Democrats object as House GOP holds hearing on fetal tissue

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats suggested on Wednesday that a special House panel investigating Planned Parenthood could be complicit in future assaults or even murders of abortion providers at the Republican-led committee's first hearing on the ethics of fetal tissue research.

The investigative panel was created last year following conservative furor over secretly recorded videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing how they sometimes supply fetal tissue for medical research.

Republicans and conservatives have denounced the practice of fetal tissue research after abortion and some have accused Planned Parenthood of illegally selling the organs for profit.

A witness supporting the research — law and ethics professor Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin — said it is important for developing vaccines and research on disease, including Ebola, HIV, Alzheimer's and even Zika, a spreading virus with links to a spike in babies born with abnormally small heads in Brazil.