When Congress conducted an investigation on fetal tissue trafficking at Planned Parenthood following the 2015 release of undercover videos captured by the Center for Medical Progress, the abortion giant repeatedly stated reasons the federal law against fetal trafficking didn’t apply to its facilities, including one branch claiming it did not even have a fetal tissue program. But when Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) associates were questioned under oath in subsequent depositions, those claims proved to be false. On Wednesday, Planned Parenthood asked a U.S. District Court judge to censor video footage of those depositions.
A new video released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) on Thursday features testimonies given by PPFA associates contradicting former claims made by PPFA attorneys to Congress, media, and federal courts.
Documents show that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Texas repeatedly claimed it did not have a fetal tissue program, and that the only tissue transfer it participated in was donating placenta to a University of Texas medical branch. When questioned under oath, Melissa Farrell, the vice president of research at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, admitted her branch sold the “products of conception in its entirety,” which means everything removed from a woman during an abortion, including the fetus, the placenta, the umbilical cord, and the amniotic sac.
Farrell’s testimony dispels PPFA’s documented claims that it was donating only placentas, which is considered an organ of all fetuses in utero.
The CMP video goes on to lay out how much of the previous investigations into PPFA focused on its business transactions with tissue procurement companies, but that the abortion giant’s “research programs” should also be investigated for illegal fetal tissue trafficking.
Dr. Katharine Sheehan, former medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest in San Diego and Riverside in Southern California, testified that her PPFA branch directly supplied fetal tissue and organs to local researchers. One study published by UC San Diego even thanks Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest for supplying the aborted fetal tissue used in the university’s experimental study.
Another recorded deposition shows Dr. Mary Gatter, former medical director of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, testifying that she was responsible for “research projects” at her branch and securing approval from the national PPFA Research Department. But when asked to clarify, “Those research projects may have included projects that involved fetal tissue?” Gatter testified, “I cannot remember.”
Documents unsealed in April this year include invoices from a Planned Parenthood branch in California and in Nevada, showing that they charged $55 per “usable” organ. The invoices debunked PPFA’s claims they were only being “reimbursed” for “transport fees.”
“Planned Parenthood’s contracts and invoices are proof positive that their payments were tied solely to the marketability of aborted baby body parts,” CMP founder David Daleiden said at the time.
Now, five years after the CMP released its first undercover videos, PPFA is still working to hide incriminating evidence from the public. In a motion filed in San Fransisco’s U.S. District Court Wednesday, PPFA asked Judge William Orrick, who previously suppressed evidence of fetal tissue trafficking on behalf of PPFA in a federal civil jury trial, to have the deposition videotapes of its employees held back and treated differently from the transcripts.
“Planned Parenthood requests that — to the extent any of the deposition transcripts attached as NAF Appendix exhibits 4, 6, 7, and 50 are unsealed — the Court clarify in its order that the deposition videos remain confidential (or highly confidential) pursuant to the protective order in the Planned Parenthood matter,” the motion reads, claiming that the videos have been used by Daleiden and CMP to make “inflammatory claims” against PPFA and have caused “increased security concerns” for the abortion provider.
CMP has published the full video depositions given under oath by PPFA associates and by associates at its former tissue procurement business partners, such as Advanced Bioscience Resources. CMP has also released four video compilations of the depositions, featuring admissions of babies having been born alive with beating hearts, and admissions about PPFA’s financial incentives.
“When the undercover videos were first released, Planned Parenthood delivered a carefully-constructed script to the public and to the press minimizing their involvement in fetal experimentation — but under oath, their story changes,” Daleiden said in a statement Thursday. “Now we know that Planned Parenthood flagrantly lied to the United States Congress about the extent of its abortion clinics’ criminal trafficking in fetal body parts for experimentation.”
