Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the United States. To date, five videos have been published showing activists posing as buyers from a fetal tissue procurement company speaking with directors from variousPlanned Parenthood facilities to uncover the truth behind the illegal profiting of the distribution of human fetal tissue. Under U.S. federal transplantation of fetal tissue law it states “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration.”
As the videos continue to be released, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, denies that any profit is made from fetal donations. She claims that any costs are “simply costs of preservation, transfer.” It is apparent that this is in fact not the case and they will even alter abortion procedures to ensure a greater profit.
What is more disturbing about the most recent videos is not only are they selling body parts and making a profit but they will go out of their way to ensure the body is as intact as possible. In a video released on August 7, Savita Ginde, vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, confirms this practice by saying, “We’d have to kind of see the baseline of how things are getting extracted now, and then see if we could do any work with them to maybe be little bit more gentle.” Ginde then points out that, “sometimes, if someone delivers before we are able to see them for a procedure then we are intact.”
In another video, the director of Research of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, also shows an interest in attaining intact fetuses whenever possible stating, “We’ve had studies in which the company or the investigator has a specific need, for certain portions of the products of conception and we bake that into our contract, and our protocol, that we follow this,” Farrell said as a hidden camera captured her conversation with pro-life activists posing as interested buyers of harvested fetal parts. She explained, “we deviate from our standard in order to do that.”
Farrell said, “we’re going to potentially have some that we’re going to be able to do more or less intact, and some that will not be. But it’s something that we can look at and explore how we can make that happen, so we can have a higher chance.”
These statements appear to violate U.S. federal law which declares that “no alteration of the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy was made solely for the purposes of obtaining the tissue.” The Center for Medical Progress suggests that both Ginde and Farrell are participating in an illegal practice that is dehumanizing and gruesome.
In response to the allegations against the organization, Richards has denied that Planned Parenthood makes a profit from harvesting and selling body parts and that all fees they are paid cover legitimate costs for storage and transportation. In the fourth video, however, Ginde agreed that charging per-item is better because it allows Planned Parenthood to see how much they can make per specimen rather than giving a flat out fee to potential buyers. Similarly, in the fifth video Farrell demonstrates her desire to increase profit when she comments, “So if we alter our process and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, then we can make it part of the budget, that any dissections are this, and splitting specimens into different shipments is this. I mean, that’s it, it’s all just a matter of line items.”
In the two latest videos it is evident that having a fetus more intact leads to greater compensation and the more difficult the fetus is to extract, the greater the monetary gain.
Ex-procurement technician Holly O’Donnell shared her experience working with StemExpress, which purchases tissue harvested by Planned Parenthood, and confirms this belief by saying, “The harder and more valuable the tissue, the more money you get. So, if you can somehow procure a brain or a heart, you’re going to get more money than just chorionic villi or umbilical cord. That’s basically what it is. So I guess that’s an incentive to try and get the hard stuff.”
O’Donnell explained how when she applied for the job and went to the interview she was never told what it was she would be doing exactly, the only information she was given was that StemExpress was looking for a procurement technician. On her first day on the job she was taken to a room where another worker had placed the remaining fetal body parts on a tray and O’Donnell recalled, “I’ve never had anxiety before this at all and I’m looking and I have no idea what’s going on and my trainer literally has tweezers and says ‘this is the head, this is the arm, this is the leg, can you show me some of the parts I just showed you’, and I grabbed the tweezers and I did what she said and the moment I grabbed the tweezers, I put it in the dish, I remember grabbing the leg and saying this is the leg and the moment I picked it up I could just feel like destined pain, I’ve never felt that before like shoot up through my body and I blacked out.” O’Donnell added, “A nurse looks at me and says you’re new here, don’t worry it still happens to a bunch of us, some of us don’t ever get over it.”
The videos show Planned Parenthood employees have become desensitized to the fact that the tissues they are obtaining are coming from the dismemberment and disembowelment of human beings with the staff joking and laughing as they reach for a 20-week old fetus from the freezer and saying “it’s a twin” and making other comments such as “and another boy!”
The lack of media coverage on these videos was noted by Brent Bozell, president of Media Research Center, who said of journalists, “They are gutless wonders who are helping to cover-up abominable, diabolical, Nazi-like medical procedures on the tiniest members of the human family.”
In a Los Angeles Superior Court, a temporary restraining order was made against the Center for Medical Progress to prevent them from releasing another video and a memo by SKDKnickerbocker, a crisis communications firm, was sent to various media stations asking them not to air the videos on the grounds that it violated patient confidentiality. David Daleiden, senior investigator for the Center for Medical Progress, responded saying, “The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in our investigative journalism work. Planned Parenthood cannot believe they were caught so flat-footed on selling baby parts and so they are just name-calling.”
StemExpress has severed its relationship with Planned Parenthood following the release of the videos.
