The House DOGE Subcommittee announced last week it had launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood for a panoply of charges, including illegally promoting abortion and transgender injections to children and profiting from the harvest or transfer of aborted babies’ organs and tissue. Yet a pro-life legal expert says it is possible even this robust list of lawbreaking may omit yet another abortion industry felony which is punishable by five years in prison.

Planned Parenthood stands accused of repeatedly misleading federal officials about its activities in oral testimony and written documents, a violation of a criminal statute banning anyone from making a “materially false” statement to the government.

Many of the contested statements stemmed from Planned Parenthood’s damage control operation after undercover videos showed abortion industry employees discussing, joking about, and even haggling over the “donation” of aborted babies’ organs and tissue for scientific experiments. Investigative journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress exposed the practice a decade ago, posing as agents interested in purchasing harvested organs.

A federal statute (42 USC § 289g-2) makes it “unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.” But it states, “The term ‘valuable consideration’ does not include reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.” The DOGE investigation will probe potential violations of this statute.

Pro-life legal scholars have acknowledged ambiguity about the legal definition of “reasonable.” But a legal scholar says, in Planned Parenthood’s rush to cover its tracks, it may have left itself vulnerable to prosecution on yet another statute.

On July 29, 2015, then-Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards cited the statute’s allowing payments for “the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue” in a letter to then-director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins. “We require Planned Parenthood to follow all state and federal laws and have given them specific guidance for complying with this requirement.”

The following month, Planned Parenthood claimed in a letter to bipartisan congressional leadership that, while some affiliates received remuneration for aborted babies’ bodies, “these amounts were intended to recover only their costs, as allowed under the federal law and our guidance.” Publicly, Planned Parenthood asserted it sought only to recoup its “cost to transport tissue” and branded the videos a “smear campaign.”

But in a 2010 contract, StemExpress agreed to pay Planned Parenthood $55 for each aborted cadaver “determined in the clinic to be usable,” as well as $10 for each sample of maternal blood. In 2012, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte billed the company $24,940 over three months — but none of its invoices mentions reimbursements nor bills the company for actual expenses. They appear as a fee-for-service.

Far from merely breaking even, StemExpress promotional materials promise abortionists providing samples will prove “financially profitable,” because the company “fiscally rewards” participants and will be “contributing to the financial growth of your clinic.”

After the fallout, Richards pledged Planned Parenthood would no longer receive such remuneration and touted “our decision not to take any reimbursement for expenses.”

“In order to completely debunk the disingenuous argument that our opponents have been using — and to reveal the true political purpose of these attacks — our [f]ederation has decided, going forward, that any Planned Parenthood health center that is involved in donating tissue after an abortion for medical research will … [accept] no reimbursement for its reasonable expenses — even though reimbursement is fully permitted under the 1993 law,” Richards wrote Collins in October 2015.

The letter came one week after the House of Representatives formed a select committee to investigate Planned Parenthood.

But Daleiden produced documents showing Planned Parenthood continued supplying aborted babies to the University of California at San Diego in a 2018 plan. According to Daleiden, this was offered under the terms of a 2009 contract in which Planned Parenthood agreed to supply aborted babies’ bodies in exchange for “valuable consideration.” Then-Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called on the Justice Department to investigate the contract last year.

If Planned Parenthood received a fee-for-service instead of reimbursement, or continued to receive such payments, that may violate 18 U.S. Code § 1001 which punishes anyone who “makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry” with being “imprisoned not more than 5 years.” The same strictures apply to oral statements.

“Planned Parenthood made a public commitment in 2015 to stop accepting any payment for aborted fetal remains. If the organization resumed receiving reimbursements or any type of valuable consideration in exchange for fetal body parts, that raises serious concerns about potential violations of federal law, including the federal fetal tissue trafficking statute and 18 USC §?1001,” Alexandra Snyder, CEO of Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), told The Washington Stand. “At minimum, this warrants a thorough investigation into whether Planned Parenthood misled federal agencies about its practices.” 

That is but one such instance. While under oath during a 2015 congressional hearing, Richards also told then-Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), “At Planned Parenthood … we don’t provide abortions after viability.” Yet at the time, Planned Parenthood facilities carried out abortions until 24 weeks. The Planned Parenthood office in Fairview Heights, Illinois, currently advertises abortion through 26 weeks, or six months, of pregnancy.

In 2016, the House Select Investigative Panel on Planned Parenthood uncovered enough evidence of Planned Parenthood’s wrongdoing to make 15 criminal and regulatory referrals. The committee “learned that abortion providers may modify abortion procedures, in apparent violation of the law, to increase the odds of getting an intact infant cadaver,” although this will “increase the likelihood that unborn infants are born alive during late second-trimester abortions, and raise the question whether these infants’ civil rights are recognized by abortion providers.” Furthermore, “abortion providers often fail to separate public funding from abortion-related costs” and may illegally profit from fetal organ harvesting. The panel also found two California-based Planned Parenthood affiliates “committed systematic violations of the HIPAA Privacy Rule from about 2010 to 2015.”

“This evidence points toward conduct focused on profit and not on patient welfare,” the 471-page report concluded.

Nearly a decade later, the DOGE investigation reopens congressional oversight into the abortion industry. “Despite receiving billions in taxpayer dollars, they offer almost no prenatal care, push late-term abortions, and even supply aborted babies for grotesque experiments,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the chair of the DOGE Subcommittee overseeing the new investigation.

Greene also raised concerns Planned Parenthood, which reportedly builds between 62% and 79% of its abortion facilities in majority-minority neighborhoods and disproportionately aborts black and Hispanic babies, may be engaging in racially discriminatory actions. “The English-language consent forms for fetal tissue donation disclose possible ‘commercial value’ in the aborted fetuses, whereas the Spanish-language consent forms do not disclose this,” noted Greene’s letter to current Planned Parenthood CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson.

The penalties may be difficult to impose. The statute of limitations for providing materially false information to the federal government is five years, and former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards passed away from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer on January 20 — President Trump’s first day in office.

But Congress can determine it no longer wants the federal government financially entangled with an ethically challenged organization dedicated to killing unborn children and distributing their body parts in exchange for money.

“When footage of Planned Parenthood’s abortionists talking about harvesting unborn children’s organs was released, I was shocked at how cavalierly they were able to discuss the process of pulling out entire intact organs — organs that clearly demonstrate the humanity of the unborn child and the grotesque nature of abortion — a process that in some cases literally tears apart the baby,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told TWS. “To then sell those body parts and profit off of them is beyond evil and demonstrates that the abortion industry knows with certainty that their work takes the life of a unique, unrepeatable human being, not a clump of cells.”

The latest link in Planned Parenthood’s long and sordid history of skirting the law erupted as the Senate considers President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which would eliminate all federal funding for any organization that carries out abortions or transgender procedures. Taxpayer funding accounts for 39% of all Planned Parenthood revenue. Planned Parenthood primarily receives federal funding through Title X, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). As TWS exposed, the Biden-Harris administration promoted guidelines encouraging federally funded Title X providers to talk with minors about sex behind their parents’ backs, concealing potentially serious health complications and perhaps sexual abuse. 

Members of Congress say the ultimate way to defund Planned Parenthood comes through reestablishing regular order in the congressional budget process. “The way you stop it is you actually do your appropriations bills, and you say, ‘We’re not going to fund Planned Parenthood. We’re not going to fund various DEI programs, or woke programs in the military, or anything else that will be designated by DOGE or designated by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s subcommittee on Oversight,’” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told “Washington Watch” shortly after the election.

Planned Parenthood has stated if taxpayers are no longer obligated to fund its activities through compulsory taxation, it would have to close 200 Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide — many in liberal states that affirm abortion.

“Our U.S. senators should pay close attention to this investigation as they make crucial decisions regarding the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which could finally defund this bloody, bloated, monstrous peddler of abortion,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue.

“Planned Parenthood’s work is an abomination and a dark stain on America’s history,” Szoch told TWS. “In America, the buying and selling of human organs is illegal — and Planned Parenthood should be held accountable.”

The NIH/Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to The Washington Stand’s queries.