babyparts“A lot of people want liver,” Deborah Nucatola informed two potential business partners in between a bite of salad and a sip of red wine. What Nucatola, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s senior director of medical services, didn’t know, was that these potential business partners were actually undercover pro-life activists trying to uncover evidence of Planned Parenthood’s lawless approach to obtaining and distributing fetal organs, which can fetch a high price due to their high count of stem cells. Much to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates’ chagrin, many of Nucatola’s statements were incriminating. And they were all caught on camera.

A video of the meeting between the actors and Nucatola was released by the Center for Medical Progress on July 14, and after Planned Parenthood released an official response, a second undercover video was released. This second video was as revealing as the first, with Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood’s medical director’s council, joking about wanting a Lamborghini for her skills at haggling on the price of body parts harvested from aborted children. This joke, though not remotely funny, makes sense. After all, Planned Parenthood is a business that, according to Ovide Lamontagne, a lawyer with Americans United for Life, makes north of a billion dollars every year, with over $456 million coming from taxpayers. In theory, it makes sense for the executive of a billion-dollar business to earn a luxury car for their skills. Why shouldn’t Gatter benefit from a job well done?

Even when ignoring the obvious moral reasons that people shouldn’t be rewarded for selling pieces of dead babies, there are several federal laws that are either being bent or broken in order for Planned Parenthood to make money from these exchanges.

Under title 42 of the U.S. Code, “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.” This means that it is legally acceptable for the fetal tissue to be exchanged, so long as no financial gain is being made from it. This is the core of Planned Parenthood’s defense of their actions, as they claim that the selling of “specimens” is actually done to compensate for the clinics’ operational costs as opposed to lining the pockets of Planned Parenthood’s abortionists and executives.

Nucatola had something else to say on the matter: “(Our affiliates) want to break even. And if they can do a little better than break even, and do so in a way that seems reasonable, they’re happy to do that.” Doing better than breaking even is almost universally regarded as making a profit, not merely recovering from losses. For these words to merely be the result of a momentary stumble, or simply be a miscommunication, seems quite unlikely. Even less likely is that the additional evidence that the Center for Medical Progress revealed is also a miscommunication.

This evidence comes in the form of a promotional flyer that was allegedly released by Stem Express, a company that distributes aborted fetal tissue. These flyers, which were endorsed by Planned Parenthood medical director Dorothy Ferguson, promise “financial profits” and “fiscal growth” to abortion facilities in exchange for fetal tissue.

These tissues sell for an estimated $30-$100 dollars according to Nucatola. Though defenders of Planned Parenthood claim that this is merely to cover such costs as storage of organs and the time staff members spend talking a woman into donating her child’s organs to the abortuary, it seems as though the price that the fetal parts are sold for is merely decided on who offers the greatest bid. Without a flat rate or well-kept records regarding allocation of staff time, it is extremely difficult to prove that Planned Parenthood is doing anything strictly illegal, which is just the way they want it.

Whether or not Planned Parenthood and its affiliates are profiting off the sale of aborted tissue is the main source of controversy from this video, though it is not the only law that the Center for Medical Progress claims Planned Parenthood has broken. The Public Health Service Act stipulates that “no alteration of the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy was made solely for the purposes of obtaining the tissue.”

Planned Parenthood has not yet denied Nucatola’s graphic description of choosing an abortion method to maximize the resale value of the fetus they are extracting: “I’m gonna crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” Nucatola explains on the tape. “And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex.” This means that abortionists will go out of their way to crush certain parts of the fetus in hopes of better preserving whichever section – be it the liver, the heart, the legs, or anything else salvageable – will make them the most money. In some cases abortionists will also try to change the direction that the baby is delivered in hopes of preserving the skull and its valuable contents. By using an ultrasound to rotate the baby, the abortionist can ensure that the baby is not born vertex, meaning head first, thus preserving the precious skull and making the abortuary a greater profit.

Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, said of the revalations, “It is stomach-churning to hear a top doctor for the national Planned Parenthood organization admit, on videotape, that Planned Parenthood abortionists can and will alter late abortion procedures to facilitate the harvesting of intact baby body parts.”

Gatter, though wisely mum on whether or not abortion facilities are making a profit off these sales, is rather loose lipped on what is done in order to preserve the fetus’ organs: “I wouldn’t object to asking Ian, who’s our surgeon who does the cases, to use (a manual vacuum aspiration) at that gestational age in order to increase the odds that he’s going to get an intact specimen.” Though she explicitly states that this is a “violation of protocol,” she dismisses the law’s objections with her commands, due to it being a “specious little argument” against abortion. This mirrors what Nucatola said in the first video: “The federal (partial-birth] abortion ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation.” They both apparently believe that the law exists merely as a guideline, only truly there when they serve their needs.

When Nucatola doubts that an abortionist is capable of preserving sections of the dead fetus, she will substitute herself in to commit the abortion, another notable change made not for the safety of the woman, but for the desires of the abortion facilities to harvest body parts. Changing the personnel committing the act, changing the tools used to abort the child, changing how the fetus is slaughtered, these are all notable alterations to the “method or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy” restrictions on abortion set out by federal regulations.

Some would argue that bending or breaking these laws is ethical, that these fetal body parts are a necessary source of stem cells that will lead to scientific breakthroughs. But according to David Pretence, research director for the Charlotte Lozier-Institute, research it shouldn’t leave the medical community in a worse state. “Adult stem cells are the gold standard,” he explains. “And virtually all success – over a million patients now – is due to adult stem cells.” In an interview with the National Review, he states that fetal cells are not just less effective, they are less safe. Calling them “more dangerous” than stem cells from umbilical blood or adult tissue, Pretence notes that fetal cells have a possibility of producing tumors or random tissues instead of the desired tissue.

What is most notable about this is that Stem Express gives a $10 bonus to those that procure umbilical cord blood. This seems logical, as it encourages abortionists to acquire stem cells that can best help medical research. Unfortunately, this bonus is but a fraction of what can be made from extracting virtually anything else from the aborted child. Skin, kidneys, ears, and umbilical cord tissue all go for $5 more than umbilical cord blood, while the extraction of such items as bones, eyes, testicles and liver results in a $35 bonus per specimen, with remuneration growing to $75 if over 40 specimens are procured.

Planned Parenthood has employed various tactics to take pressure off their business, one of which is flat out lying to the media. Justin Camblin noticed a bizarre section of the document that was sent by Planned Parenthood’s public relations firm to reporters, which claims that it compensates the women who donate their children’s organs to the abortion facilities. As if Gatter’s flat explanation that “patients don’t get anything, of course,” weren’t incriminating enough, the Center for Medical Progress has released an alleged fetal organ donation consent form, which clearly reads, “I agree to give my blood and/or the tissue from the abortion as a gift” and “I understand I will not be paid.”

Other strategies Planned Parenthood has used in order to discredit the videos range from attack ads on members of the Center for Medical Progress to outright claiming that the videos are fake. Even anti-life consultants are struggling to legitimize Planned Parenthood and its affiliates’ actions to the public. Lobbyist Mark Hemingway described Planned Parenthood’s actions as “humanitarian undertakings,” painting it as their responsibility to do these deeds to further scientific research.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood faces governor-ordered investigations in Louisiana and Texas and could face a Congressional investigation if Speaker John Boehner gets his way. Pro-life groups such as Americans United for Life, the National Right to Life Committee, and Priests for Life, say at the very least there must be investigations to see if federal laws are being broken. The NRLC also says that if the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act became law, preborn babies would be protected in law from late-term abortions which might “curb some of the grisly practices described” by the Planned Parenthood employees in the two videos.

But as the columnist Mark Steyn says, the scandal isn’t the harvesting of baby body parts but the killing of a million preborn babies each year in the United States, and the dehumanization that such mass slaughter entails.