Smith anti-organ harvesting bill passes House once again

Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester)’s effort to clamp down on forced organ harvesting in China overwhelmingly passed the House yesterday evening, though past history suggests that the bill may still face a long road to becoming law.

Smith’s bill, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, authorizes sanctions and passport revocations for those involved in organ trafficking or convicted of organ trafficking-related crimes; the congressman said that he wrote the bill after years of testimony he’s heard in committee hearings about crimes committed by the Chinese government against Uyghurs, the Falun Gong, and other minority groups. The bill passed by a margin of 406-1, with one lone Republican opposed.

“Every year under General Secretary Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party, tens of thousands of young women and men – average age 28 – are murdered in cold blood to steal their internal organs for profit or to be transplanted into communist party members and leaders,” Smith said on the House floor. “These crimes against humanity are unimaginably cruel and painful.”

This isn’t the first time, though, that Smith’s bill has made it through the House. In 2023, House members passed that session’s version of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act by a margin of 413-2, but the Senate never opted to take it up and it died there without a vote. Smith said he wants to make sure this year’s bill doesn’t meet a similar fate.

“State-sponsored forced organ harvesting is big business for Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party and shows absolutely no signs of abating, which is why we and the rest of the world need to step up, particularly the democracies of this world,” he said. “We must act – and we must act decisively.”