Each week there is more evidence of a questionable intersection between Planned Parenthood and the research industry which experiments on the baby body parts secured from PPFA abortion clinics and illuminating examples of how PPFA is responding to the immense fallout from a video released last week by The Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
Adding to Planned Parenthood’s woes is that CMP released a second video today–along with a full transcript–of a meeting between Dr. Mary Gatter, president of the Medical Directors Council of PPFA, and two CMP-affiliated persons who posed as executives of a recently formed for-profit firm engaged in collecting and selling fetal organs to researchers.
The first undercover video was of a two-and-one-half hour conversation with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director for medical services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who matter-of-factly told two undercover CMP investigators about intact heads and intact livers and lungs and how together they might expedite the sale from PPFA affiliates to places that would pay for unborn baby body parts.
The second video, of a meeting that took place February 6, is just as creepy. As NRLC explained in its press release, “ Dr. Gatter discusses a potential contract between the simulated vendor at Planned Parenthood of Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley [California], where she is medical director, as well as past organ-harvesting arrangements at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, where she was previously medical director.”
There are many lengthy exchanges about how to best secure intact baby body parts, prices, and “volume.” Among the most revealing responses came as Dr. Gatter addressed the issue of a willingness to change their ordinary first-trimester abortion technique–suction aspiration. The allusion to “IPAS” in her “shorthand” answer is to manual aspiration, a different abortion technique.
Gatter: Let me explain to you a little bit of a problem, which may not be a big problem, if our usual technique is suction, at 10 to 12 weeks, and we switch to using an IPAS or something with less suction, and increase the odds that it will come out as an intact specimen, then we’re kind of violating the protocol that says to the patient, “We’re not doing anything different in our care of you.” Now to me, that’s kind of a specious little argument and I wouldn’t object to asking Ian , who’s our surgeon [abortionist] who does the cases, to use an IPAS at that gestational age in order to increase the odds that he’s going to get an intact specimen, but I do need to throw it out there as a concern. Because the patient is signing something and we’re signing something saying that we’re not changing anything with the way we’re managing you, just because we agree to give tissue. You’ve heard that before.
Buyer: Yes. It’s touchy. How do you feel about that?
Gatter : I think they’re both totally appropriate techniques, there’s no difference in pain involved, I don’t think the patients would care one iota. So yeah, I’m not making a fuss about that.
Later she adds, as a further justification, this would be just a “slight variation of the technique.” Besides, Dr. Gatter adds, “the consent they’re signing is for suction aspiration; it doesn’t describe what kind it is.” (She subsequently appears to qualify this ever so slightly by saying she will “discuss this with Ian,” the abortionist.)
Dr. Gatter’s answers, alas, evidenced the same sheer indifference as Dr. Nucatola’s. At one point she “jokes” about using a “less crunchy [abortion] technique” so as to be able to extract the desired baby body part intact.
While dickering over price (“it has to be big enough that it is worthwhile”), Dr. Gatter “jokes”
It’s been years since I talked about compensation, so let me just figure out what others are getting, if this is in the ballpark, it’s fine, if it’s still low then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini. [laughs]
The abortion industry, understandably from their point of view, does everything it can to keep what it does a secret. PPFA and its anti-life soul mates want “to operate behind a veil of antiseptic tidiness” (to quote Brit Hume) to hide abortion’s sheer brutality.
One of the many other reasons to keep the public in the dark is its trafficking in baby body parts. That is not good for PPFA’s “brand.”
Speaking of PPFA’s response, there’ve been the standard comebacks : that (a) PPFA’s standards “are entirely consistent with the strictest ethical guidelines established in the health care industry”; and (b) “ Planned Parenthood stands behind our work to help women and families donate tissue for medical research when they wish to. It is always their decision.”
The former is supposed to be taken on face value because PPFA says so and the latter is highly debatable, as we’ve talked about several times. Dr. Nucatola talked about women being approached more than once and being told their baby’s body parts may help find a cure for such devastating diseases as Alzheimer’s.
Then there is the fascinating letter from Roger Evans, Senior Counsel for PPFA, in response to a letter from the House Energy and Commerce Committee requesting certain information, and a briefing for committee staff from Dr. Nucatola.
Evans begins with self-congratulation, then bashes the CMP for two and a half pages, and then concludes by lawyering up on the committee’s request that Dr. Nucatola present the staff briefing.
“But in light of these allegations, we are understandably in the process of retaining counsel to advise us on the best way to proceed. Until we have completed this engagement and provided counsel an opportunity to become familiar with the relevant facts, we cannot provide a definitive response.”
There is one particularly interesting comments from the letter in light of the second video. Evans wrote
“The [first] video also conveyed the impression that all Planned Parenthood affiliates have tissue donation programs. In fact, only a very small number of affiliates have programs to help women and families who wish to donate tissue for medical research, as we will explain during the briefing.”
But the undercover CMP investigator notes that virtually every affiliate in the entire state of California is “already partnered” with a company that secures fetal tissue/intact baby body parts.
Dr. Gatter’s one word answer is “Yea.”
Then, a moment later, she adds, “You’ve got one small pocket of people who are not partnered, that’s Pasadena because the volume is not big.”
There are four other posts today about the impact of the Planned Parenthood videos. Please read them all and pass them along.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
