Rep. Marsha Blackburn, chairman of the House Select Panel on Infant Lives, sent a letter Friday to New Mexico Attorney General Hector H. Balderas Jr., referring the University of New Mexico and Southwestern Women’s Options for criminal charges.
The 291-page letter alleges the university and the late-term abortion clinic committed “systemic violations of the law” by transferring the human remains from abortions for research purposes.
New Mexico’s Jonathan Spradling Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act prohibits the transfer of fetal remains from abortions.
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, praised the decision, calling it “the fruit of years of research and hard work by a tenacious community of pro-life activists.”
“Seeing the fruit of that labor makes this a great day for us,” he said in a press release. “All that’s left now is for law enforcement to read them their rights and take them away!”
The letter includes documents detailing how the UNM Hospital “aggressively engaged in expanding” its abortion services over the last several decades for partisan purposes.
Among other things, the university provided residents and fellows to perform abortions at SWWO and enlisted local abortionists as “volunteer” faculty who received employee benefits.
SWWO is the largest late-term abortion clinic in the nation, performing the procedure through all nine months of pregnancy.
Pro-life activist Tara Shaver of ProtestABQ brought attention to the matter when she noticed language regarding fetal tissue donation on the bottom of one of the abortion clinic’s consent forms. She filed a complaint with the attorney general’s office prior to the House investigation, which was ignored.
“We hope that this very heavily documented recommendation from the House Select Panel will persuade Attorney General Banderas to act to enforce New Mexico laws and stop the illegal exploitation of aborted babies for ’valuable consideration,’” Ms. Shaver said in a statement. “We also hope that he will put an end to UNM’s practice of using taxpayer funds as well as UNM students to push their political agenda on abortion expansion upon an unwilling community.”
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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