Recently-unsealed documents reveal Planned Parenthood charged a biospecimen company nearly $25,000 for fetal tissue and maternal blood samples in 2012, fueling accusations from opponents that the nation’s largest abortion provider violated federal law while exchanging fetal body parts.

The invoices were unsealed as part of Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit with David Daleiden, the pro-life journalist whose undercover videos prompted both state and federal calls for investigations. According to the invoices, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte charged StemExpress $55.00 per “POC,” or products of conception — another term for fetal remains — and $10.00 per sample of blood.

Three invoices — dated Aug. 2, Sept. 5, and Sept. 28 — show the abortion provider charging $5,860, $11,365, and $7,715. That totals $24,940, along with more than 200 POC’s.

Daleiden argues that the disclosure reveals Planned Parenthood clearly violated federal law, which only allows reimbursements for associated costs rather than for the body part itself.

Planned Parenthood has defended itself by claiming that its charges related to transportation and time spent by staff. The invoices don’t mention either of those, however, nor do they contain the word “reimbursement.”

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Instead, they assign a fee per body part. Specifically, the previously released contract between those organizations showed that the exchanges were based on “POC determined in the clinic to be usable.”

Planned Parenthood did not provide specific comment but pointed Fox News to a more generic backgrounder on Daleiden. “Planned Parenthood has never, and would never sell fetal tissue, and any claim otherwise is absurd,” the document reads. It previously announced that it wouldn’t accept payments for its fetal tissue program, with its president arguing that doing so should put to rest concerns about Planned Parenthood having “any financial interest in fetal donation.”

StemExpress, which promises “financial profits” in its brochure, handled all of the services for which Planned Parenthood might legitimately seek reimbursement under the law, Daleiden argued. He pointed to a House Select Panel report suggesting that Planned Parenthood was engaging in “double counting” costs like transportation. Instead, it indicated that the group’s costs were “more properly assigned to the middleman procurer or the end-user researcher.”

On Wednesday, Daleiden told Fox News: “The federal law against selling aborted fetal organs and tissues in exchange for ‘valuable consideration’ was enacted to prevent monetary incentives to turn children in the womb into a commodity. The law lays out the unmistakable difference between a researcher reimbursing a clinic for used up PPE, versus StemExpress paying solely for the number of ‘usable’ body parts it could collect and then sell from Planned Parenthood’s abortions.

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“Planned Parenthood and StemExpress’s business relationship — sadly not unique to them — sets quotas for certain types of abortions, treats pregnant women like a cash crop, places a price tag on human beings, and declares that our nation’s children are worth more dead than alive,” he said.

His comments echoed those of former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson, who said her clinic in Texas had quotas and sought to “turn every client interaction into a revenue-generating visit.”

“This is literally what I have been saying for years,” Johnson said, responding to the invoices. “They are charging. They have just been line item-ing it under different wording…transport, handling, processing, etc…when the process for handling the POC after an abortion isn’t any different.

“You either throw it in a biohazard bag that stays in the clinic or a styrofoam container that goes to the procurement company,” she added.

StemExpress did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment. The company’s contract with Planned Parenthood specified that POC’s include “any fetal organ or other fetal or placental material taken from the human uterus during an abortion.” It also outlines “reasonable costs” for things like the removal of fetal organs, disposal services, and “appropriate space for in which Stem-Ex representatives and employees may work.”

According to Daleiden, those payments violate federal law because they’re tied to the usability of extracted body parts rather than merely serving as “associated” costs for handling organs. An email between BioMax, the fake company used by Daleiden, and StemExpress similarly shows StemExpress emphasizing the need for “only viable” fetal liver specimens.

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The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the organization, although it’s unclear how it’s proceeded since 2017 when it first made headlines. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Planned Parenthood has repeatedly tried to discredit Daleiden as a fraudster who deceptively edited his undercover videos of employees discussing fetal body parts.

“David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress intentionally waged a multi-year illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign against Planned Parenthood,” the group said last year.

One of its officials added: “This group’s false claims completely fell apart upon closer investigation, and they’ve been exposed as part of an extreme political agenda to outlaw abortion in this country.”

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Fusion GPS, the controversial D.C. firm involved in the notorious “Steele dossier” during the Trump-Russia probe, reviewed the videos and claimed they did not “present a complete or accurate record of the events they purport to depict.” Last year, an appeals court contradicted Planned Parenthood’s narrative, arguing the videos were “not deceptively edited.”

A judge awarded Planned Parenthood $2 million in November as part of a civil lawsuit with Daleiden. He’s currently facing criminal charges in a prosecution initiated by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., when she served as California’s attorney general. More specifically, the state is charging him under an anti-eavesdropping law. Five of those charges were dropped by a judge who ruled that “there is an absence of probable cause to establish that these conversations were ‘confidential communications’ as defined by the statute.”

The post Unsealed docs show Planned Parenthood charged $25G for body parts, blood samples within months first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

In an undercover video released Wednesday, a former technician for a tissue-harvesting company details how an aborted baby was kept alive so that its heart could be harvested at a California Planned Parenthood facility, raising more legal questions about the group’s practices.

Holly O’Donnell, a former blood and tissue procurement technician for the biotech startup Stem Express, also said she was asked to harvest an intact brain from the late-term, male fetus whose heart was still beating after the abortion.

A Stem Express supervisor “gave me the scissors and told me that I had to cut down the middle of the face. And I can’t even describe what that feels like,” said Ms. O’Donnell, who has been featured in earlier videos by the Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group that previously had released six undercover clips involving Planned Parenthood personnel and practices.

David Daleiden, the video project leader, said the undercover footage and interviews show that fetuses are sometimes delivered “intact and alive” before their organs are harvested.

The federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 says that when a child is born alive, including having a beating heart, he or she is a legal person and has a right to lifesaving medical care.

California law also prohibits any kind of experimentation on a fetus with a discernible heartbeat, said the Center for Medical Progress, which is calling for the federal government to cease its $500 million a year support to Planned Parenthood and for it to be investigated.

“Today’s video is especially gruesome, and it shows, once again, the barbarity of what takes place at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country,” said Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, one of several congressional panels investigating Planned Parenthood.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Wednesday that all the videos are “disturbing,” and his committee’s investigation will look into whether “any federal funding supported transactions involving fetal tissue.”

“Top-level employees of Planned Parenthood admit to changing their procedures to harvest intact bodies of unborn children for body-part trafficking,” said Rep. Trent Franks, Arizona Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and civil justice.

Mr. Franks and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, also said Wednesday that they have written to 58 Planned Parenthood affiliates. They are seeking 10 years of data about all abortions, late-term abortions, “born-alive” infants, fetal tissue collections and any modifications of abortion techniques to “increase the odds of preserving intact fetal tissue and organs.”

Five states — Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Utah and New Hampshire — already have defunded Planned Parenthood.

A request for comment from Planned Parenthood Federation of America about the new video was not immediately available, but the nonprofit organization has denounced earlier undercover videos as fraudulent and misleading.

“These extremists show a total lack of compassion and dignity for women’s most personal medical decisions,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said earlier this month after a video release.

Meanwhile, pro-life groups are using the videos to step up their calls for investigations and defunding of Planned Parenthood.

Rallies and protests at nearly 300 Planned Parenthood clinics are planned for Saturday.

Mixed poll results

On Wednesday, Reuters/Ipsos released a rolling poll of hundreds of people that found stable support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Between Aug. 13 and Aug. 18, about 54 percent of Americans consistently said they support taxpayer funding for the reproductive health and abortion group. Federal funds are not permitted to be used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or endangerment of the life of the mother.

But when pollsters changed their question and asked a smaller sample of people for their views on “current efforts” to defund Planned Parenthood, the rolling poll showed a shift: Those who agreed that Planned Parenthood should be defunded grew to 39 percent, while those opposing defunding shrank to 34 percent; another 27 percent said they didn’t know.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll further asked people if the undercover videos had affected their views on Planned Parenthood or abortion. The rolling poll found that 45 percent of people said the videos made them “more negative” about Planned Parenthood, while 33 percent said it hadn’t changed their views, 19 percent said it made them “more positive,” and 3 percent said they didn’t know.

As for abortion in general, 51 percent said the videos had not changed their views, while 31 percent said it made them “more negative” about abortion, 16 percent said it made them “more positive” about abortion, and 3 percent said they didn’t know.

In June, the Senate voted to defund Planned Parenthood and send the money to community health clinics, but it failed by seven votes.

Separately, Stem Express was in a California court Wednesday in its effort to block the release of a Center for Medical Progress video featuring a recorded conversation with three employees.

The biotech firm, based in Placerville, California, recently ended its relationship with two California Planned Parenthood affiliates to purchase their aborted fetus parts and resell them for scientific experimentation.

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik lamented Stem Express‘ decision to “bail” on Planned Parenthood, and condemned the undercover videos as “pure harassment by antiabortion activists, conniving with opportunistic politicians.”

In Wednesday’s video — the seventh released this summer — the Center for Medical Progress said state and federal laws require that the same treatment be given to an infant born alive after an abortion as to a normally delivered baby.

Ms. O’Donnell said she observed a “beating heart” in a nearly intact, late-term male fetus at the Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose.

A Stem Express supervisor asked to show her something “kind of cool” and tapped the heart of the aborted fetus, “and it starts beating,” Ms. O’Donnell said.

“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,” she said.

Then Ms. O’Donnell was asked to harvest the aborted child’s brain, which meant slicing open his face to get at the organ.

“Oh my God, this … just what am I doing?” she recalled thinking to herself after she had complied. “That was the moment when I knew I couldn’t work for the company anymore.”

The seventh video includes an interview with an official with another biotech company who says, “So, you know, there are times when after the [abortion] procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating.”

It also contains a brief interview with another biotech official who says that feticides, like digoxin, are not used when an aborted fetus is going to be dissected for parts because feticides taint the tissues.

Mr. Daleiden, the video project leader, said that not using drugs to kill the fetus before the abortion raises the risks that a child will be born alive.

• David Sherfinski contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/19/planned-parenthood-kept-aborted-babies-alive-to-ha/

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