happening in the state of Missouri,” Koenig said Friday. “If they’re not doing illegal activities, then they have nothing to fear. If they are, then they need to be punished and potentially shut down.”

Koenig noted that if it came down to shutting down the Planned Parenthood affiliates located around Missouri that men and women had other reproductive care options.

Critics of the video note that the tape is highly edited and that the CMP is a hard-right conservative group intent on stopping women from having the ability to terminate their pregnancies. Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, reasserted that their organ donation program, in which the remains of aborted fetuses are given to research facilities, was legal and called the tape a smear campaign in a statement released Friday morning.

“The allegation that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation is not true,” she said in the statement. “Our donation programs – like any other high-quality health care providers – follow all laws and ethical guidelines.”

Rep. Franklin, who has not seen the video but has heard of the points through various media, believes that both advocates and opponents of abortion would like to know more about the process.

“If this is a process that’s taking place under the table, I think all of us want to know,” she said. “If this is something in Missouri that we want to allow to happen then we need to have it regulated.

“We have to look at both sides of this, which would be questioning Planned Parenthood as to do they partake in this activity and then I think we need to question the recipients of these facilities if they are receiving things from Planned Parenthood.”

According to Ann Wade, the external relations officer for Planned Parenthood of  St. Louis and Southwest Missouri, the two Planned Parenthood affiliates of Missouri would comply with any investigation but also noted they would be a waste a time.

Planned Parenthood has already denied all criminal wrongdoing and accused the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion activist group, of heavily editing a two hour conversation with an official down to about 8 minutes. In the video, the official appears to claim that PP generates a small profit from selling fetal tissue and remains to medical laboratories for stem-cell and other related research.

“It’s a moot point because none of our affiliates participate,” she said, referring to organ donation programs. The St. Louis and Kansas City affiliates of Planned Parenthood manage locations throughout the rest of the state and neither of those two locations take part in organ donation programs because of possible gray areas in state legislation.

PP officials say they generate no profit and any fee charged for the tissue is simply to cover the appropriate shipping costs. Donating human remains for medical purposes is legal, but selling them for profit is not.

“We want to make sure there’s no room for misinterpretation.”

 

 

Collin Reischman contributed to this story.