Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
The latest video in the Planned Parenthood baby parts scandal focuses on a small and secretive company known as Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. (ABR) where some workers were “funding places in Hawaii for themselves” off the business of selling human tissue.
LifeNews.com is reporting on the latest video which features Cate Dyer, who used to work as a procurement technician for ABR before she founded StemExpress, the company that has been caught in the limelight of the baby parts scandal alongside Planned Parenthood.
“They were funding places in Hawaii for themselves,” Dyer tells the undercover reps from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) who were filming the whole conversation. “Some staff–not that I know so much on the Planned Parenthood side, but I wouldn’t be surprised–there are some staff in the past that have been on the payroll with ABR.”
According to Dyer, ABR would pay an “advisor fee” to a clinic manager or director in order to preserve their exclusive right to harvest fetal tissue at that location. “There’s like, well enough known,” says Dyer, that “for a long time there were certain clinics that because they had paid advisors that were sitting on boards for these clinics, that were also an advisor to ABR, you were just never going to go anywhere with them, you know what I mean?”
The video also features conversations with Dr. Katharine Sheehan, the long-time medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest until 2013. Sheehan tells the undercover reps that at Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest, where they have had a relationship with ABR for over 10 years, it’s good for a biotech firm to return a portion of their fees to the clinic. When the CMP reps say they do this, Sheehan eagerly replies, “Right, get a toe in and make it, make a pro–alright.”
In an August 27 letter to Congress, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards referenced a California Planned Parenthood affiliate that currently receives $60 “per tissue specimen” from a tissue procurement organization. Based on a process of elimination, the CMP identified Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest and ABR as the affiliate referred to in Richards’ letter.
“We now know from Cecile Richards’ letter that $60 per collected tissue specimen is what will ‘get a toe in’ to harvest baby parts at Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest,” wrote CMP Project Lead David Daleiden. “As multiple tissue specimens often come from a single fetus, $60/specimen can quickly add up to hundreds of extra dollars in revenue per abortion.”
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).
Also caught on film was a discussion with Perrin Larton, the Procurement Manager at ABR, who described the company’s fetal tissue harvesting practice to a prospective buyer.
“I literally have had women come in and they’ll go in the O.R. and they’re back out in 3 minutes, and I’m going, ‘What’s going on?’ Oh yeah, the fetus was already in the vaginal canal whenever we put her in the stirrups, it just fell out,” she says of situations where enough cervical dilation has occurred to procure an intact fetus.
ABR charges $340 per second-trimester fetal tissue specimen.
The latest edition in this macabre story shows that not only are aborted fetal body parts being sold for profit, but the callous agents who are procuring, selling and buying these samples are living well enough to afford places in Hawaii. They callously laugh about born alive infants “falling out” of their mother’s body as if this human life was nothing more than a waste product that just happens to be worth money when sold on the open market.
This whole scandal is reminiscent of the way people behaved in ancient times, when they tossed unwanted babies out into the elements to die and roared with pleasure while watching people being torn apart by wild animals in a circus theater.
If the only way to advance science is to engage in this kind of cold and insensitive handling of human life, then we may be making progress in one area, but are regressing into a much more primitive form of morality than any of us should be proud of.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
