Documents being revealed by the U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives, set up to investigate the abortion industry after David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress released videos in 2015 documenting Planned Parenthood officials negotiating for higher pay for baby body parts, confirm the profit in the trade.
“This barbarism degrades our nation and violates federal laws against such profiteering. We commend the Select Panel for its investigative work thus far and call on the Department of Justice to take immediate action,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List.
“The abortion industry sells baby hearts, livers, brains, hands and other organs procured by a middleman company inside their facilities at no cost or effort to the facilities themselves,” she continued. “The facility receives upfront fees that can amount to five-figure sums every month and then the procurement companies resell organs for tens of thousands more – depending on the child’s characteristics.
“Was the developing baby 18 weeks old? 24 weeks? Was the mother a smoker? What is the child’s ethnicity? All of these factors might make the heart, foot, eyeball or limbs more expensive,” she said in a statement released Tuesday.
Daleiden and his fellow activists at the Center for Medical Progress set up a fake company and sent investigators with concealed video cameras to Planned Parenthood clinics. Planned Parenthood doctors and managers 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.
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:
[jwplayer 7pzwagZg]
In the second video, Planned Parenthood’s Mary Gatter said, “I want a Lamborghini.”
See her comments:
[jwplayer vbPjx8h2]
In the fifth, Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood’s Houston clinic discusses “intact fetal cadavers”:
[jwplayer 6YZC1nO2]
The seventh video has the testimony of a Planned Parenthood worker who tapped an aborted infant’s heart and saw it start beating.
[jwplayer 5wFzwlF1]
And No. 8 has Cate Dyer, CEO of Stem Express, admitting Planned Parenthood sells fully intact aborted babies.
[jwplayer RiJygVb1]
The SBA list linked to online documents posted by the U.S. House. They include copies of promotional materials promising that the baby body trade is “financially profitable.”
“Join the [blanked out] partner program that fiscally rewards clinics for contributing to the advancement of life-saving research with a solution that is easy to incorporate into your clinic practice,” it continues.
It promises the promotion of biomedical research while “also providing a financial benefit to your clinic.”
The documentation specifically describes “financial profits,” and reminds potential participants, again, that it’s “financially profitable.”
One of the “partnership agreements” proposed for agreement between an abortion business and a body parts purchaser provides that person “agrees to make a donation to the [abortion trade association] in the amount of U.S. $10,000 and undertake the activities listed in Appendix B….”
It continues, “For the aforementioned sum mentioned in the section marked ‘Payment for Services,’ [the trade association] commits to performing the following for one year …”
It then lists a series of obligations.
One redacted billing statement requested a payment of $9,060 for “January and February 2011 sample collections” at Stockton, Sacramento and Fresno. Another year-end statement for 2014, with identifying data blacked out, billed $42,535.
The paperwork explains, “The AC [abortion clinic] has no costs so the payments from the [procurement business] to the AC are pure profit. All costs are born (sic) by the PB for the Customer. The payments from the Customer to the PB exceed its cost by a factor of 300 to 400 percent.”
The CMP, in a statement posted online, said, “The facts are now undeniable that Planned Parenthood had no ‘costs’ to ‘reimburse’ and every dollar they received for little baby hearts, brains and livers netted illegal profit. Planned Parenthood lied to the media, to Congress, and to the American people for nine months falsely asserting they had no financial benefit from supplying baby parts.
“Now, Planned Parenthood and their partners in crime must face justice under the law for their barbaric criminal profiteering from abortion baby parts,” the CMP statement said.
“The documents which will be made public at Wednesday morning’s hearing confirm David Daleiden’s findings from undercover videos exposing baby organ harvesting and sale. Procurement companies like StemExpress market themselves to abortion clinics by explicitly offering them chances to make money. The documents make clear there is absolutely no cost to the abortion clinic so that all monies received go to their bottom line,” Dannenfelser said.
“Procurement technicians are trained,” she said, “to work with clinic staff to target women coming in for abortions based on gestational age. They are told to quickly obtain consent from women at one of the most vulnerable points in their lives, relying on IRB consent forms that are misleading – at best – concerning the likelihood of ‘cures’ resulting from research using fresh baby organs.
“The procurement techs are promised bonuses for particular baby parts, with stomachs, bladders and lungs resulting in a higher per item bonus than ears, kidneys, or tongues,” she said.
She called on the Department of Justice “to take immediate action.”
The organization said Catherine Glenn Foster, an associate scholar at the SBA List-related Charlotte Lozier Institute, is on the schedule to testify on the federal law.
Her comments were previewed online: “As demonstrated by the evidence presented by this panel, clinics and procurement companies have been getting away with charging far more than the allowed costs for harvesting, transporting, and warehousing body parts as they wait for customers. In doing so, they have violated both the intent and the letter of 42 U.S.C. § 289g-2, which bars, among other things, the transfer of human fetal tissue ‘for valuable consideration.'”
The statement continued, “For perhaps we forget that this law is meant to protect the ethical imperative that recognizes the dignity in every human life. In the face of clinical, sanitized language, we may become desensitized. In the abortion clinic, a human baby is called ’tissue’ or a ‘fetus.’ A head is a ‘calvarium’ or ‘cal.’ The technician who counts baby body parts is a ‘products of conception’ or ‘POC’ worker. And by converting human lives into a bulk commodity, public discussion has been stifled. But we are in fact talking about real and unique human beings whose lives were tragically snuffed out.”
WND reported only days ago that a Texas prosecutor whose links to the local Planned Parenthood abortion business run deep had become a focal point of a criminal case against Daleiden, the undercover operative who released the videos.
Daleiden and an associate were indicted by a grand jury assembled by Harris County prosecutor Devon Anderson on counts relating to using an allegedly fake driver’s license even though the grand jury had been charged with investigating Planned Parenthood’s possibly illegal body parts sale activities.
At the time, officials with Operation Rescue, another cutting edge pro-life organization like Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress, called for a new “untainted” grand jury.
Anderson’s grand jury had indicted Daleiden, founder of the CMP, and Sandra Merritt, after they posed as executives of a fake biomedical research company to capture with a hidden camera Planned Parenthood doctors and clinic managers discussing the harvesting of fetal tissue for profit.
Daleiden and Merritt were accused of tampering with a governmental record, a felony that carries a punishment of up to 20 years. Daleiden also was indicted with a misdemeanor for the alleged purchase and sale of human organs.
Operation Rescue, whose chief, Troy Newman, is a board member for CMP, said the charges against Daleiden and Merritt need to be dropped or a special prosecutor “in no way affiliated with Devon Anderson, the Harris County district attorney’s office or Chip Lewis” needs to be appointed.
OR reported its information “indicates the grand jury indictments against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were likely in retaliation against Operation Rescue for filing a complaint against Houston abortionist Douglas Karpen, which led to a grand investigation of him in 2013.”
The AP reported Planned Parenthood attorney Josh Schaffer said the grand jury “never even voted on possible” charges against Planned Parenthood.
“No vote means no investigation,” said Cheryl Sullenger, senior vice president of Operation Rescue. “The people are entitled to an unbiased investigation into the serious allegations of illegal conduct by Planned Parenthood. That does not appear to have happened.”
OR explained it filed a 2013 complaint that resulted in a grand-jury investigation of Karpen, who was accused by former co-workers of murdering babies born alive during shoddy abortions.
“Chip Lewis, Karpen’s attorney, falsely accused Operation Rescue of paying three former Karpen employees to testify against him and of ‘doctoring’ grisly photographs of babies Karpen had allegedly murdered, according to witnesses,” OR said.
“Lewis threatened Operation Rescue after no true bill was returned against Karpen. Lewis told the Houston Chronicle, ‘Those responsible for bringing these wholly unfounded allegations against Dr. Karpen will be held responsible for their crimes.’ He further threatened an investigation of Operation Rescue, which never materialized.”
It is Lewis, OR reported, who “has tight connections to District Attorney Devon Anderson.”
“He is a long time personal friend of hers and her now deceased husband, former D.A. Mike Anderson, and is the largest political donor to the Anderson family. It could be assumed that Anderson owes Lewis for his friendship and political favors.”
Daleiden’s lawyers in a court filing are asking for the charges to be dropped.
The Planned Parenthood lawyer, Schaffer, “stated that during the grand jury proceedings, he and prosecutors maintained a ‘dialogue … about the details of the case, and kept that going through,'” the filing explains.
“To further demonstrate collusion with the pro-abortion lawyers, an attorney for the National Abortion Foundation, Mr. Derek Foran, announced to the world via The New York Times that he had insider information and ‘learned about the indictments in Texas about a half hour before they were publicly announced,'” it states.
The submission also explains Anderson’s grand jury violated a variety of procedural rules, leaving the indictment invalid.
A spokesman in Anderson’s office confirmed to WND she was not taking questions on the issue, and he submitted a statement she had prepared: “These matters will be thoroughly reviewed by a judge and jury. I am confident that the actions of the DA’s office in this case will withstand any scrutiny.”
But an officer with Operation Rescue, Cheryl Sullenger, said the two motions on Daleiden’s behalf “accuse the office of District Attorney Devon Anderson of colluding with Planned Parenthood – who was supposed to be the subject of the investigation – and others to improperly extend the grand jury for the purpose of launching a new investigation against Daleiden and his associate, Sandra Merritt.”
“Once Daleiden and Merritt were charged, evidence was released by Operation Rescue’s Texas attorney, Briscoe Cain, that proved Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was engaged in providing fetal body parts from aborted babies to four public-funded Texas universities. That evidence was ignored by Anderson,” she reported.
“Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, but apparently, this one leaked like a sieve – but only in the direction of Planned Parenthood and its cronies,” said Newman, who served as a founding board member for Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress. “The grand jury was so tainted with improper conduct that all the charges against Daleiden and Merritt should be thrown out immediately, with a huge apology included!”
