quote:

Every time you hear the network anchors and reporters act outraged about President Trump calling on "friendly" reporters and the fact that there's something desperately wrong about trying to avoid negative publicity and hostile questions, think of Planned Parenthood.

As with virtually anyone on the left, journalists treat Planned Parenthood as the most sacred of cows. In the last few weeks, from the women's marches through the March for Life and other protests of Planned Parenthood, none of the networks will investigate or even cover the activities of these merchants of death.

They will say that those who are anti-abortion want to defund Planned Parenthood. But they routinely repeat the liberal argument that federal funds don't pay for abortions (never mind the taxpayer-funded abortions under Obamacare). They don't point out the fact that Planned Parenthood is hard-wired into the Democratic Party coalition, and that it reportedly spent about $14 million in PAC money for Democrats in the last cycle.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll asked plainly whether people supported defunding Planned Parenthood. Only 31 percent said yes, and 62 percent said no. Another recent Quinnipiac poll asked about banning abortion at 20 weeks. Forty-six percent said yes, and 46 percent said no.

Planned Parenthood has performed tens of thousands of abortions after 20 weeks. The Guttmacher Institute, previously a Planned Parenthood affiliate, reportedly released data showing that about 18,000 third-trimester abortions are performed ever year. According to this survey, roughly a third of those who believe this ghastly practice should be banned also believe Planned Parenthood should be funded so they can commit these atrocities.

That gap illustrates that Planned Parenthood (through a very cooperative media) effectively brands itself as a generic women's health care provider, not as the McDonald's of abortion. Take its claim that abortion services only account for 3 percent of its procedures. Even liberal fact-checkers like Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post slammed that as misleading. He said: "The organization treats each service -- pregnancy test, STD test, abortion, birth control -- equally. Yet there are obvious differences between a surgical (or even medical) abortion, and offering a urine (or even blood) pregnancy test. These services are not all comparable in how much they cost or how extensive the service or procedure is."

But the networks just parrot the propaganda line. Take NPR anchor Ari Shapiro, who said, "Nationally, Planned Parenthood says it treats 2.5 million patients a year, and abortions make up 3 percent of the services." ABC's "Good Morning America" let a spokeswoman claim that "(Ninety-seven) percent of the services that Planned Parenthood provides are preventive health services."

The networks also give us celebrities reading the sales pamphlet. Actress Scarlett Johansson was quoted by CBS as saying, "For millions of Americans, Planned Parenthood is often the only trustworthy and affordable clinic." Baloney. She might be excused as a fool, but CBS knows better.

These networks are deliberately ignoring what the anti-abortion group Live Action keeps proving: Planned Parenthood is not a hospital. Most of its centers don't offer prenatal care. You don't go there for a mammogram. It is a "sexual health" clinic. Women go there for contraceptives, pregnancy tests and STD tests, and to kill their babies.

On Jan. 24, Live Action posted a video documenting how it contacted 97 Planned Parenthood clinics across 41 of the organization's affiliates where undercover recording is legal under state law, and only five said they offered any form of prenatal care. They don't insure a healthy pregnancy. They terminate pregnancies. And the network coverage? Nonexistent.

In a video posted on Feb. 6, Sue Thayer, a former director of two Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa, said she encouraged an abortion quota that, if met, would result in staff pizza parties. And the network coverage? Nonexistent.

These are just two of six videos that Live Action has posted in the last few weeks, and they've drawn more than 33 million views. The networks simply won't touch them. They are rigidly doctrinaire in maintaining their Happy News narrative. Nothing that anti-abortion people produce, no matter how solid the reporting, can break through. It's all somehow "alternative facts" and "fake news." And they wonder why the public doesn't trust them.

quote:

Glam American actresses Emma Stone and Dakota Johnson adorned their pricy Oscars ceremony gowns and handbags with golden Planned Parenthood pins in the shape of the group's logo.

I believe there should be truth in virtue signaling. But bloodied miniature forceps would have clashed with the Givenchy and Gucci outfits worn by the abortion giant's pinup gals.

Since President Trump's reinstatement of the so-called "Mexico City policy" barring taxpayer funding of international nongovernmental organizations that perform and promote abortions, Hollywood progressives have turned up the volume on their abortion radicalism -- and opened their wallets.

Golden Globes winner Tracee Ellis-Ross plans to hock 10 massive, red-carpet rings and donate the proceeds to Planned Parenthood. Pop songstress Katy Perry chipped in $10,000. The author of the "Lemony Snicket" children's book series, Daniel Handler, and his wife showered the peddler of harvested fetal organs with $1 million.

"We've been very fortunate," Handler explained, "and good fortune should be shared with noble causes."

"Noble?"

That's not how outspoken health professional Obianuju Ekeocha, an African-born biomedical scientist who grew up in Nigeria and now lives and works in England, sees it.

"The Africans are grateful for the Mexico policy!" she wrote me. Are you listening, Tinseltown?

In response to a campaign by Western feminists and liberal European governments called #SheDecides to raise global funding for abortions, Ekeocha published a bold and informative YouTube video excoriating elitists hellbent on funding and terminating unborn children in Africa -- in defiance of how Africans actually feel about abortion.

Ekeocha noted that a recent Pew Research Center survey on global attitudes about abortion found that the vast majority of those polled in Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Nigeria believe the practice to be "morally unacceptable."

Ekeocha actually traveled to African neighborhoods and interviewed women about the "noble cause" of elitist abortionists.

Catholic nuns, Muslim schoolgirls, millennial-age young women and elderly grandmothers all made their position clear:

"No to abortion!"

"We love babies, so we do not support abortion."

"We don't need any safe abortion as not[h]ing is safe in killing."

Beneath their costumery of progressive benevolence, liberal Hollywood "helpers" and global do-gooders exhibit a cold indifference toward the actual wants and needs of their supposed beneficiaries in the Third World. They're raising hundreds of millions for abortions, not for food, water and education.

This, Ekeocha accurately diagnoses, is "cultural imperialism."

And, remember, it's marinated in racist eugenics: Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in 1916 "to stop the multiplication of the unfit." It would be "the most important and greatest step towards race betterment." In an essay included in her writing collection held by the Library of Congress, Sanger urged her abortion clinic colleagues to "breed a race of thoroughbreds." Nationwide "birth control bureaus" would propagate the proper "science of breeding" to stop impoverished, nonwhite women from "breeding like weeds."

Planned Parenthood activists blanketed the Third World with population-control propaganda preaching "the fewer, the merrier" and "Why carry more burdens?"

Outside of the privileged Hollywood bubble, Obianuju Ekeocha speaks for millions in condemning the butchers, predators and enablers of Planned Parenthood.

"They have not helped or furthered the cause and well-being of women in any way at all both in the developed countries and also in the developing countries," she told me. "Yet, they continue to get enormous funding from many western governments and also most unfortunately they get the support of celebrities like Emma Stone and Dakota Johnson who choose to be blinded by extremist (liberal) views that portray the killing of unborn babies as a women's right, progressive, health care, reproductive justice."

Take off your glittering abortion pins and open your minds.

"The truth is that abortion in all its forms is an abhorrent practice. Most people in Africa understand this very well," Ekeocha passionately explains.

"Whether a pre-born baby is killed in a back alley clinic or in an air-conditioned PP clinic, the killing of an unborn child is always barbaric. This is the one lesson we can teach Emma Stone, Dakota Johnson and all the other celebrities who are falling over themselves to support an abortion giant whose only legacy is that of death."

quote:

President Trump has offered an ultimatum to Planned Parenthood. In a new statement to The New York Times, Trump informed the organization that they can keep their taxpayer funding - if they cease to do abortions

quote:

“As I said throughout the campaign, I am pro-life and I am deeply committed to investing in women’s health and plan to significantly increase federal funding in support of nonabortion services such as cancer screenings,” he said. “Polling shows the majority of Americans oppose public funding for abortion, even those who identify as pro-choice. There is an opportunity for organizations to continue the important work they do in support of women’s health, while not providing abortion services.”

Trump made similar statements during his presidential campaign last year. While he was uncomfortable with Planned Parenthood's obsession with abortion, Trump frustrated conservatives when he noted Planned Parenthood does "very good work" for millions of women.

Congressional conservatives have urged the defunding of Planned Parenthood after a series of scandals exposed the organization as a greedy, inhumane organization. For instance, the Center for Medical Progress conducted an undercover investigation in which they discovered employees negotiating the sale of fetal body parts. Meanwhile, the pro-life group Live Action learned that employees were sometimes provided abortions quotas to fill. Actual health care be damned.

In case you were wondering, Planned Parenthood did not accept Trump's offer.

Planned Parenthood says it was offered $ by Trump "to abandon" patients. Not a deal "we will ever accept" @maggieNYT https://t.co/1ssKZQ7Oei
— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) March 6, 2017

Donations, not federal funds, pay for abortions, according to Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

oh no stalkertroll, townhall!

"Trump Says Planned Parenthood Can Keep Federal Funding...If They Stop Doing Abortions"

quote:

President Trump has offered an ultimatum to Planned Parenthood. In a new statement to The New York Times, Trump informed the organization that they can keep their taxpayer funding - if they cease to do abortions

quote:

“As I said throughout the campaign, I am pro-life and I am deeply committed to investing in women’s health and plan to significantly increase federal funding in support of nonabortion services such as cancer screenings,” he said. “Polling shows the majority of Americans oppose public funding for abortion, even those who identify as pro-choice. There is an opportunity for organizations to continue the important work they do in support of women’s health, while not providing abortion services.”

Trump made similar statements during his presidential campaign last year. While he was uncomfortable with Planned Parenthood's obsession with abortion, Trump frustrated conservatives when he noted Planned Parenthood does "very good work" for millions of women.

Congressional conservatives have urged the defunding of Planned Parenthood after a series of scandals exposed the organization as a greedy, inhumane organization. For instance, the Center for Medical Progress conducted an undercover investigation in which they discovered employees negotiating the sale of fetal body parts. Meanwhile, the pro-life group Live Action learned that employees were sometimes provided abortions quotas to fill. Actual health care be damned.

In case you were wondering, Planned Parenthood did not accept Trump's offer.

Planned Parenthood says it was offered $ by Trump "to abandon" patients. Not a deal "we will ever accept" @maggieNYT https://t.co/1ssKZQ7Oei
— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) March 6, 2017

Donations, not federal funds, pay for abortions, according to Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2017/03/06/trump-says-planned-parenthood-can-keep-fundingif-they-stop-doing-abortions-n2294887

exactly which part of all that was "factless propaganda?" maybe if you throw some felchgobbles at that question, it'll go away?

quote:

ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr


"some good news for texans"

Not the ones that are unborn, of course.

You know, of all the (three or four) people in that abortion room, the most vulnerable one is the one for whom there's no voice.



Michael

quote:

ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr


"some good news for texans"

Not the ones that are unborn, of course.

You know, of all the (three or four) people in that abortion room, the most vulnerable one is the one for whom there's no voice.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

Well we know you dont give a damn about the hosts life at all.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

sorry troll, you've not watched all the videos, nor read all the transcript and neither have I. people therefore are in a position where they have to believe one group saying this, or another group saying that. given a choice between accepting the center for medical progress' interpretation of events (as does the author of the article) vs media matters. im going with the former. you are no position to declare what media matters says as the final truth.

to make things worse, you misrepresented my response to that initial post that you copy/pasted above. of course in a completely self serving and out of context way.

and sorry again troll. the government gives money to planned parenthood to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. not to mention medicaid. planned parenthood does abortions. moving money around internally and accounting for it in different ways doesn't change the reality that the government and citizens are funding them.

the same is true for selling parts---calling them a reimbursement for expenses doesn't change that reality either.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

"the host?" as in the baby's a parasite??

Michael---I trust you know this but to point it out to other readers, lucy' "caring about the host" isn't about the "health of the mother" in the sense that normal people would understand that. its about a "hey I don't feel like being a mother so im going to kill my baby" "caring."

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44
to make things worse, you misrepresented my response to that initial post that you copy/pasted above. of course in a completely self serving and out of context way.

quote:

it doesn't really matter what you or media matters said there---the congressional committee's made a months' long deliberation of the video(s) and the transcripts and believe there is enough evidence for a criminal referral to a variety of places. in so much as anything you've posted touches on the matter (some of it doesn't), the committee has rejected it. im going to suggest they know better than you, or media matters.

quote:

The Honorable Loretta Lynch
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
The Honorable James B. Comey, Jr.

Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20535

Dear Attorney General Lynch and Director Comey:

In the summer of 2015, the Senate Judiciary Committee began an inquiry into paid fetal
tissue transfers involving Planned Parenthood. The Committee has since obtained and reviewed
more than 20,000 pages of information from the organizations involved, and engaged in detailed
discussions with the attorneys for those organizations. The investigation has culminated in a
Majority Staff Report to the Committee. That report is attached for your review.

The report documents the failure of the Department of Justice, across multiple
administrations, to enforce the law that bans the buying or selling of human fetal tissue (42
U.S.C. § 289g-2) with even a single prosecution. It also documents substantial evidence
suggesting that the specific entities involved in the recent controversy, and/or individuals
employed by those entities, may have violated that law. Moreover, that evidence is contained
entirely in those entities’ own records, which were voluntarily provided to the Committee and
are detailed in the report.

Accordingly, I am referring the paid fetal tissue practices of the following organizations,
as outlined in the report, to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and potential
prosecution:
 StemExpress, LLC;
 Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc.;
 Novogenix Laboratories, LLC;
 Planned Parenthood Mar Monte;
 Planned Parenthood Los Angeles;
 Planned Parenthood Northern California; and
 Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest.

In addition, as also described in the attached report, it appears that the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America learned that its affiliates engaging in paid fetal tissue
programs were not following the policies and procedures it had put in place to ensure compliance
with 42 U.S.C. § 289g-2. However, instead of exercising its oversight procedures to bring them
into compliance, it contacted the affiliates involved and then altered those oversight procedures
in a manner that allowed the affiliates’ conduct to continue. While the Committee does not have
all the details of what transpired between the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and
these affiliates, the facts uncovered raise a reasonable suspicion that these organizations, and/or
individuals employed by them, may have engaged in a conspiracy to violate the fetal tissue law
(18 U.S.C. § 371). Therefore, I am referring the practices of these organizations, as outlined in
the report, to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and potential prosecution
for this offense, as well.

Please contact the Committee if you determine that you need to seek access to unredacted
copies of any of the records necessary to further your investigation into these matters.
If you have any questions, please contact Jason Foster of my Committee staff at (202)
224-5225. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,
Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Senate Committee on the Judiciary

cc: The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on the Judiciary

quote:

March 2016

Introduction

Since CMP began releasing videos of Planned Parenthood’s senior leadership describing the grisly details of its trade in aborted baby parts, Planned Parenthood has steadfastly denied that it has received any financial benefit from supplying baby body parts.[1] However, Planned Parenthood has never been able to demonstrate the purported costs that its fees for baby parts were meant to “reimburse.”

One of the major links in Planned Parenthood’s baby-parts-for-profit scheme, StemExpress, LLC, has now been subpoenaed by the Congress for its refusal to hand over key documents to the Congressional investigation. CMP expects StemExpress, Planned Parenthood, and their allies to fight tooth and nail to avoid producing such documentation because it will prove Planned Parenthood’s substantial financial benefit from trading in fetal tissue.

Planned Parenthood uses two primary models to harvest and sell fetal body parts: 1) partnership with tissue procurement organizations like StemExpress, and 2) direct supply to local buyers. In practice, both models operate in a way to minimize Planned Parenthood’s cost while maximizing the fees and profits it can receive for high-quality body parts.

Model 1: Tissue Procurement Organizations (TPOs)

In the first model, the Planned Parenthood affiliate uses a Tissue Procurement Organization (TPO), like StemExpress, to manage fetal organ harvesting at their surgical abortion clinics. The TPO model virtually guarantees that the Planned Parenthood clinic will profit from supplying fetal tissue, because the TPO handles all of the costs of procurement while still paying the abortion clinic a fee per usable body part harvested.

The Planned Parenthood affiliates in California, who are currently suing CMP in retaliation for the videos exposing their illicit baby parts trade, used the TPO model nearly ubiquitously: Planned Parenthood Los Angeles partnered with Novogenix Laboratories, LLC; Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest in San Diego has worked with Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. for over 10 years; Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and Planned Parenthood Northern California both worked with StemExpress until the scandal last summer.

StemExpress’ harvesting protocols are described by whistleblower Holly O’Donnell[2] and confirmed by multiple StemExpress documents and Planned Parenthood leaders. Specially-trained StemExpress “procurement technicians,” like O’Donnell, would arrive at the Planned Parenthood clinics each morning on abortion days with lists of body parts orders for the day.[3] The StemExpress techs would consent the abortion patients to “donate” fetal tissue, receive the fetuses in the back lab of the clinic after the abortions, dissect the ordered body parts out of them, package them up, and ship them off via the local FedEx office at the end of the work day.

StemExpress technicians handled every step of the baby parts harvesting, except the abortion itself, from the moment the abortion patients walked in the door. Yet according to Planned Parenthood’s contract with StemExpress, StemExpress still paid Planned Parenthood “fifty-five dollars ($55) per POC [product of conception] determined in the clinic to be usable.”[4] StemExpress defined POC as “any fetal organ or other fetal or placental material taken from the human uterus during an abortion.”[5] That is, not only did Planned Parenthood still get paid for the baby parts after StemExpress did all the work, but Planned Parenthood would only get paid if the body parts were high enough quality for StemExpress to sell to research customers. This is a clear admission that the fees Planned Parenthood received for aborted baby parts were based on market value.

Kevin Cooksey, VP of Corporate Development and Legal Affairs at StemExpress, described this criminal arrangement explicitly in an email June 12, 2015, explaining the language of the StemExpress Clinic Procurement contract:[6]

I call your attention to sections 2.2 and 2.4 because while the language is straight forward, often I find they nevertheless require some helpful explanation.

Section 2.2 is intended to ensure that we receive only viable specimens from the clinics. As we discussed at dinner, in the past StemExpress has received tubes from certain clinics containing specimens that range from unusable tissue (unusable for a host of reasons) to blood clots that were mistaken for liver tissue. The common theme in these cases was that the supplier expected payment even though the material was unusable or non­existant.[7]

StemExpress procurement logs document the number of fetal parts harvested at Planned Parenthood clinics on given days. The log for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in Fresno shows 8 fetal parts harvested on December 12, 2012.[8] The log for Planned Parenthood in San Jose shows 9 fetal parts harvested on January 10, 2013.[9] The Mar Monte affiliate has a third large surgical site in Sacramento,[10] and a fourth in Stockton.[11] Assuming 3 abortion days per week at each abortion clinic, a baby parts yield of 8 per day would mean:

8 fetal parts/clinic x 4 clinics x $55/part x 3 days/week x 50 weeks/year = $264,000/year

Such an arrangement easily nets over a quarter million in extra profit margin for just this one Planned Parenthood affiliate each year.

Model 2: Direct Supply

The second model for baby parts harvesting at Planned Parenthood clinics is one of direct supply to local biotech companies or university laboratories. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston, TX has been using this model for decades. While it is possible in this model that the Planned Parenthood clinics may take on more of the work of harvesting baby parts, and thus may incur some actual costs, by cutting out the TPO middle-man the clinics can also charge much higher fees per fetal specimen, far in excess of any actual cost. In this context, Planned Parenthood has more line items to mask illicit baby parts profits, but its accounting gimmicks still cannot withstand close scrutiny.

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast invoices to University of Texas Medical Branch for a 2010-2011 fetal tissue study show the clinic charging $25 per “Consent obtained” from abortion patients, and an additional $150 “Consent fee” for a subset of abortion patients.[12] This is consistent with a two-tiered payment system where Planned Parenthood billed first for its staff to consent all the eligible abortion patients, and then billed a second, higher fee for the fetal tissue specimens that were usable. On April 9, 2015,[13] Melissa Farrell, Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, described using these “two levels of invoicing” for a previous contract with Amphioxus Cell Technologies, a private Houston biotech company.[14] Farrell smiled as she said, “We had it worded as ‘per consent,’” and then explained that the two-tier payments “covered if a patient consented to be in the study and then for whatever reason we didn’t get a sample.” Farrell’s explanation of this compensation scheme, like Kevin Cooksey’s at StemExpress, shows Planned Parenthood’s fees for baby parts are based on market value of usable fetal parts.

Farrell also explained that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast never handled shipping costs for fetal specimens: “All of our other researchers that were local, even the company, they sent a courier to pick it up.”[15] In such an arrangement, the only extra work for Planned Parenthood is consenting the abortion patients to “donate” fetal tissue. Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services for PPFA, indicated that the overall patient consent process typically only takes 10 minutes per patient.[16] In such a situation, patient consent for fetal tissue procurement should only be worth a fraction of hourly staff time wages, but for the sake of argument we can assume Planned Parenthood’s staff time is adequately reimbursed by $25/hour, with a generous hour of consent “processing” time for each fetal specimen. This still yields a $150 profit margin per usable fetal tissue specimen collected at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.

Farrell said the commercial Amphioxus Cell Technologies fetal tissue collection was large scale:

It was collection Monday through Friday, they would send a courier over, and I don’t remember if it was any specific gestational ages […] But it was basically everybody and anybody who agreed to donate. So like I said, some days we’d have as many as 6 or 10 in a day.[17]

8 fetal specimens/day x $150/specimen x 5 days/week x 50 weeks/year = $300,000/year

As in the case of Planned Parenthood affiliates who work with TPOs, the high per-specimen fees quickly add up to a significant baby parts profit margin in one year.

Information coming in from other Planned Parenthood affiliates seems to indicate their direct supply models operated according to similar principles, minimizing Planned Parenthood work while maximizing the fees collected. At Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, fetal tissue specimens were billed at $160/consent.[18] Meanwhile, for fetal brain harvesting at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, UW-Madison apparently sent over a special “study nurse” to handle the patient consent process.[19] The logistics of baby parts harvesting—Planned Parenthood’s capping consent time with patients at 10 minutes, the use of outside couriers or research staff at buyer expense, and the high per-specimen fees paid to Planned Parenthood—ensure that fetal tissue harvesting on a direct-supply model remains highly profitable for Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood’s Alleged “Policy Change”

Planned Parenthood Federation of American President and CEO Cecile Richards announced somewhat conspicuously on October 13, 2015 that Planned Parenthood would no longer receive “reimbursement” in exchange for fetal tissue. There are a number of reasons to be skeptical about this announcement, however, which came in the form of an open letter to Francis Collins, Director of the NIH.[20]

Previous PPFA policies on fetal tissue procurement, from May 2005 and June 2011, were oddly silent on the issue of remuneration in fetal tissue programs.[21] PPFA’s most recent prior “guidance,” from May 2015, recommends that an affiliate “must be able to demonstrate the reimbursement represents its actual costs.”[22] It is hard to understand why PPFA has purportedly chosen to change this recently-adopted policy, rather than simply to produce the demonstration of cost the May 2015 policy calls for—unless the truth is there was no “cost” to Planned Parenthood, and the purported “policy change” is really an admission of guilt.

If this is a true “policy change” at PPFA, it is also surprising that Richards does not quote the new policy or present it as an attachment to the letter. Top Planned Parenthood leadership, like CAPS (Consortium of Abortion Providers) National Director Deborah VanDerhei, and Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Nucatola (who writes the Manual of Medical Standards & Guidelines), repeatedly told CMP investigators undercover that PPFA would never enforce a national policy around fetal tissue. VanDerhei said of remuneration to affiliates, “We’re not gonna say no,”[23] and Nucatola insisted, “There will never be guidelines.”[24] Because of the federated structure of Planned Parenthood and the significant independence of its affiliates, it is unlikely that any new “policy” against fetal tissue remuneration is anything more than a temporary gentleman’s agreement for immediate PR purposes, and this may explain Planned Parenthood’s failure to produce a copy of it.

Conclusion

Planned Parenthood’s persistence in such a complete lack of transparency around its clinics’ apparent profiteering from aborted baby parts is inexcusable—especially while it continues to receive over half-a-billion dollars in taxpayer money each year. Planned Parenthood still cannot or will not answer basic questions about which affiliates have engaged in this barbaric trade, what exactly its purported “costs” were for fetal tissue “donation” at clinics where procurement companies did all the work, and how much money it has received total from companies like StemExpress over the past five years. The constant dissimulation and breezy question-dodging from Planned Parenthood spokespersons should be a red flag to elected representatives everywhere. After refusing to hand over key documents on its financial transactions for fetal tissue, StemExpress was subpoenaed by Congress—Planned Parenthood should now be on notice to stop covering up for its affiliates’ criminal baby parts sales and start answering the hard questions, if it can afford to tell the truth.