The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a letter released today to the National Institutes of Health in which the nation’s largest abortion provider says they will no longer accept any reimbursement for costs associated with procuring fetal body parts from abortions. The letter claims that the tissue provided to buyers by affiliates in Washington did not accept money for the body parts and that its Oregon affiliate has only been providing placental tissue for reimbursement.
Not surprisingly, the letter makes no mention of the sale of kidneys, brains, and other body parts which are very sought-after by members of the tissue procurement community whose representatives were captured on film negotiating payment for these products from Planned Parenthood affiliates.
The videos were recorded by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress which posed as a tissue buyer during a years-long undercover investigation that sparked national outrage as well as a slew of state and federal investigations.
What the videos do best is expose the cold-hearted attitude of Planned Parenthood employees who were routinely caught on film picking through, and joking about, tiny body parts that were procured after abortion procedures. Others sat in restaurants, munching on salads and sipping wine while discussing how abortionists know how to “crush” above and below desirable baby parts to be sure the most valuable tissue is intact.
In one film, a live fetus is caught moving on film while a clinic worker was being instructed to harvest its brain.
Cecil Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, insisted in the letter that they broke no laws and that the proceeds received for these body parts is allowed under law.
Naturally, she made no mention of the many areas where the clinics may have broken the laws, such as when abortionists admitted on film to altering the abortion procedure in order to better preserve desirable body parts, a tactic that is very much against the law.
Instead, her letter contained the usual content which is almost always short on facts and very long on hysterical hyperbole:
“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.”
I think the only smokescreen that has been dissipated in this discussion is Planned Parenthood’s, an organization that professes to be sincerely interested in the reproductive health care of its clients even though it offers a very short list of services in comparison to other clinics.
She goes on to state in her letter that their decision to forgo reimbursement shouldn’t be interpreted as a suggestion that other clinics should follow suit or that the law is weak, and vows to continue to give women the option to donate fetal tissue. Of course, she neglects to add that in at least one of the videos, a former employee of a tissue supplier admits that Planned Parenthood took body parts without their patients' consent.
This latest move of Planned Parenthood is nothing more than a PR stunt and a thinly veiled attempt to seize the conversation and steer it away from any more revelations that might lead to further damage to its bottom line.
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