Planned Parenthood is facing a furious backlash from conservatives after an ethics campaign group leaked a video purportedly showing an executive discussing the sale of body parts from aborted foetuses.
Christian leaders and Republican politicians, including several presidential candidates, responded with horror to an undercover video filmed by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) during a lunch with Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, Deborah Nucatola. CMP's representatives posed as employees of a biotech company.
The video shows Nucatola discussing the abstraction of organs from foetuses. "Yesterday was the first time she said people wanted lungs," she told the undercover buyers. "Some people want lower extremities, too, which, that's simple. That's easy. I don't know what they're doing with it, I guess if they want muscle."
She said: "I'd say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they'll know where they're putting their forceps."
Nucatola described managing the abortion process to preserve the foetal organs.
"We've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I'm not gonna crush that part, I'm gonna basically crush below, I'm gonna crush above, and I'm gonna see if I can get it all intact."
Figures were discussed at the meeting, which CMP said proved Planned Parenthood – a US reproductive health service and abortion provider – was selling body parts from foetuses. Nucatola said in the video that Planned Parent was "very, very sensitive" to suggestions that its clinics were "selling tissue". Asked for a price range, she said: "You know, I would throw a number out, I would say it's probably anywhere from $30 to $100, depending on the facility and what's involved.
"It just has to do with space issues, are you sending someone there that's going to be doing everything . . . is there shipping involved? Is someone going to be there to pick it up?"
However, a statement from a Planned Parenthood vice-president, Eric Ferrero, said that women who had abortions sometimes wanted to donate to medical research and categorically denied that profits were made. Ferrero said: "There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood. In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field."
He described CMP as a "well funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood's mission and services" which had "promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood's participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research".
Nevertheless, the video has ignited a firestorm among social conservatives horrified not just at the allegations but at the tone of the conversation.
Minneapolis pastor Jonathan Parnell wrote a highly critical article on John Piper's Desiring God website asking "How many more body parts must be dismembered, packaged, and sold before we realize this whole thing is a nightmare?" Piper tweeted a call to pray and fast about abortion today.
Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, blogged: "If this does not shock the conscience, what will? It is not only that infants, in their mother's wombs, are deprived of their lives, but also that their corpses are desecrated for profit. This is not only murderous; it is murderous in the most ghoulish way imaginable." Moore called Planned Parenthood "pirates and grave-robbers of those who have no graves." Among Republican politicians, Jeb Bush said on Twitter: "This is a shocking and horrific reminder that we must do so much more to foster a culture of life in America."
Carly Fiorina wrote on Facebook: "This latest news is tragic and outrageous."