LOS ANGELES, Sept. 15–The fourth episode in a new documentary web series and 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.”
The “Human Capital” documentary web series, produced by The Center for Medical Progress, integrates expert interviews, eyewitness accounts, and real-life undercover interactions to explore different themes within Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal tissue. Episode 4, “Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Criminal Enterprise,” launches today at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EU_02c5bM
The video 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 (CAPS) at PPFA.
“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,”
says Dr. Westhoff 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.
Deborah VanDerhei is the National Director for CAPS, an influential committee within Planned Parenthood that drives abortion policy across the organization. VanDerhei refers to payments for fetal tissue as “donation for remuneration,” which carries the connotation of financial reward or benefit without regard for actual expenses. VanDerhei explains, “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.”
“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 okay.” VanDerhei nods her head up and down and affirms, “Mhm.”
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).
Vanessa Cullins, the Vice President of External Medical Affairs, 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.
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. “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,” notes 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.”
I think your conflating multiple issues. Yes, no doubt that that their are companies whose research off of donated parts will turn a profit, such profits are not addressed by current law and are largely deemed ethical when used for medical research. Also, none of the companies that you listed deal with transplant surgery. Instead what is being addressed by the PP tapes is that harvesting birthed and unborn body parts for a profit is illegal. The only costs that can be legally covered are for transportation and processing which PP does neither since a middleman Stemxpress handles all of that.