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.
