As members of Congress consider whether to defund Planned Parenthood, a new video highlights the abortion provider’s booming business in organs harvested from aborted babies.
“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,” Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, Senior Medical Advisor for Planned Parenthood for America tells a hidden camera. “Certainly, everything we provide–oh, gonads! Oh my God, gonads. Everything we provide is fresh.”
The video is the tenth from The Center for Medical Progress.
Westhoff seemed to be aware that she was treading on dangerous ground with her commments about selling “fresh” baby organs. “Obviously, we would have the potential for a huge P.R. issue in doing this,” she told a man at a cocktail party. But she then offered to introduce the buyers to “national office abortion people” from Planned Parenthood.
In another taped interview, Deborah VanDerhei tells a questioner: “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.” VanDerhei is the National Director for CAPS, an influential committee within Planned Parenthood that drives abortion policy across the organization.
“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.”
Her words are prophetic, as the revelations have stirred up a firestorm for several months.
There’s also a legal question at stake. As CMP notes, “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).”
House lawmakers are scheduled to vote Friday on whether to defund abortion giant Planned Parenthood.