Planned Parenthood Testimony on Fetal Tissue Sales Contradicts Claims

The official sworn testimony of Planned Parenthood officials in the organization’s lawsuit against video journalists who recorded their practices in the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal tissue contradicts their public claims when the videos were first released.

The Center for Medical Progress (CMP), led by David Daleiden, released a new video Tuesday, along with accompanying documents and testimony, that features Planned Parenthood officials’ admissions, under oath, in their organization’s lawsuit against the pro-life group.

The officals’ on-the-record testimony again highlights the allegations the abortion giant illegally profited from the sale of the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics.

Among the Planned Parenthood officials featured in the video is Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), who appeared in the now familiar first undercover video of the series as she ate a salad and drank wine while discussing how she performs abortions in order to harvest the highest quality unborn baby body parts.

“I knew [Planned Parenthood Los Angeles] was getting payments because I was a provider there,” Nucatola testified, yet also testified she never felt the need to check PPLA’s compliance with PPFA policies about receiving payments:

Similarly, Dr. Mary Gatter, the former PPLA medical director who became well-known for her joke at the end of one of the videos that she would like “a Lamborghini” in exchange for the aborted baby body parts, testified that PPFA provided a “waiver” to PPLA to begin a program with for-profit biomedical company Novogenix.

The video also features sworn testimony from Dr. Dorothy Furgerson, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte (PPMM), the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country.

CMP explained in a press statement:

Dr. Furgerson signed PPMM’s contract with StemExpress to sell fetal body parts to StemExpress per specimen “determined in the clinic to be usable”, and Dr. Furgerson’s endorsement appears on a StemExpress brochure handed out at National Abortion Federation meetings advertising “fiscal rewards” and “financial profits” to the abortion clinics who provided fetal tissue to StemExpress. When asked if the purpose of the brochure was “to obtain more potential sources of fetal tissue,” Dr. Furgerson testified, “Yes, I understood that that’s what they were trying to do.”

“The time has come for federal consequences for Planned Parenthood,” Daleiden said in a statement, adding:

Planned Parenthood lied to the public and to Congress, but now there is no longer any reasonable doubt that Planned Parenthood sold fetal body parts, commodifying living children in the womb and treating pregnant women like a cash crop. The U.S. Department of Justice must escalate the enforcement of laws against fetal trafficking to the highest level of priority.

From the release of the first CMP video, Planned Parenthood and its media and political allies have adhered to the narrative that the videos of its staff engaged in haggling over the price of aborted baby body parts were “deceptively edited.”

However, in January 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the opposite.

Judge Edith H. Jones, a Ronald Reagan nominee who wrote for a three-judge panel, rebuked a lower district court, asserting, “The district court stated, inaccurately, that the CMP video had not been authenticated and suggested that it may have been edited.”

Planned Parenthood has yet to be prosecuted for any of the allegations related to profits from the sales of the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics.

In June 2019, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and his predecessor Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), current chairman of the Committee on Finance, wrote to Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, seeking an update on the federal investigation that was supposedly launched in 2017 into the allegations raised, in part, through the video documentation by CMP.

The senators asked Barr and Wray to respond to their inquiry no later than July 2.

In August, Breitbart News reached out to the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) press team for an update on the Department of Justice/FBI response and was informed SJC was still awaiting a response.

Last week Fox News host Tucker Carlson revealed 37 Planned Parenthood affiliates received $80 million in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, funded through the CARES Act coronavirus relief measure.

Small Business Administration officials and members of the Senate have now called for Planned Parenthood to return the funds since they knew from the outset they were ineligible for them.

Senators have also urged Attorney General William Barr to launch a Department of Justice investigation into how Planned Parenthood obtained the coronavirus relief funds.