Organization’s director of research talks about “getting creative”
The fifth undercover Planned video from the Center of Medical Progress shows an official boasting of the abortion provider’s ability to deliver fully intact fetuses.
In the video, released Tuesday, a day after the US Senate failed to ban federal funding of Planned Parenthood, actors posing as representatives from a human biologics company meet with Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston. They are shown discussing a potential partnership to harvest fetal organs.
“Where we probably have an edge over other organizations, our organization has been doing research for many many years,” Farrell explains. When researchers need a specific part from the aborted fetus, Farrell says, “We bake that into our contract, and our protocol, that we follow this, so we deviate from our standard in order to do that.”
Asked specifically if this means Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast can change abortion procedures to supply intact fetal specimens, Farrell affirms, “Some of our doctors in the past have projects and they’re collecting the specimens, so they do it in a way that they get the best specimens, so I know it can happen.“
The investigators ask Farrell how she will frame a contract in which they pay a higher price for higher quality fetal body parts, and she replies, “We can work it out in the context of–obviously, the procedure itself is more complicated.” To the Center for Medical Progress, that suggested that “without having you cover the procedural cost” and paying for the abortion, the higher specimen price could be framed as “additional time, cost, administrative burden.”
Farrell finally summarizes her affiliate’s approach to fetal tissue payments: “If we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this. It’s all just a matter of line items.”
Farrell also indicates to the investigators over lunch that the specimen sales from her department contribute significantly to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s overall finances.
“I think everyone realizes, especially because my department contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States," she says.
As with one previous video produced by the Center for Medical Progress, the footage contains images of recently aborted children, laid out on a medical counter and picked through with tweezers. Viewer discretion is advised.
