By Bob Eschliman
Editor
Ever since the first video from the Center for Medical Progress saw the light of day, Planned Parenthood has insisted that it had done nothing wrong and the videos were heavily edited. Based on comments by several top-level Planned Parenthood officials in the fourth episode of CMP’s documentary web series “Human Capital,” that is clearly a lie.
CMP’s latest video features several Planned Parenthood Federation of America executives discussing the organization’s secretive practices around aborted fetal parts harvesting.
The video includes comments from Deborah VanDerhei, the National Director of the organization’s Consortium of Abortion Providers, describing the harvesting of fetal body parts as “donation for remuneration.” It also highlights conversations with Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, Senior Medical Advisor for PPFA; Dr. Vanessa Cullins, Vice President for External Medical Affairs for PPFA; and Deborah VanDerhei, National Director for the Consortium of Abortion Providers at PPFA, an influential committee within Planned Parenthood that drives abortion policy across the organization.
Scroll down to see the video. The article continues afterward.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the country, responsible for 327,000 abortions every year, and receives $528 million in taxpayer money each year.
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). In the video, Cullins seems fully aware of the criminal exposure that fetal body parts sales present to Planned Parenthood.
“This is important. This could destroy your organization and us, if we don’t time those conversations correctly,” she tells a prospective buyer.
“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,” Westhoff says in the video to a prospective fetal organ buyer.
“Certainly, everything we provide — oh, gonads! Oh my God, gonads. Everything we provide is fresh.” Westhoff continues, “Obviously, we would have the potential for a huge P.R. issue in doing this,” before offering to introduce the buyers to “national office abortion people” from Planned Parenthood.
“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,” VanDerhei explains.
“Is this really worth getting — I don’t even know what in general, what a specimen generally brings in?” VanDerhei later asks a prospective buyer. When she is told $100 per specimen, she remarks, “But we have independent colleagues who generate a fair amount of income doing this.” VanDerhei suggests that Planned Parenthood goes to great lengths to avoid leaving a paper trail about their fetal tissue activity: “It’s an issue that you might imagine we’re not really that comfortable talking about on email.”
In a conversation recorded between VanDerhei and Vanessa Russo, Compliance Program Administrator for Planned Parenthood Keystone in Pennsylvania, Russo argues, “A company like this that wants to give our organization money for the tissue–I think that that’s a valid exchange, and that that’s OK.” VanDerhei nods her head up and down and affirms, “Mhm.”
CMP project leader David Daleiden said the lengths to which Planned Parenthood leadership will go to cover up the organization’s illegal sale of aborted baby parts is “nothing less than the desperation of a guilty conscience.” Those “lengths” have included blacked-out emails to what Daleiden calls “contorted oxymorons” such as “donation for remuneration.”
“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,’” he said. “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.”
Follow Us