Planned Parenthood will stop taking reimbursement for baby body parts used for medical research to quell the controversy sparked by an undercover investigation.
According to a letter posted online Tuesday, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards told Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health of the move while denying her organization has been engaged in any improper activities.
But the procurement of body parts will continue.
"The participation by a handful of our affiliates in supporting women who choose to make fetal tissue donation has always been about nothing other than honoring the desire of those women and contributing to life-saving research and cures," she wrote.
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"In order to debunk the disingenuous argument that our opponents have been using – and to reveal the true political purpose of these attacks – our federation has decided, going forward, that any Planned Parenthood health center that is involved in donating tissue after an abortion for medical research will follow the model already in place at one of our two affiliates currently facilitating donations for fetal tissue research."
She said that particular affiliate "accepts no reimbursement for its reasonable expenses – even though reimbursement is fully permitted under the 1993 law."
"Going forward, all of our health centers will follow the same policy, even if it means they will not recover reimbursements permitted by the 1993 law."
The videos have been released over the past few months by the Center for Medical Progress. The group set up a fake company and sent investigators with concealed video cameras to Planned Parenthood clinics.
Planned Parenthood officials were caught haggling over the price of baby body parts. A number of them talked about being paid per item, how they could adjust abortion procedures to salvage requested body parts and how they could create a revenue stream from such transactions.
One executive made plain her interest in huge payments, stating, "I want a Lamborghini," a $200,000-plus exotic car.
Richards again claimed, in the letter, "opponents of safe and legal abortion have turned patently false claims about our role in fetal tissue donation into fodder to advance their extreme political agenda."
However, two different expert investigations have concluded that the videos are substantially accurate.
"Planned Parenthood adheres to the highest legal, medical and ethical standards," Richards wrote. "The outrageous claims that have been made against Planned Parenthood, which have been widely discredited and debunked, are the worst kind of political interference in women's health."
Her letter did not address why Planned Parenthood, when the first videos appeared, apologized.
Planned Parenthood is the abortion industry's largest operator in the United States, doing about 327,000 abortions annually and getting paid more than $500 million in taxpayer funds.
It has claimed that no federal tax money is used for abortions.
Federal law allows reimbursement for costs of tissue donation but no profit. Federal law also prohibits the adjustment of any abortion procedure to salvage body parts.
The videos show Planned Parenthood executives indicating that both of those standards were being violated.
Congress has proposed legislation to withdraw taxpayer funds, and four congressional committees are now investigating Planned Parenthood.
Several states already have moved to cut Planned Parenthood funding.
WND reported congressional panel has subpoenaed all of the uncut videos that were obtained by the CMP.
A federal judge in California cleared the way for the videos to be delivered, even though he had ordered several of them suppressed at the request of members of the National Abortion Federation, whose members apparently appear in the videos.
The subpoena was issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits and Administrative Rule.
Judge William Orrick denied a request by the National Abortion Federation to block the subpoena, arguing Congress "has the power to investigate, and it is not up to the courts to go beyond the narrow confines of determining that the committee's inquiry is in its province."
Nor, he said, could "courts assume (and I do not assume) that an unworthy purpose prompts a congressional act."
The judge said that to "refrain from creating needless friction with a coordinate branch of government," he would allow CMP to provide the subpoenaed materials as long as the same materials also are provided to him and to NAF.
The subpoena from Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, commands CMP Executive Director David Daleiden to produce documents, communications and video footage relating to the "acquisition, preparation and sale of fetal tissue."
WND reported when a forensic analysis confirmed the videos "are authentic and show no evidence of manipulation." The analysis was delivered to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which hired Coalfire Systems Inc. to analyze the "raw video and audio data files" that have been creating havoc for America's largest abortion provider.
Planned Parenthood has contended the videos, 10 released so far, were manipulated.
However, Coalfire's conclusion was consistent with a previous analysis commissioned by Planned Parenthood.
Fusion GPS, hired by Planned Parenthood, concluded that while "cuts, skips, missing tape, and changes in camera angle" were "suspicious," its analysis commissioned by Planned Parenthood "did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation."
One video shows a Planned Parenthood executive worried about being "low-balled" in the sale of the body parts of aborted babies. In another, a Planned Parenthood executive explains the availability of "intact" fetal bodies. Another revealed an abortion executive talking about altering procedures to obtain the human organs that researchers would want.
One video features a former abortion worker explaining how she was told to remove the brain from an aborted child whose heart was still beating.
In the first undercover video released by CMP, Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on crushing babies.
"We've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I'm not gonna crush that part, I'm gonna basically crush below, I'm gonna crush above, and I'm gonna see if I can get it all intact," she said.
See the first video:
In the second video, Planned Parenthood's Mary Gatter said, "I want a Lamborghini."
See her comments:
In the fifth, Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood's Houston clinic discusses "intact fetal cadavers":
The seventh video has the testimony of a Planned Parenthood worker who tapped an aborted infant's heart and saw it start beating.
And No. 8 has Cate Dyer, CEO of Stem Express, admitting Planned Parenthood sells fully intact aborted babies.
WND has reported on the videos as they have been released. They are posted online.
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