Planned Parenthood fretted over publicity from body-parts trade

Planned Parenthood executives openly fretted about the possibility of bad publicity over the abortion organization's activities in selling body parts – to an undercover video investigator who was making a series of videos about the organization's activities in selling body parts.

"This is important," said Vanessa Cullins, the vice president of external medical affairs for Planned Parenthood. "This could destroy your organization and us, if we don't time those conversations correctly."

And Deborah VanDerhei, the national director of Planned Parenthood 's Consortium of Abortion Providers, said, "Think New York Times headline when you're creating your policy."

She explained, "It's an issue you might imagine that we're not that comfortable talking about on emails. And so we want to have the conversation in person."

She continued, "I think a congressional hearing from, you know, scared the bejeezus out of people fifteen years ago … so we just want to not have to repeat that again."

The comments are in the newest video released by the Center for Medical Progress. The group of pro-life activists created a fake company purporting to be in the baby body parts procurement business and went undercover to video statements from Planned Parenthood and others in the industry.

Read the tested and proven strategies to defeat the abortion cartel, in "Abortion Free: Your Manual for Building a Pro-Life America One Community at a Time."

The new video is the 10th to be released in the series that earlier revealed Planned Parenthood officials and others discussing payment for the parts – they mostly wanted them paid for on a "per specimen" basis. One Planned Parenthood executive previously warned that she didn't want to be "low-balled" in her payments because, "I want a Lamborghini."

Another executive, Vanessa Russo, compliance program administrator for Planned Parenthood Keystone, warned the undercover investigators she didn't want to "consent to be bullied by ridiculous laws" and when "a company like that that wants to give our organization money for the tissue, I think that that's a valid exchange and that that's okay."

CMP said its "Human Capital" documentary series, Episode 4, also includes comments from Carolyn Westhoff, senior medical adviser for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

"We've just been working with people who want particular tissues, like, you know, they want cardiac, or they want eyes, or they want neural," said Westhoff to a prospective fetal organ buyer. "Certainly, everything we provide – oh, gonads! Oh my God, gonads. Everything we provide is fresh."

She continued, "Obviously, we would have the potential for a huge P.R. issue in doing this."

VanDerhei took up the theme.

"I have been talking to the executive director of the National Abortion Federation, we're trying to figure this out as an industry, about how we're going to manage remuneration, because the headlines would be a disaster," she said.

She adds that, "we have independent colleagues who generate a fair amount of income doing this."

CMP said, "The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2)."

The organization said Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion industry player in the U.S., responsible for 327,000 abortions yearly. It also gets some $528 million in taxpayer funding annually.

"From email black-outs to contorted oxymorons like 'donation for remuneration,' the lengths to which Planned Parenthood leadership will go to cover-up their illegal sale of aborted baby parts are nothing less than the desperation of a guilty conscience,' said David Daleiden, project lead for CMP.

"Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards openly admits they receive '$60 per tissue specimen,' and their contracts with StemExpress offer payments per fetus 'determined in the clinic to be usable.' Planned Parenthood runs their abortion and baby parts business in open disregard for the law and should be prosecuted immediately. Their taxpayer funding should be reassigned to Federally Qualified Health Centers, which provide more and comprehensive health services at locations outnumbering Planned Parenthood 20 to 1."

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said, "The latest undercover video from the Center for Medical Progress likely has many executives at Planned Parenthood calling in sick today as they would rather stay in bed than be the new face of condoning and encouraging the sale of baby body parts.

"Planned Parenthood knew that if it ever got out that they were taking money for the body parts of babies they were aborting, that it would be a 'PR disaster'. That's why they don't have a written on policy on such matters. That's why they don't want it in emails. Every single congressman and senator needs to watch these videos. This includes Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell. The time for rhetoric is over; now is the time for leadership and action. We expect our leaders to not fund Planned Parenthood in the upcoming budget battle. Period."

See video No. 10:

WND had reported only a day earlier how Democrats in Congress launched a vigorous defense of Planned Parenthood's body-parts trade, issuing a report citing mostly Planned Parenthood sources that confirms the abortion provider is paid usually about $60 per specimen.

But the activists who prompted the congressional investigation point out that nowhere do Democrats or Planned Parenthood reveal the actual costs of providing the body parts.

The new report is from the Democrats on the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Energy and Commerce.

It alleges there is no evidence of anything improper in Planned Parenthood's practice of getting paid for body parts by outside organizations that then resell the parts to researchers, sometimes for hundreds of dollars each.

Among the investigations that resulted are several that are being conducted now by Congress. After a recent hearing on the dispute, the Democrats issued their report as an "update on the committee's ongoing investigation into claims regarding the alleged sale of fetal tissue by affiliates of Planned Parenthood."

Although the document describes the issue as "alleged sale," it confirms that various contracts obtained by Planned Parenthood paid the organization $45, $55 or $60 per specimen.

And the 18-page document sheds no light on the actual costs associated with processing the body parts.

Daleiden pointed out the problem with the minority party's report.

"It is telling that the House Energy & Commerce Committee's minority memo, drafted by Planned Parenthood's political cronies, can only cite multiple contracts between Planned Parenthood affiliates and tissue procurement organizations which explicitly confirm that Planned Parenthood charges per fetus and per fetal body part for only high-quality procured tissue specimens, but the memo cannot cite any evidence at all of actual costs incurred by Planned Parenthood."

He continued: "The facts are clear that Planned Parenthood receives substantially scalable payments for harvested fetus body parts, but there is still no evidence that these payments correspond in any way to any actual costs. Planned Parenthood's political cronies, paid for with Planned Parenthood's abortion and baby parts money, continue to abuse … the credulity of the American people by shrilly insisting that Planned Parenthood's admissions of payment for baby parts and alterations to abortion procedures are not evidence of criminal activity and barbaric atrocities against humanity that the American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for."

Read the tested and proven strategies to defeat the abortion cartel, in "Abortion Free: Your Manual for Building a Pro-Life America One Community at a Time."

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."

In the second video, Planned Parenthood's Mary Gatter joked, "I want a Lamborghini."

A former StemExpress worker, Holly O'Donnell, said in No. 3 that she fainted in horror when she was asked to process an aborted baby.

In No. 4, Savita Ginde of Planned Parenthood's Denver clinic said she didn't want to do a flat fee. "A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it."

In the fifth, Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood's Houston clinic discusses "intact fetal cadavers."

The sixth video returns to O'Donnell, who confirms fetal remains are taken for research without patient consent.

The seventh horrifying 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.

In the ninth video in the series, Dyer discusses the practice further with CMP's undercover investigators.

Read the tested and proven strategies to defeat the abortion cartel, in "Abortion Free: Your Manual for Building a Pro-Life America One Community at a Time."

An old story

WND also has reported that as horrific as the videos appear, they should surprise no one, since such practices have been documented for nearly two decades already.

A price list uncovered by a pro-life organization dated June 1998 shows that the price per specimen from a second trimester abortion is $90 fresh and $130 frozen.

Mark Crutcher, whose Life Dynamics organization was a ground-breaker in investigating the abortion behemoth that gets some $500 million annually from U.S. taxpayers, worked on that investigation.

His group reported back in February 2000 how the baby parts market works: "A baby parts 'wholesaler' enters into a financial agreement with an abortion clinic in which the wholesaler pays a monthly 'site fee' to the clinic. For this payment, the wholesaler is allowed to place a retrieval agent inside the clinic where he or she is given access to the corpses of children killed there and a workspace to harvest their parts."

He continued: "The buyer – usually a researcher working for a medical school, pharmaceutical company, bio-tech company or government agency – supplies the wholesaler with a list of the baby parts wanted. … when such orders are received … they are faxed to the retrieval agent at the clinic who harvests the requested parts and ships them to the buyer."

The documentation was provided at that time to Life Dynamics by a worker who left Comprehensive Health for Women, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Overland Park, Kansas.

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Among the documents was a "Fee-for-Services" Schedule A, effective June 1998, which outlined a charge of $220 per specimen for first-trimester aspiration abortions and $260 if the baby parts were frozen.

Crutcher's report, citing Planned Parenthood's own paperwork, found that one agent sold during February 1996 alone 47 livers, 11 liver fragments, seven brains, 21 eyes, eight thymuses, 23 legs, 14 pancreases, 14 lungs, six arms and one kidney-adrenal gland.

He also sold three orders of blood from the unborn child. The retrieval agent "harvested all of the parts," the report said, explaining that "in order for the blood of an aborted child to be sold, the dead baby had to be brought to him intact."

The "specimens," the report said, would have generated up to about $25,000 in revenue for one month from one retrieval agent at one Planned Parenthood business.

Crutcher reported that the tissue logs reveal that one baby is often chopped up and sold to many buyers.

For example, babies taken from donors 113968 and 114189 were both killed late in their second trimester and cut into nine pieces. By applying the price list, buyers would have been invoiced between $3,510 and $5,070 for these parts, he said.