The Planned Parenthood abortion business has announced it will stop accepting financial payments for the body parts from aborted babies. The abortion giant has been exposed in a series of undercover videos discussing how it sells aborted babies and their body parts for profit and breaks multiple federal laws to do so.
But today, according to the Wall St. Journal, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards announced in a letter to the National Institutes of Health that planned Parenthood will stop accepting “reimbursement” from the sales of aborted fetal body parts. Attacking the pro-life group that exposed her, Richards says the move is designed to take away the “smokescreen” of the “extremists” behind the Center for Medical Progress videos.
Richards claims the decision “is first and foremost about preserving the ability of our patients to donate tissue, and to expose our opponents’ false charges about this limited but important work.”
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
As the Wall Street Journal reports:
“I want to be completely clear about two things: First, Planned Parenthood’s policies on fetal tissue donation already exceed the legal requirements,” Richards wrote to NIH. “Now we’re going even further in order to take away any basis for attacking Planned Parenthood to advance an anti-abortion political agenda.
“And, second, our decision not to take any reimbursement for expenses should not be interpreted as a suggestion that anyone else should not take reimbursement or that the law in this area isn’t strong,” she added.
“The real goal of these extremists has nothing to do with our fetal tissue donation compliance process but is instead to ban abortion in the U.S. and block women from getting any health care from Planned Parenthood,” Ms. Richards wrote. “Today, we’re taking their smokescreen away.”
Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood said the decision was made jointly by Ms. Richards, affiliates and chief medical officers.
Richards also admits that Planned Parenthood companies in multiple states have been involved in selling the body parts of aborted babies. The letter states:
Fetal tissue has been provided by affiliates in California and Washington state, and the Washington clinics haven’t been taking any money for it, she said. The Oregon affiliate has been providing placental tissue for reimbursement. Planned Parenthood didn’t disclose the amount it will forgo with its new policy.
Planned Parenthood said they didn’t have an exact dollar figure of how much procuring tissue without getting reimbursed will cost them or the two affiliates.
Though Planned Parenthood will no longer sell aborted babies and their body parts, women having abortions can still donate them:
Under federal law, the tissue can be sent directly to university research centers or to third parties that process it and provide the material to researchers, but it is illegal to profit from tissue. Planned Parenthood has said it only procures fetal tissue for research, not transplantation, and it only recovers reasonable costs.
In her letter, Ms. Richards said the decision to forgo reimbursement shouldn’t be interpreted as a suggestion that other clinics should follow suit or that the law is weak, according to the letter to the NIH. She also said the organization will continue to give women the option to donate fetal tissue.
Congress has had multiple hearings investigating numerous abuses and potential violation of multiple laws to sell aborted baby parts.
In the first hearing on Planned Parenthood, James Bopp, the general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, told the House Judiciary Committee that Planned Parenthood likely broke multiple federal laws in its sale of aborted babies and their body parts for research.
He said, “Recorded conversations, released by the Center for Medical Progress reveal many legal issues with Planned Parenthood’s procedures and practices regarding fetal tissue procurement.”
During a second hearing, Democrats on the panel complained that the videos showing the abuses at Planned Parenthood were “heavily edited.” But when Republicans on the committee attempted to show the videos, they objected and refused to watch them.
At a third hearing, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards defended the sales of abortion babies. She contended that no baby has ever been born alive following a botched abortion, she essentially admitted that claims Planned Parenthood does mammograms are a lie, and she defended her exorbitantly high salary as the head of the nation’s biggest abortion business.
“These procedures and practices of Planned Parenthood, and their tissue procurement partners, show that federal laws when applicable, have been and are continuing to be violated during the procurement and sale of human fetal tissue,” Bopp explained.
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are looking to use the reconciliation process to approve legislation to de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which has been caught selling aborted babies and their body parts. After the House approved the de-funding measure, Senate Democrats defeated a bill to fund the federal government that included language de-funding Planned Parenthood for one year while the Congressional investigation continues into how it allegedly violated multiple laws to sell aborted babies and their body parts.
House Republican leaders are planning to target Planned Parenthood’s funding by immediately drafting a fast-track reconciliation bill that would be able to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster and be approved on a majority vote in the Senate.
While the reconciliation process would result in getting a bill to de-fund Planned Parenthood to pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s desk, Obama has already promised repeatedly to veto any bill that revokes taxpayer funding for the abortion company. The Senate does not have enough votes to overcome such a veto, leading some pro-life groups to point out that there is little hope of de-funding Planned Parenthood until the election of a pro-life president next year.
“The Administration strongly opposes Senate passage of the Senate amendment to H.J.Res. 61, making continuing appropriations for fiscal year (FY) 2016, and for other purposes, which contains highly objectionable provisions that advance a narrow ideological agenda,” the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said before the vote. Eliminating federal funding to Planned Parenthood would “limit access” to healthcare for women, men, families and “disproportionately” affect low-income people, the OMB said.
Weeks ago, a previous Senate vote on de-funding Planned Parenthood saw Senate Democrats filibuster and block legislation to revoke $550 million in taxpayer funding.
A new Congressional report finds that de-funding the Planned Parenthood abortion business — even for one year — would save “several thousand” unborn babies from the nightmare of abortion. The report also finds de-funding Planned Parenthood would save the federal government $235 million.
The 10th video by The Center for Medical Progress features several top-level Planned Parenthood 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.”
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must Investigate Planned Parenthood for Selling Aborted Baby Parts
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all ten:
- In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “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 Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
- In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
- In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
- In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
- In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
- In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
- In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
- The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
- The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies.The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
The full, unedited videos have confirmed that revelations that some aborted baby remains sold by Planned Parenthood go to biotech companies for the purpose of creating “humanized” mice. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood has been exposed as having sold body parts from aborted babies for as much as 15 years.
The federal law that technically prohibits the sale of aborted babies and their body parts was written by a pro-abortion Congressman decades ago and essentially spells out a process by which sellers of aborted baby body parts can meet certain criteria that allows the sales to be legal. That’s why a Colorado congressman has introduced legislation to totally ban the sales of aborted baby body parts.
