Today (August 19, 2015), saw the release of the seventh Planned Parenthood video: Human Capital—Episode 3: Planned Parenthood’s Custom Abortions for Superior Product.
Here is the summary:
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19–The third episode in a new documentary web series and 7th video on Planned Parenthood’s supply of aborted fetal tissue tells a former procurement technician’s harrowing story of harvesting an intact brain from a late-term male fetus whose heart was still beating after the abortion.
The “Human Capital” documentary web series, produced by The Center for Medical Progress, integrates expert interviews, eyewitness accounts, and real-life undercover interactions to explore different themes within Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal tissue. Episode 3, “Planned Parenthood’s Custom Abortions for Superior Product,” launches today. . . .
The series focuses on the personal narrative of Holly O’Donnell, a former Blood and Tissue Procurement Technician for StemExpress, a biotech start-up that until last week was partnered with two large northern California Planned Parenthood affiliates to purchase their aborted fetus parts and resell them for scientific experimentation.
O’Donnell describes the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘I want to see something kind of cool,'” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
The San Jose Planned Parenthood does abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. Referring to the beating heart of the aborted fetus, O’Donnell remarks, “I don’t know if that constitutes it’s technically dead, or it’s alive.”
State and federal law require that the same treatment be given to an infant born-alive after an abortion as to a normally delivered baby (1 U.S.C. 8, CA Health and Safety Code 123435). California law also prohibits any kind of experimentation on a fetus with a discernible heartbeat (CA Health and Safety Code 123440). StemExpress has been cited in published scientific literature as a source of fetal hearts used for Langendorff perfusion, which keeps a heart beating after it is excised from the body:http://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/…
O’Donnell also tells how her StemExpress supervisor instructed her to cut through the face of the fetus in order to get the brain. “”She gave me the scissors and told me that I had to cut down the middle of the face. I can’t even describe what that feels like,” she says.
The video also features recordings of Dr. Ben Van Handel, the Executive Director of Novogenix Laboratories, LLC, and also of Perrin Larton, Procurement Manager of Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. (ABR). Novogenix is the company that has harvested fetal organs from abortions done by Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, in Los Angeles, while ABR is the oldest fetal tissue procurement company and works with Planned Parenthood in San Diego and other clinics around the country. Van Handel admits, “There are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating,” and Larton describes abortions she has seen where “the fetus was already in the vaginal canal whenever we put her in the stirrups, it just fell out.”
CMP’s Project Lead David Daleiden notes, “Today’s video contains heartrending admissions about the absolute barbarism of Planned Parenthood’s abortion practice and baby parts sales in which fetuses are sometimes delivered intact and alive. Planned Parenthood is a criminal organization from the top down and should be immediately stripped of taxpayer funding and prosecuted for their atrocities against humanity.”
Goal of videos is to get people (like me) who haven't thought or cared much abt unborn children to be horrified
Well, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
— Jacob Lupfer (@jlupf) August 19, 2015
Genuinely wondering if there was *anything* #PlannedParenthood could do that would cause supporters to say, "OK, I need to re-think this…"
— Brant Hansen (@branthansen) August 19, 2015
1. If I Haven’t Seen the Other Videos Yet, What Do I Need to Know?
Since July 14, 2015, The Center for Medical Progress has posted the following undercover videos of Planned Parenthood’s handing of the body parts of its victims:
- Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts (July 14, 2015) [full footage | complete transcript]
- Second Planned Parenthood Senior Executive Haggles Over Baby Parts Prices, Changes Abortion Methods (July 21, 2015) [full footage | complete transcript]
- Human Capital, Episode 1: Planned Parenthood’s Black Market in Baby Parts (July 28, 2015) [full footage | complete transcript]
- Planned Parenthood VP Says Fetuses May Come Out Intact, Agrees Payments Specific to the Specimen (July 30, 2015) [full footage | complete transcript]
- Intact Fetuses “Just a Matter of Line Items” for Planned Parenthood TX Mega-Center (August 4, 2015) [full footage | complete transcript]
- Human Capital, Episode 2: Inside the Planned Parenthood Supply Site (August 12, 2015)
The following is a very helpful summary of what has happened thus far—both in terms of the undercover investigation and its effects so far:
2. Scientifically, Does Human Life Really Begin at Conception Or Is It Merely Potential Human Life?
Three distinguished and brilliant professors:
- Patrick Lee, the McAleer Professor of Bioethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville (author of Abortion and Unborn Human Life)
- Christopher O. Tollefsen, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina,
- Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University (co-author with Tollefsen of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life)
recently responded to the idea that there is no scientific consensus regarding the beginning of human life.
They point out that “there have been countless scientific monographs and scholarly articles—in embryology, developmental biology, and genetics—explicitly affirming that a human being at the earliest stage of development comes to be at fertilization.”
They cite three among many possible examples:
“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).” Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2.
“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.” Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, CELL TISSUE RES. 349(3):765 (Mar. 20, 2012)
“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte” (emphasis added; Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000, p. 8). (Many other examples could be cited, some of which may be found here.)
Lee, Tollefsen, and George write:
That is the authority of science. On request, we can cite dozens more examples. The authorities all agree because the underlying science is clear. At fertilization a sperm (a male sex cell) unites with an oocyte (a female sex cell), each of them ceases to be, and a new entity is generated. This new entity, initially a single totipotent cell, then divides into two cells, then (asynchronously) three, then four, eight and so on, enclosed all the while by a membrane inherited from the oocyte (the zona pellucida). Together, these cells and membrane function as parts of a whole that regularly and predictably develops itself to the more mature stages of a complex human body.
From the zygote stage onward
this new organism is distinct, for it grows in its own direction;
it is human—obviously, given the genetic structure found in the nuclei of its cells;
and it is a whole human organism—as opposed to what is functionally a part of a larger whole, such as a cell, tissue, or organ—since this organism has all of the internal resources and active disposition needed to develop itself (himself or herself) to the mature stage of a human organism.
Given its genetic constitution and epigenetic structure, all this organism needs to develop to the mature stage is what human beings at any stage need, namely, a suitable environment, nutrition, and the absence of injury or disease. So it is a whole human organism—a new human individual—at the earliest stage of his or her development.
This is why it is correct to say that the developing human embryo is not “a potential human being” (whatever that might mean) but a human being with potential—the potential to develop himself or herself (sex is established from the beginning in the human) through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood with his or her identity intact.
You can read the whole thing here.
3. What Questions Are Lawmakers Asking the CEO of Planned Parenthood and the Secretary of US Health and Human Services?
Represenatives Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently sent letters to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards about Planned Parenthood’s “potentially unlawful transactions involving fetal tissue.”
They wrote:
According to its 2013-14 Annual Report, Planned Parenthood received more than $500 million in government funding in the last fiscal last year alone, accounting for more than 40 percent of the organization’s total revenue. The Department of Health and Human Services provided a significant portion of the federal funds that Planned Parenthood received. It is not clear whether Planned Parenthood used any federal funds to support transactions involving fetal tissue.
They requested that Burwell:
1. Identify each agency within HHS that provides funding and/or support to Planned Parenthood or its affiliates, and the programs that each agency administers that provide such funding and/or support.
2. For each year 2010 through present, identify the total amount of federal funding that HHS provided to Planned Parenthood or its affiliates, broken down by agency, group, and program.
3. Identify what restrictions or regulations apply to the use of funding provided by HHS to Planned Parenthood or its affiliates.
4. Identify, specifically, what procedures, services, or other medical treatments are available only or exclusively at a Planned Parenthood affiliate or health center that are covered by either a state’s Medicaid program or a health plan sold via a state exchange or HealthCare.gov under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Do not include services or procedures that could otherwise be provided by a private health care provider.
And they asked that Richards:
1. For each year from 2010 through present, provide the cumulative amount of funding that Planned Parenthood received from the federal government, and identify all program(s), grant(s), and other sources of the federal funds.
2. For each year from 2010 through present, provide all financial statements and annual reports, including but not limited to Internal Revenue Service Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax.
3. For each year from 2010 through present, identify and provide an accounting of all Planned Parenthood activities that were financed with federal funds, to include the specific amount of federal funds used for each expenditure.
4. For each year from 2010 through present, provide the cumulative amount of funding that Planned Parenthood received from Medicaid programs by state.
5. For each year from 2010 through present, provide a list of the 50 highest-paid Planned Parenthood employees. Include the individual’s title, annual salary, bonuses and any other compensation.
6. According to the 2013-2014 Annual Report, Planned Parenthood ‘supports 66 independently incorporated affiliates, operating approximately 700 health centers across the U.S.’ Provide a list of these affiliates and health centers including a contact with phone number or email for each.
7. Identify, specifically, what procedures, services, or other medical treatments are available only or exclusively at a Planned Parenthood affiliate or health center that are covered by either a state’s Medicaid program or a health plan sold via a state exchange or HealthCare.gov under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Do not include services or procedures that could otherwise be provided by a private health care provider.
Both Richards and Burwell have until August 28 to provide this information to the committee.
4. If Planned Parenthood Were Ever to Be Shut Down, Where Would Women Go for Contraception, Mammograms, and Health Care?
Here’s a helpful graphic to pass along to others, showing that there are 20 comprehensive care clinics for every Planned Parenthood:
For more information on this, go here.
