According to a new Center for Medical Progress (CMP) video and report, Planned Parenthood of Orange County allegedly changes abortions in order to harvest intact fetuses that can boost the organization’s sales and, ultimately, profits.
In the new undercover video, a woman identified as medical director at Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties Dr. Jennefer Russo details the fetal tissue business with citizen journalists posing as representatives of a for-profit fetal tissue company. She admits her clinic attempts to obtain “intact specimens” during up to six-month abortions.
The video is released as the U.S. Supreme Court is about to hear a landmark case that will weigh the interests of Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby against the health and safety of women. In addition, a special House panel is about to hold its first hearing as it considers the state of fetal tissue sales.
In the video, Russo confirms that her Planned Parenthood clinic works with local for-profit biotech company Da Vinci Biosciences/DV Biologics, which sells the organs of aborted babies both nationally and internationally.
According to the information shown in the video, once Da Vinci Bio harvests fresh fetal organs at Planned Parenthood, it charges $350 per fetal half-liver, $500 for fetal thymus, and $750 for fetal brain on the open market. Nevertheless, federal law says it is illegal for any person to knowingly sell or transfer human fetal tissue for profit.
Planned Parenthood Orange & San Bernardino Counties’ 2008 Annual Report lists Da Vinci Biosciences as a financial donor to the abortion facility.
“They take the whole specimen,” Russo explains in the video about Da Vinci. She asks the undercover buyer, “You’re looking ideally for an intact specimen?”
“As intact as possible,” the buyer replies.
In the first CMP undercover video, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describes over lunch using an ultrasound-guided procedure to flip the fetus to feet-first position in order to get intact specimens. When asked about using this procedure to harvest more intact body parts, Orange County’s Russo admits, “Yeah, we like to do that too.”
Using ultrasound guidance to manipulate the fetus into breech position prior to intact removal of organs is characteristic of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure.
Nucatola previously recommended Russo and Planned Parenthood in Orange County as good prospective partners for fetal body parts harvesting.
When the undercover buyers meet with Russo, she also reveals that her Planned Parenthood affiliate is not using digoxin – the chemical used to kill the unborn baby in second-trimester abortions in order to prevent a live birth – due to a nationwide supply shortage. Without the use of a chemical like digoxin, it is possible for a baby aborted intact to actually be born alive:
BUYER: And when do you start using dig[oxin]?
RUSSO: Well, 20 weeks, but we don’t dig right now because there’s a shortage.
BUYER: Because of – ?
RUSSO: There’s a nationwide shortage of dig[oxin].
BUYER: Really?
RUSSO: Yeah.
Asked about producing intact fetuses for organ harvesting, Russo admits, “It happens sometimes, but it’s pretty rare. But, we try.”
An undercover phone call to Da Vinci Biosciences confirms that Planned Parenthood’s latest cases are being done without feticide. When a caller posing as a buyer asks for a brain from an aborted 18 to 24 weeks gestation fetus, the Da Vinci salesperson states, according to the video, “It is feticide-free, considering that we have such a large catalogue of fetal tissue, I believe that would be a requirement for us, in order to have so many fetal products available.”
“Although Planned Parenthood’s political and PR cronies work overtime to cover-up the revelations of its illicit baby parts trade, Planned Parenthood’s interstate criminal scheme to harvest and sell aborted baby parts continues without any transparency or accountability,” notes David Daleiden, CMP Project Lead in a statement. “The fact that a community like Orange County, CA, is open for business for baby body parts makes clear the need for law enforcement and elected officials to hold Planned Parenthood accountable.”
“And as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a landmark abortion business regulation case, Planned Parenthood’s baby parts scheme sends an urgent message about the critical need for States to have strong regulatory authority over the abortion industry,” he adds.
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