Financial documents discovered by a congressional investigative panel allegedly show that Planned Parenthood has profited from the sale of the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics.

The House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives was created to investigate fetal tissue practices in the abortion industry. The impetus was provided by the release of videos last summer which exposed Planned Parenthood’s apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies and altering the position of babies during abortion to harvest the most intact organs.

Although Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing in its sale of body parts, the abortion business also released a statement last October announcing it would no longer accept payments for aborted fetal tissue.

A new white paper on the pricing of fetal tissue, produced by the House panel, notes that “to profit from the acquisition or transfer of fetal tissue violates Title 42 USC §289 g-2, which prohibits the transfer of any fetal tissue for valuable consideration that exceeds the reasonable costs associated with the procurement.”

The white paper and accompanying exhibits highlight three important discoveries made by the panel.

First, fetal tissue procurement companies – such as StemExpress, which was featured in the investigative videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) – appear to do all of the work in the fetal tissue transfer, with no cost to abortion clinics such as Planned Parenthood, allegedly allowing the abortion companies to receive millions of dollars in pure profit.

Second, by 2015, StemExpress was working with nearly 100 abortion clinics. Approximately 1 in every 5 abortion facilities nationwide was involved in the sale of the body parts of aborted babies to StemExpress. Just prior to the release of the CMP investigative videos, the tissue procurement business was about to have access to over 50 percent of the abortion market.

Third, CMP’s video exposé was just the tip of the iceberg regarding the relationship between Planned Parenthood and StemExpress.

The House Select panel is holding a hearing on Wednesday to examine its documents and exhibits and consider the issue of whether abortion clinics and other “middleman businesses” were violating federal law by profiting from the transfer of aborted fetal tissue.

“The release of those horrific videos last summer raised many questions about whether abortion clinics and middleman tissue procurement businesses were profiting from the sale of baby body parts, organs and tissues,” panel chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn said in a statement, adding:

This hearing will examine business documents, invoices, marketing brochures, and management documents that reveal one for-profit procurement business and several abortion clinics may have acted in violation of federal law by profiting from the sale of baby body parts, organs and tissues.

David Daleiden, project lead of CMP, said in a statement about the House panel’s documents, “The financial documents uncovered by the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives prove that Planned Parenthood profited from the sale of aborted baby parts to their long-time business partner StemExpress.”

He added:

The facts are now undeniable that Planned Parenthood had no “costs” to “reimburse” and every dollar they received for little baby hearts, brains, and livers netted illegal profit. Planned Parenthood lied to the media, to Congress, and to the American people for 9 months falsely asserting they had no financial benefit from supplying baby parts. Now, Planned Parenthood and their partners in crime must face justice under the law for their barbaric criminal profiteering from aborted baby parts.

Planned Parenthood and its leftwing media supporters continue to insist the videos, produced by CMP, were “deceptively edited.”

However, a Democrat opposition research firm named Fusion – hired by Planned Parenthood itself to review the videos – said while its analysts observed the videos had been edited, “the analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.”

Additionally, Fusion noted, “[A]nalysts found no evidence that CMP inserted dialogue not spoken by Planned Parenthood staff.”

An analysis by Coalfire, a third-party forensics company hired by Alliance Defending Freedom, found that the videos were “not manipulated” and that they are “authentic.”