Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wants a federal investigation into Planned Parenthood, which is reportedly providing aborted baby body parts to the University of California San Diego in exchange for "valuable consideration" — while also maintaining intellectual property rights over the fetal tissue.
"If confirmed, this relationship represents a flagrant violation of federal law, which explicitly prohibits the transfer of fetal tissue for any compensation," Rubio wrote in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm. The letter was first obtained by The Daily Signal.
"I request that both of you open an investigation into the matter, publish your findings for the American people to see, and hold any guilty parties accountable to the fullest extent of the law," he wrote.
The University of California San Diego and Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest entered into a contract in 2009, wherein Planned Parenthood would provide "fetal and placental tissue" to the university "for the purpose of deriving cell lines from and determining gene expression, genomic, and epigenetic profiles of the materials."
Under that contract, Rubio said, Planned Parenthood retained "all right, title, and interest in and to the [fetal tissue], including … patents and patent applications and other intellectual property rights relating to the [fetal tissue]."
The university had agreed to provide Planned Parenthood with credit as the source of the baby tissue if any publications or studies resulted from its use, The Daily Signal reported.
Though federal law forbids acquiring, receiving, or transferring human fetal tissue for "valuable consideration," the Planned Parenthood and University of California contract was made for "valuable consideration," Rubio noted.
He called the inclusion of the phrase "valuable consideration" in the contract "significant," given the language is specifically in federal law.
Planned Parenthood provides information and help to women seeking in-clinic or abortions through pills.
"Furthermore, the relationship between Planned Parenthood and UCSD [University of California San Diego] appears to be much more than a mere contract," Rubio added. "Not only was Planned Parenthood providing the aborted fetal tissue in exchange for 'valuable consideration,' but emails between the groups show that Planned Parenthood and UCSD were actively collaborating and meeting at regular intervals to discuss the progress of the research."
One of the newly obtained documents shows a $10,000 donation from the university to Planned Parenthood as recently as 2021, the senator said.
Rubio pointed out the University of Pittsburgh is already under investigation for its "experimentation on aborted babies and its cozy relationship with Planned Parenthood."
His letter calls on the Department of Justice to uncover how many babies Planned Parenthood gave to the university, what the fetal tissue was used for, how much money the university had given to Planned Parenthood, how much Planned Parenthood has gained monetarily from its control over the intellectual property rights of the fetal tissue, and whether the National Institutes of Health or other agencies have provided funding for that fetal tissue research, The Daily Signal noted.
The New York Times reported in 2015 that the NIH had spent "$76 million on research using fetal tissue in 2014 with grants to more than 50 universities." Those universities that were obtaining fetal tissue from abortionists and selling it to laboratories were existing in a "gray zone, legally," since "federal law says they cannot profit from the tissue itself, but the law does not specify how much they can charge for processing and shipping."
The Biden administration in 2021 lifted restrictions on the use of fetal tissue for medical research, reversing rules imposed in 2019 by President Donald Trump.
The new rules, disclosed by the National Institutes of Health, allow scientists to use tissue derived from elective abortions to study and develop treatments for diseases including diabetes, cancer, AIDS, and COVID-19, The New York Times noted.
Scientists can purchase fetal tissue from sources approved before the ban, and all projects that had been approved before the Trump administration's restrictions will be reinstated without further review, according to an email sent to scientists by the N.I.H., The New York Times added.