A bill designed to crack down on the Chinese Communist Party’s forced organ harvesting of cultural and religious minorities, including Christians, has reportedly been sitting idle in the U.S. Senate for seven months, despite overwhelming bipartisan support in the House and mounting evidence of atrocities in China.
The legislation, H.R. 1503, known as the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025, was introduced by Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey and passed the House with near-unanimous backing. Yet the bill has failed to advance out of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where it remains stalled — the same fate that met a nearly identical version in 2023.
Smith, a longtime human rights advocate, told the Daily Caller that the delay has serious consequences as reports of persecution continue to grow. He said Christians and other religious minorities in China face increasing danger as the CCP expands what he described as a brutal, state-run organ harvesting operation.
Smith has been investigating the issue for decades. He chaired his first congressional hearing on forced organ harvesting in 1998, during which Chinese security officials testified. At the time, he said, the practice existed on a limited scale. That changed dramatically after 1999, when the CCP launched a sweeping crackdown on Falun Gong, a spiritual movement rooted in Buddhist and Taoist traditions.
Falun Gong practitioners quickly became prime targets. Smith said their abstention from alcohol and tobacco made them ideal candidates for organ harvesting. He noted that the average age of those executed and immediately harvested was just 28.
“I want to know how long [the patients] have to wait [for a liver transplant],” Smith said, underscoring the speed with which organs were made available.
Evidence cited by Smith includes undercover recordings documented in “Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for Their Organs” by investigators David Matas and David Kilgour. In one recorded phone call, a Chinese doctor boasted about the ready supply of organs.
“The supply of organs we have, we have every day. We do them every day,” the doctor said.
When asked whether the organs were taken from living people, the doctor replied, “They are all alive, all alive.”
The investigators specifically referenced Falun Gong practitioners, describing them as healthy. The doctor acknowledged their use but said he could not discuss details over the phone, instead inviting what he believed was a potential buyer to visit in person.
Smith said detainees’ health is routinely monitored in detention centers to ensure their organs are viable. He said up to six vital organs can be harvested from a single individual after execution.
A 2024 report from Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting cited multiple independent sources confirming that prisoners of conscience in China are subjected to forced medical exams and blood tests without consent. The report said guards have even used the threat of organ harvesting to coerce compliance from detainees.
The group also highlighted troubling irregularities in China’s transplant data. While reliable statistics are difficult to obtain, DAFOH found that China’s reported transplant numbers show sudden spikes followed by long plateaus — patterns that differ sharply from global norms.
Between 2000 and 2004, DAFOH reported that China’s annual transplant numbers surged by 250 percent. By contrast, other countries saw growth rates of just 10 to 15 percent during the same period.
Smith warned that congressional inaction sends the wrong message to Beijing. He said the Senate’s failure to act allows the CCP to continue what he described as crimes against humanity with little consequence, even as evidence continues to pile up.
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