Bre Payton:
Even though it swore up and down for weeks that it did nothing wrong, Planned Parenthood claimed today it will stop accepting payment in exchange for aborted baby parts harvested by its abortionists:
In order to completely debunk the disingenuous argument that our opponents have been using – and to reveal the true political purpose of these attacks – our Federation has decided, going forward, that any Planned Parenthood health center that is involved in donating tissue after an abortion for medical research will follow the model already in place at one of our two affiliates currently facilitating donations for fetal tissue research. That affiliate accepts no reimbursement for its reasonable expenses – even though reimbursement is fully permitted under the 1993 law. Going forward, all of our health centers will follow the same policy, even if it means they will not recover reimbursements permitted by the 1993 law.
Despite its previous claims of innocence, Planned Parenthood’s announcement today suggests that the organization knew its activities were almost certainly illegal.
When the shocking videos of Planned Parenthood were first released, the taxpayer-funded abortion mill said it only accepted reimbursement for the cost of harvesting and shipping aborted baby body parts. According to the group, accepting mere reimbursement, rather than profiting from the practice, is allowed by law. The undercover videos, however, showed multiple senior Planned Parenthood staff haggling over the prices they would accept in exchange for aborted baby body parts. In one video, one Planned Parenthood executive said she needed a good price for baby body parts because, “I need a Lamborghini.”
Planned Parenthood’s decision to stop taking cash for organs was spurred entirely by a series of undercover videos by The Center for Medical Progress which were decried by Planned Parenthood supporters as “deceptively edited.” In fact, the videos were released in full, and a forensic audit showed that there was no deceptive editing whatsoever.
Abortion activists masquerading as journalists tried their best to cover up the footage. For the most part, they followed Planned Parenthood’s request to not cover the videos, which resulted in a virtual blackout of coverage from certain outlets for quite some time. When they did finally decide to write about it, these activists with bylines would parrot Planned Parenthood’s false talking points or repeat falsehoods about the abortion provider’swebsite being attacked by extremists.
Despite the best efforts of Planned Parenthood’s allies to discredit these videos and prop up Planned Parenthoods organ-trafficking scheme as something charitable and good-natured, the announced change in policy seems to indicate that those “deceptively edited videos” actually highlighted a widespread practice that Planned Parenthood was desperate to keep in the dark.