The long-term impact of the videos of Planned Parenthood executives callously discussing the sale of parts of aborted babies – one piped up, “I want a Lamborghini,” in the middle of the conversation – is still unclear.
But some corporations and academic institutions suddenly are treating the nation’s biggest abortion provider as a pariah.
Colorado State University officials this week insisted it’s “just not true” that the school purchased parts of aborted babies from StemExpress, one of the companies identified in the sting videos released by the Center for Medical Progress.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Co. and Xerox have told Planned Parenthood to remove their names from a list of corporate donors, the Heritage Foundation’s publication the Daily Signal reported.
When allegations arose that CSU on Jan. 20, 2013, “purchased, directly or indirectly from the California affiliate of Planned Parenthood Federal of America, aborted babies’ body parts for experimentation,” Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., wrote to CSU President Tony Frank.
“If these allegations are true, Colorado State University appears to have violated or aided and abetted in the violation of Colorado law. Specifically, C.R.S. 25-2-111.5, enacted in 2000 and resulting from a bill I introduced when I served in the Colorado State Senate, prohibiting the purchase of fetal tissue from induced termination of pregnancy,” the congressman wrote.
Lamborn, who said he was asking Colorado Attorney General Cynthia S. Coffman to investigate, demanded the university explain immediately “whether there is any basis to these allegations,” which he described as “outrageous.”
The Fort Collins Coloradoan reported CSU officials said the claim was “just not true.”
CSU spokesman Kyle Henley told the newspaper the school will respond to Lamborn. He insisted the university doe not obtain or use full organs or body parts for research.
That statement, however, was under challenge.
“Colorado State University is denying what is clearly obvious,” Colorado Citizens for Life Executive Director Sarah Zagorski told the Coloradoan. “The documentation from Stem Express refers to an identified employee name Leila Remling, who works in CSU’s Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology Department. The purchase order also reveals that this was not merely ’tissue,’ it was the sale of the liver of an aborted baby.”
She was referring to an image posted online by LifeNews.com that appears to be a delivery form from Stem Express, a “tissue” distribution company that works with Planned Parenthood.
The document lists a liver and thymus of gestational age 16.1 weeks to be delivered to the CSU address.
Henley admitted to the Coloradoan that CSU had obtained “very small” amounts of donated fetal tissue from “legal, federally regulated sources for a National Institutes of Health-supported research project.”
“The faculty involved, and the university, care deeply about their ethical obligations and the importance of obtaining tissue only from federally compliant sources,” Henley told the Coloradoan. “Our university is a leader in the ethical conduct of research, and we welcome public discourse as we seek to uphold our academic and research missions. This is not an issue that any of us takes lightly.”
Coffman explained that she had forwarded Lamborn’s concern to the head of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, as well as U.S. Attorney John Walsh, who would be responsible for prosecuting violations of federal statutes.
“It is past time to defund Planned Parenthood. The callous barbarism of selling abortion babies’ body parts should have no place in our society,” Lamborn said.
One of the recently released videos features Planned Parenthood executive Mary Gatter making sure she wasn’t being low-balled and commenting that she wanted to buy a Lamborghini, the exotic super-car that sells for some $200,000.
See the Gatter video:
Another video features Planned Parenthood executive Deborah Nucatola bluntly discussing the sale of body parts while sipping wine and eating salad.
See the Nucatola video:
Investigation
Congress and multiple states have started investigations of Planned Parenthood. But President Obama’s Department of Justice said it would investigate the video makers.
Some corporations, however, aren’t waiting for the results of investigations.
Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Co. and Xerox already have told Planned Parenthood to remove their names from a list of corporate donors that Planned Parenthood quickly hid when the controversy erupted, the Daily Signal reported.
The companies had been cited by Planned Parenthood as organizations that would match charitable contributions. Planned Parenthood is at tax-exempt nonprofit but, nonetheless, receives about $500 million a year in federal taxpayer monies.
A representative from Coca-Cola told the Daily Signal the company does not contribute to Planned Parenthood and does not match employee contributions to the organization. The report said that when told that its name appeared on Planned Parenthood’s website, the Coca-Cola representative said, “We’ll ask them to correct the information.”
Other corporate officials provided similar responses.
“We checked our files for the last 20 years and have no record of Xerox Corp. contributing to Planned Parenthood,” a representative from Xerox said.
‘Stomach-turning stuff’
The establishment media, however, largely have tried to ignore the videos, wrote Fox News commentator Kirsten Powers in a USA Today column.
It was damning, she said, that Planned Parenthood’s “usual defenders were nowhere to be found.”
“There was total silence from the New York Times editorial board and their 10 (out of 11) pro-abortion rights columnists. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi [who later called for an investigation of the video makers] – both recipients of Planned Parenthood’s highest honor, the Margaret Sanger Award – have been mum.”
Powers noted “a few loyalists” like Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak defended the organ-harvesting, saying, “Planned Parenthood deserves to be supported, not attacked.”
“Actually,” wrote Powers, “it’s fetuses who are under attack. By Planned Parenthood.”
Powers citing the Planned Parenthood official’s desire to employ a “less crunchy” way to perform abortions to preserve organs that could be sold.
“This is stomach-turning stuff. But the problem here is not one of tone. It’s the crushing. It’s the organ harvesting of fetuses that abortion-rights activists want us to believe have no more moral value than a fingernail. It’s the lie that these are not human beings worthy of protection.
“There is no nice way to talk about this. As my friend and former Obama White House staffer Michael Wear tweeted. ‘It should bother us as a society that we have use for aborted human organs, but not the baby that provides them,’” she wrote.
The left-leaning FactCheck.org came to PP’s defense, insisting the amount of money discussed in the videos wouldn’t amount to a profit.
Mark Crutcher, whose Life Dynamics organization was a ground-breaker in investigating Planned Parenthood, uncovering its aborted baby parts trade nearly 20 years ago, corrected that impression.
Documents he obtained during his earlier investigation of the horrors found: “The tissue logs reveal that one baby is often chopped up and sold to many buyers. For example, babies taken from donors 113968 and 114189 were both killed late in their second trimester and cut into nine pieces.”
By applying the price list, buyers would have been invoiced between $3,510 and $5,070 for the parts, he said.
Supporters worried
Even diehard supporters are worried, according to one left-leaning commentator.
Molly Redden at Mother Jones wrote: “That Planned Parenthood is the target of a withering attack by anti-abortion activists is no surprise – they have been at war for years. But this time seems different, with some of Planned Parenthood’s strongest allies drawing nervous comparisons to the 2009 sting operation that destroyed the community organizing group the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
“They may be right to worry,” she continued. “The videos have already moved Congress to launch two probes into the organization’s activities. Eight Republican governors – including several who are running for president – have opened parallel investigations.”
And worst of all, she said, the Center for Medical Progress “has promised to release more explosive hidden-camera footage.”
She worried that the latest sting videos make Planned Parenthood “seem like a sinister outfit that profits wildly from abortion.”
WND previously reported Planned Parenthood allies are now hesitating.
Arit John, writing in Bloomberg, noted that there have been many criticisms of the tactics used to obtain the undercover video.
“But even if the legal accusations don’t hold up, Nucatola discusses how she and other providers potentially change the way they perform abortions when they have the needs of the research community in mind,” John wrote. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,’ she says in the video.
“That has caused some doubts, even among people who support abortion rights,” John wrote.
At the New York Times, Northwestern University professor Laurie Zoloth described it as “terribly disturbing because the physician seems to be engaged in a transaction in which the goal is to extract tissue to meet the needs of a company, rather than being focused on the core purpose of her clinic, which is to provide a safe medical procedure.”
Zoloth continued, “The doctor seems extraordinarily cavalier … Having this discussion over a meal, while drinking what appears to be wine, takes this further from the realm of professional clinical medicine and into the realm of business.”
She said the “specter of cutting up and using hearts and lungs and legs from aborted fetuses disturbs even supporters who are pro-choice. The physician seems in the video to be unaware of this basic moral problem.”
John wrote that the release raises a lot of questions.
“Is Planned Parenthood illegally profiting off the sale of fetal body parts? According to the full video, probably not. Are Planned Parenthood officials violating medical ethics rules by changing the way they perform abortions to preserve body parts for research? Unclear. And, is this enough to launch a concerted effort on the right to defund Planned Parenthood and hurt its efforts across the country? Possibly. After all, it was a series of similar undercover videos that prompted Congress’ most recent failed attempt to block taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood.”
At the Chicago Tribune, Red Huppke, who admits supporting Planned Parenthood and abortion, said the organization needs to speak up.
He cited the statements by Nucatola, who said: “I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.
“So then you’re just kind of cognizant of where you put your graspers, you try to intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Wrote Huppke: “To the average person, it’s horrifying to watch someone discuss the procedure in such a cavalier manner. In parts, Nucatola comes off as a monster. In a world where controversial videos spread like a contagion on social media, embedding images in people’s minds, perception can render facts irrelevant. Regardless of the source or the manner in which the recording was obtained, this video will affirm many of the worst fears of Planned Parenthood’s critics and sway others who weren’t sure quite where they stand.”
Huppke continued: “I fully support women’s reproductive rights and believe Planned Parenthood – which provides far more than just abortion services – is a good organization that helps women across the country. I also understand the passionate opposition to abortion and respect the fact that, for many, abortion is inherently immoral and the use of tissue from an aborted fetus, regardless of what good might come of it, is the continuation of an immoral act.
“The Center for Medical Progress and other anti-abortion activists are, of course, doing all they can to make this video seem as macabre and damning as possible. They’re making allegations that don’t stand up to scrutiny, but the truth is that the video shows a pragmatism that many, even those who support a woman’s right to choose, will find discomforting.”
WND has contacted Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign about the issue but has received no response from Clinton or her campaign staffers.
Clinton and President Obama are among the top recipients of Planned Parenthood contributions, according to InfluenceExplorer.com.
WND asked Clinton’s campaign the following questions:
- Are you opposed to Planned Parenthood’s apparent harvesting of body parts of aborted babies and sale of them?
- As a top recipient of Planned Parenthood political contributions, does it concern you that these proceeds from dead babies might be helping to fund your presidential campaign?
- Will you continue to accept those political contributions even after these new revelations?
History of video stings
Another group to document the behavior of Planned Parenthood has been Live Action, which released video after video of Planned Parenthood operatives covering up the sexual abuse of minors, providing false medical counsel, trying to manipulate abortion patients, aiding those trafficking in child sex and more.
Live Action President Lila Rose said the latest CMP video “further illustrates the barbaric reality of business at Planned Parenthood – that after selling an abortion, Planned Parenthood works to improve their bottom line by harvesting the body parts of the child they have just killed. What has our nation come to that we allow the brutality of abortion upon our children, and then sell their broken bodies for profit, all the while, funding the perpetrator?”
She added: “Human rights are bipartisan – where is the outcry from presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and others over sale of the parts of children? Silence in the face of such atrocity is complicity.”
At one point, it was reported that a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minneapolis told an undercover investigator posing as a teen to let her partner abuse her with “rope burns” and “markings.”
“Anything” the counselor said, “is normal as long as it’s consensual.”
Here’s an example of what Live Action calls false counseling from Planned Parenthood in Milwaukee:
And allegedly helping child sex traffickers in the Bronx:
Here’s questionable counseling in Appleton, Wisconsin:
Here a minor girl is told to lie:
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/coke-xerox-ford-retreat-from-planned-parenthood/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/coke-xerox-ford-retreat-from-planned-parenthood/
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