The Justice Department is requesting unredacted documents from the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation into the sale of human body parts by Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

Chairman Chuck Grassley had referred the case to the FBI for criminal prosecution in December of 2016, but the Justice Department ignored it.

Planned Parenthood is accused of selling fetal tissue for profit. The law only allows such sales to recover "reasonable expenses."

Fox News:

“At this point, the records are intended for investigative use only—we understand that a resolution from the Senate may be required if the Department were to use any of the unredacted materials in a formal legal proceeding, such as a grand jury,” Boyd also wrote.

A spokesman for the Senate Judiciary Committee did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

In the committee’s final report entitled “Human Fetal Tissue Research: Context and Controversy” published in December 2016, Grassley referred Planned Parenthood and other providers to the FBI for investigation.

Grassley said at the time that the committee has discovered enough evidence that shows how abortion providers had transferred fetal tissue and body parts from aborted fetuses for research by charging amounts higher than they actually cost.

“The report documents the failure of the Department of Justice, across multiple administrations, to enforce the law that bans the buying and selling of human fetal tissue,” Grassley wrote last December urging the Justice Department and FBI to investigate. “It also documents substantial evidence suggesting that the specific entities involved in the recent controversy, and/or individuals employed by those entities, may have violated that law.”

The now-federal investigation comes after a 2015 undercover investigation by activists David Daleiden, leader of the pro-life Center for Medical Progress, and Sandra Merritt, an employee of the group, who both posed as fetal researchers and made undercover videos of themselves trying to buy fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood.

The recorded conversations included officials from Planned Parenthood and StemExpress, a California company that provides blood, tissue and other biological material for medical research and has received fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood.

PP receives thousands of dollars for fetal body parts, claiming that their transactions are normal for the industry. But that doesn't answer the question of how much it costs to abort a fetus and extract organs and tissue? PP is going to claim that there are thousands of dollars in administrative costs per sale, allowing them to claim that there is nothing unusual about their business practices.

The Daily Signal created a list of fetal body parts and how much they were being sold for:

There have been a couple of grand juries at the state level that have decided not to indict Planned Parenthood for lack of evidence. But has PP been cooking their books? If they are, the FBI is likely to find out.

This is a barbaric practice whether you are pro-choice or pro-life. Some mothers choose to donate the tissue to science - permission that PP apparently failed to get on numerous occassions. But selling body parts for profit demonstrates a profound insensitivity to the value of human life and Planned Parenthood should be punished for their actions.