Newly released footage by the Center for Medical Progress shows a Planned Parenthood employee attempting to negotiate human organ sales and explaining how they use accounting tricks to conceal their organs-for-cash scheme.
In the undercover video, Melissa Farrell, director of research at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, explains to the undercover pro-life activists posing as organ buyers how her organization uses creative wording on invoices to hide that they were selling organs for more than what it cost to procure them.
On invoices, Planned Parenthood substituted the words”per consent” in place of “per specimen,” to hide the fact they were indeed selling organs. They also double-charged buyers for organs, charging a $25 “consent obtained” fee for every woman who consented to supply baby organs regardless of whether they were actually able to harvest organs from it. They also charged an additional $150 “consent payment” for each harvestable organ obtained.
Financial documents CMP obtained from a Public Information Act request show that the nation’s largest abortion provider used this billing system on the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) for taxpayer-funded research projects.
Between 2010 and 2011, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast charged UTMB for 32 “consents obtained” and 25 “consent payments,” totaling more than $8,000 in taxpayer funds.
“The evidence that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast charged exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money in exchange for fetal specimens that it provided at nearly zero cost is overwhelming,” said CMP’s David Daleiden in a press release.
In the video, Farrell explains that Planned Parenthood will only supply organs to buyers that pay them enough to make it financially beneficial to them.
Here’s an exchange between CMP activists posing as organ buyers and Planned Parenthood:
Buyer: I just don’t want to turn it into a situation where it’s not financially beneficial to you.
PP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we’ll take you up on that. I’ll take you up on that. I’ll take you up on that. We definitely need to do that because that’s what staff and management need to see, that we’re not underwriting anybody’s project. And I go great efforts to demonstrate what the cost, actual cost is for us, to whomever asks, and then this is what is budgeted. So they know, okay, yes you’re covering costs, there’s margin for covering overhead or whatever we need just to make sure that everything is covered.
In the video, Farrell also explains how they alter abortion procedures in order to keep the babies’ organs intact for harvesting.
“It’s still the same procedure, but we’re doing it in a way that we preserve the integrity of the specimen,” she said.
Her statements again introduce ambiguity about whether Planned Parenthood clinics violate federal law, which stipulates that “no alteration of the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy was made solely for the purpose of obtaining the tissue.”
“If we alter our process so we’re able to obtain intact fetal cadavers then we can make it part of the budget,” she said. “It’s all just a matter of line items.”
A grand jury in Harris County Texas recently stated there was not enough evidence to indict Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast for illegally profiting from human organs. Ironically, they did indict Daleiden, who filmed the videos exposing the abortion provider’s organs-for-cash scheme, for the purchase and sale of human organs, which is a misdemeanor. Daleiden was also indicted for tampering with a governmental record when he used a fake identity to meet with Planned Parenthood officials, which is a felony.
The grand jury decision did not affect a separate investigation into Planned Parenthood. Texas Health and Human Services and the Texas attorney general are still investigating whether the abortion provider illegally profited from organ sales.
