FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TX PLANNED PARENTHOOD CAN “PULL OFF A LEG, OR TWO” TO HIDE PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTIONS TO SELL FETAL BODY PARTS
Abortion Leaders at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Describe Mutilating Fetal Bodies to Cover Up Criminal Late-Term Abortions
Contact: David Daleiden, media@centerformedicalprogress.org, 949.734.0859
HOUSTON, Aug. 8—Newly-released undercover footage, which Planned Parenthood sought to block for eight years, shows the organization’s Houston, TX branch describing delivering late-term fetuses intact and alive and mutilating the bodies afterwards to cover up violations of the federal partial-birth abortion law, in conversations about selling fetal body parts.
In the footage of two conversations filmed at the National Abortion Federation’s 2015 commercial trade show, undercover reporters posing as laboratory wholesalers speak with Dr. Ann Schutt-Aine, the Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, and Tram Nguyen, RN, the branch’s Vice President of Abortion Access.
In the first conversation, the undercover reporter, from The Center for Medical Progress, tells Nguyen and Dr. Schutt-Aine, “Liver is in short demand,” describing competition for fetal organs and cells based on what is “more profitable” for suppliers. Dr. Schutt-Aine responds, telling Nguyen: “[Y]ou told me about the proposition, and so now every time a do a D&E [dilation and evacuation abortion], I’m like, ‘Oh there’s some lungs, there’s some kidneys.’”
Nguyen then apologizes for a highly dismembered fetus she showed CMP undercover reporters during a site visit to the clinic a few weeks prior, saying other days the aborted fetuses may be delivered with only one limb missing: “We just had to hurry up, whereas other days it’s more intact, where it’s like maybe only like an arm that’s disarticulated.”
Nguyen remarks later, “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I have like a leg for you!’ I’m like, oh sh**, if other people were to hear me, they’d be like, you are f***ing evil.”
In the second conversation, another CMP undercover reporter asks Nguyen and Dr. Schutt-Aine how to obtain the most intact late-term aborted fetuses for organ harvesting.
“A lot of it has to do with dilation” of the mother’s cervix, the opening to the uterus, Dr. Schutt-Aine explains: “Because when you have good dilation, a cervix that’s either well-dilated and/or just softer and more pliable, then as you bring the fetus down, you can get more of it out before disarticulation occurs.”
Dr. Schutt-Aine states it may typically take 3 or 4 “passes” of the forceps into the mother’s body to remove the fetus. Nguyen then volunteers: “There are some that are like, I need you to make one more pass, one more pass,” to which Dr. Schutt-Aine clarifies, “To avoid PBA,” the acronym for the federal Partial-Birth Abortion law. Nguyen exclaims, “Yeah, I was like, ‘Uh, getting a little bit too close!’”
Dr. Schutt-Aine then explains further: “If I’m doing a procedure, and I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to come to the umbilicus [navel], I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA.”
Delivering a fetus alive past the navel, with intent to take any action after that will kill the fetus, is a violation of the federal partial-birth abortion law (18 U.S.C. 1531).
Dr. Schutt-Aine also states “I have zero experience with dig[oxin],” the chemical sometimes used to kill the fetus before pulling it out of the mother with forceps and thus comply with the federal partial-birth abortion law. When the CMP undercover reporter describes a laboratory unable to harvest stem cells from a fetus that received digoxin because, “It was all completely dead, nothing,” Nguyen coughs, laughs, and replies, “Yeah,” raising her eyebrows and nodding.
Nguyen later states, “When you have patients who cooperate, and there’s good dilation, it’s just like one pass,” of the forceps to remove the fetus, motioning with her hands, to which the CMP reporter asks, “And you get the whole thing?” and Nguyen replies, “Yeah.”
A few weeks after this conversation, in June 2015, CMP emailed Nguyen and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast VP of Research Melissa Farrell an undercover contract for $750 per fetal liver and $1,600 per pair of fetal liver and thymus. In unsealed emails produced in federal court, Nguyen forwarded the contract to PPGC’s Regional Medical & Surgical Services Director, Dyann Santos, writing, “FYI—we’re still trying to move forward with this,” to which Santos asked, “Do you want to do this?” and to which Nguyen replied, “Yes ma’am.”
“Planned Parenthood repeatedly told Congress, the courts, and the public that it had ‘rebuffed’ any opportunity to sell aborted baby body parts in Texas,” notes CMP founder and project lead David Daleiden. “This finally-released undercover footage shows that in reality, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was ghoulishly eager to rip healthy babies out of vulnerable patients whole and alive, and mutilate their bodies after to sell body parts for top dollar. Kamala Harris, as California Attorney General, raided my home and seized this footage to try to block it from release for eight years, on orders from Planned Parenthood and NAF. It’s time for justice under the law for Big Abortion.”
In 2015, the National Abortion Federation, stating it was representing institutional member Planned Parenthood, sought and received a federal injunction against the release of the footage in San Francisco federal court. Nguyen, Dr. Schutt-Aine, and Santos have all served as Board Directors of NAF. At the same time, Planned Parenthood requested then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office to seize from Daleiden the digital media containing the videos. Two weeks after a March 2016 meeting with top Planned Parenthood California officials implicated in the videos, AG Harris’ office conducted the raid on Daleiden’s home.
However, Congress had also subpoenaed the footage from CMP in late 2015. In May of this year, the San Francisco District Court finally ruled that CMP cannot be prevented from republishing any of the subpoenaed footage released by Congress.
The Center for Medical Progress is the non-profit citizen journalism organization responsible for the 2015 undercover video series showing top Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal body parts.
###
Watch the new videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1WcII0F5-A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIzXl0r1N20
Learn more about CMP here: centerformedicalprogress.org
