Fetal Trafficking Under Oath - Planned Parenthood's Admissions About Baby Parts Sales

PLANNED PARENTHOOD TESTIMONY ON SELLING BABY PARTS UNSEALED, NEW VIDEOS RELEASED
Planned Parenthood Officials Testified Under Oath About Financial Incentives in Fetal Tissue Research Programs in Abortion Giant's Own Lawsuit

IRVINE, May 26--The Center for Medical Progress, whose undercover videos exposed Planned Parenthood leadership negotiating the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal body parts, released a new video today featuring Planned Parenthood officials' sworn videotaped testimony about the sales.

The new video release documents the Planned Parenthood officials' admissions, which came in Planned Parenthood's own retaliatory lawsuit over the undercover footage and contradict Planned Parenthood's public claims about both the undercover videos and the abortion provider's fetal tissue research programs. The testimony was unsealed this spring.

The video shows how Planned Parenthood Federation of America, while under investigation in 2015, told Congress that its Gulf Coast affiliate in Houston had "rebuffed" an undercover proposal to sell fetal livers for $750 per liver and $1600 for liver/thymus pairs. But Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast's Senior Director of Abortion Access, Tram Nguyen, testified that she "wanted to move forward with it," as documented in contemporaneous emails between her and PPGC's Regional Director Dyann Santos.

The video also features sworn testimony from Dr. Dorothy Furgerson, the longtime Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country. Dr. Furgerson signed PPMM's contract with StemExpress to sell fetal body parts to StemExpress per specimen "determined in the clinic to be usable", and Dr. Furgerson's endorsement appears on a StemExpress brochure handed out at National Abortion Federation meetings advertising "fiscal[] rewards" and "financial profits" to the abortion clinics who provided fetal tissue to StemExpress. When asked if the purpose of the brochure was "to obtain more potential sources of fetal tissue," Dr. Furgerson testified, "Yes, I understood that that's what they were trying to do."

The video shows StemExpress paid Planned Parenthood solely based on the number of "usable" samples that StemExpress could harvest from PPMM's abortions, at least an extra $65 per abortion if the customer ordered a fetal organ plus a blood sample. PPMM does over 17,000 abortions a year, and unsealed invoices show PPMM making $25,000 in just 3 months from StemExpress. When asked how much money an abortion clinic could make per year from selling fetal body parts, the founder and CEO of Planned Parenthood partner Advanced Bioscience Resources, Linda Tracy, was forbidden by her lawyer to answer.

The video also includes testimony from Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the Senior Director of Medical Services for PPFA from the first undercover video release. When asked when she first found out about Planned Parenthood affiliates "receiving payments for fetal tissue", Dr. Nucatola testified, "I knew [Planned Parenthood Los Angeles] was getting payments because I was a provider there," yet testified she never felt the need to check PPLA's compliance with PPFA policies. Dr. Mary Gatter, the former PPLA Medical Director who established the relationship with "for-profit" biotech company Novogenix, testified that PPFA provided a “waiver” for PPLA to begin the program.

42 U.S. Code 289g-2 broadly forbids the exchange of valuable consideration for fetal tissue. After investigating Planned Parenthood and companies like StemExpress and ABR for over a year, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee's Select Investigative Panel made criminal referrals for Planned Parenthood and their business partners to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice. In late 2017, the DOJ announced it had opened a federal investigation, and two southern California companies admitted guilt to selling body parts from Planned Parenthood Orange & San Bernardino Counties against the law in a $7.8 million settlement with the Orange County District Attorney.

Last week, the Small Business Administration demanded 37 Planned Parenthood affiliates return $80 million in federal relief loans they fraudulently certified they were eligible for, and 27 Senators called on Attorney General Bill Barr to broaden the DOJ investigation of the Planned Parenthood affiliates' activities.

CMP project lead David Daleiden notes: "The time has come for federal consequences for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood lied to the public and to Congress, but now there is no longer any reasonable doubt that Planned Parenthood sold fetal body parts, commodifying living children in the womb and treating pregnant women like a cash crop. The U.S. Department of Justice must escalate the enforcement of laws against fetal trafficking to the highest level of priority."