Planned Parenthood Responds to Shock Video, Claims They’re Not Selling Organs, They’re ‘Donating’
By Emily Zanotti on 7.14.15 | 6:54PM
To be fair, they start out by saying that the video that hit the web this morning, depicting Planned Parenthood's top doc offering aborted baby organs for sale to a potential buyer, was "heavily edited" and "secretly recorded." The problem? The two-and-a-half hour full video still shows them selling baby parts. And something tells me, as aboveboard as Planned Parenthood thinks these actions are, they'd hardly offer the organs for sale to a bidder with a cell phone camera.
At any rate, here's what Planned Parenthood has to say about their creepy, profiteering trade in tiny kidneys:
“In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, treatments and cures for serious diseases. Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different. At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards. There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or Planned Parenthood. In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.
A well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research. Similar false accusations have been put forth by opponents of abortion services for decades. These groups have been widely discredited and their claims fall apart on closer examination, just as they do in this case.”
None of that changes that it's still very much illegal to sell human fetal tissue, but the key here is that Planned Parenthood gets around the questionable legality (and, for that matter, questionable morality), of selling off baby bits by considering them a "donation," and by taking money only in exchange for expenses, in a bizarre "reimbursement" process that is supposed to cover the cost of preserving and transporting the organs. Think of it like one of those late night commercials where a television announcer tries to sell you two sets of steak knives by offering them for free, if you just pay shipping and handling. They're not technically selling you kitchen implements or kidneys, they're merely asking for your cooperation in covering their operational overhead.
Planned Parenthood, apparently, came up with this loophole somewhere between the first CBS investigation and this, current, one, which is intriguing in its evil genius. When Planned Parenthood was first discovered to have engaged in the organ trafficking business, they didn't stop harvesting and selling organs, though their executives appeared horrified and contrite in television news interviews. They merely looked for a "less illegal" way to make a buck on the baby market - in this case, by listing the organs as "donated to science." I suppose it helps them sleep at night, too, knowing that the babies that have passed through their surgical centers are, at least, helping other, "wanted" babies to survive. Or something.
The "standards and practices" element of this response is somewhat confusing as well. As far as I can tell, having only been through the organ donation process as a casual observer, the actual donation and transfer is completed in a clinical setting, with a donation coordinator, who keep meticulous records of harvested and donated organs so that she can assure state oversight agencies that everything is aboveboard. Even research facilities work with research specimin providers, who ensure a level of quality to the process. It's hard to believe that anyone seeking to do anything altruistic with Planned Parenthood's preserved "products of conception" would ink the deal over lunch wine, but that seems to be de rigeur. But they apparently have high-end clients, according to the Center for Medical Progress, which posted the original video, so I suppose there must be a market. There are always people willing to re-enact the creepiest scenes from the history of science fiction, I guess.
And I'm not even getting into the morality of deliberately and violently ending a developing human life - one that, in many cases could survive, as the discussed age seems to be 24 weeks - in such as way as to preserve it's vital organs for medical research. I think we can confidently say that we went from a sociopathic display from only one of Planned Parenthood's employees, to a very strong suspicion that the carelessness runs to the organization's very core.
So, why again, are we giving this operation millions per year?
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