When you think about Planned Parenthood, what is the first thing that comes to mind? There is no doubt that even if everything they did was on the up-and-up, they would be a severely controversial group.
However, recent developments have shown that Planned Parenthood does indeed profit from selling aborted baby body parts to various biotech companies. The Center for Medical Progress is a pro-life investigative group, and they are the ones who broke the story.
They released a treasure trove of documents and videos that showed several sworn video depositions of clinic directors who responded to questions regarding payments to affiliates for the harvested fetal specimens.
This new information comes from a video compilation of a number of sworn depositions recorded during a court cast last year that was entitled Planned Parenthood Federation of America et al v. The Center For Medical Progress et al.
The case involved PPFA abortionists, various department directors, and the founder of a company called Advanced Bioscience Resources. This was a biotech company that at one time had a contract with Planned Parenthood to receive fetal specimens for research.
This court case was located at the U.S. Federal District Court of Northern California and the individuals taking the depositions were asked just what they knew about these various contracts and profits that the Planned Parenthood Clinics had received.
Dr. Deborah Nucatola is the senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood, and under her deposition she said that she was aware of all kinds of activities as one of the Planned Parenthood’s abortionists.
For example, she was fully aware that the Los Angeles branch of Planned Parenthood was “receiving payments for fetal body parts and tissue.”
Nucatola indicated that she hadn’t looked into whether Planned Parenthood Los Angeles had remained in compliance with PPFA policies and federal law regarding these monthly payments that this particular clinic had been receiving.
Instead, Nucatola simply passed the buck during her deposition, saying that this responsibility belonged to Dr. Mary Gatter, who is now the former PPLA medical director. Gatter was also required to give a deposition, and she said that she had been able to obtain a waiver from PPFA and that enabled her to set up various contracts with biotech companies.
The most well-known contract was with Novogenix and she was required to provide aborted fetal specimens to this organization.
Of course, the plot thickens when you consider that federal law bans abortion clinics and biotech companies from profiting off of abortions. Thus, such things as organs, limbs, and fetal tissue are supposed to be off-limits. However, as these depositions show, that doesn’t necessarily stop abortion clinics from doing it.
One case in point would be Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which not only was breaking the law by selling fetal tissue, but they were actually receiving monthly payments of over $11,000 from StemExpress for the privilege of doing it. Apparently, breaking the law in this manner is pretty lucrative. Moreover, Stem Express was one of this clinic’s best customers, paying them much more than their other client, Advanced Bioscience Resources. Of course, it has now been over 45 years since Roe v. Wade, and do we suddenly find out that after all of this time the Planned Parenthood clinics were never about a woman’s reproductive rights at all, but simply just about the almighty dollar?
Also, consider the fact that the law doesn’t mince words about this either: “42 U.S. Code 289g-2 explicits forbids any type of monetary compensation for fetal tissue. We have investigated Planned Parenthood and companies such as ABR and StemExpress for a year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel has made several criminal referrals regarding these incidents from Planned Parenthood to both the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.”
“In the latter part of 2017, the Department of Justice had decided to open a federal investigation,” the Center for Medical Progress continued. “As a result, two southern California companies announced that they had indeed sold fetal body parts that they had obtained from both the Planned Parenthood Orange and San Bernardino facilities. They entered into a $7 million settlement with the Orange County District Attorney.”
Nucatola noted how she has often performed abortion up to as high a gestational period of 24 weeks, and she was actually seen in an undercover video from 2014 describing how clinics have a tendency to do those terrible partial birth abortion videos simply for the reason to get intact organs for the biotech companies. She noted how they often wanted “specimens” such as “hearts, lungs, or the liver” and that many of these specimens can draw as high as between $30 to $100 on the market.
Another thing that was also released late last May was an undercover email contract that had been sent to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast from the Center for Medical Progress where they had posed as a fake biotech firm called Bio Max. This contract showed that this Planned Parenthood was attempting to set up a payment contract where Bio Max would pay them at least $750 for a fetal liver and up to $1,600 for a fetal thymus and liver pair. Publicly, this abortion provider said that they had rejected this contract. However, in private the director of the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Center, Tram Nguyen, said in a sworn March 2019 deposition that she had been planning to go forward on the deal.
Of course, former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and her associates continually maintained that any monies they received from harvesting these fetal body parts and organs for biotech companies such as StemExpress was only for reimbursements for such things as associated costs. However, all of the legal documents and the sworn depositions definitely appear to be a “smoking gun” that would indicate otherwise.
“Of course, the law will allow for reimbursements for different specific costs when fetal organs are being donated, all of these reimbursements will have to meet specific guidelines. For example, these fees must always be associated with processing, transportation, and other related costs,” pro-life group Live Action said. “Planned Parenthood did not do any of these things, but they were more than happy to collect money when they provided StemExpress with marketable body parts.”
David Daleiden is an investigative journalist for the Center for Medical Progress, and he said in one of his statements that he firmly believes that Planned Parenthood deserves to face federal consequences.
Of course, former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and her associates continually maintained that any monies they received from harvesting these fetal body parts and organs for biotech companies such as StemExpress was only for reimbursements for such things as associated costs. However, all of the legal documents and the sworn depositions definitely appear to be a “smoking gun” that would indicate otherwise.
“Of course, the law will allow for reimbursements for different specific costs when fetal organs are being donated, all of these reimbursements will have to meet specific guidelines. For example, these fees must always be associated with processing, transportation, and other related costs,” pro-life group Live Action said. “Planned Parenthood did not do any of these things, but they were more than happy to collect money when they provided StemExpress with marketable body parts.”
David Daleiden is an investigative journalist for the Center for Medical Progress, and he said in one of his statements that he firmly believes that Planned Parenthood deserves to face federal consequences.
“Planned Parenthood was dishonest with the public and to Congress both, but now there is no longer any doubt to the story that they sell fetal body parts, making living children in the womb a commodity and treating pregnant women who have bought the line that it is a choice as if they are a cash crop,” Daleiden said. “The U.S. Department of Justice should highly consider escalating their law enforcement against fetal trafficking and make it one of their highest priorities.”
These videos and documentation were released on the heels of a lawsuit where Planned Parenthood filed suit against Daleiden and his colleagues in California and Texas in regards to their undercover videos. The legal results came with a mixed bag; in Texas, Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit was thrown out, but in California (what a shock) Daleiden was ordered by a jury to pay over $800,000 in punitive damages because of him releasing these undercover videos. However, Daleiden’s attorneys are affiliated with the Thomas More Society, and they plan on filing a vigorous appeal.
Of course, I have to admit that when I was writing this I kept conjuring up images of Anthony Hopkins of Hannibal Lecter fame or of some obscure Death Metal band. This is very morbid and immoral, to say the least. However, enough about how I feel…what do YOU think about this new development in the pro-life and pro-choice debate?
