A medical technician who harvested aborted fetuses in Planned Parenthood clinics describes her traumatic work experience in a third video produced by a medical ethics group opposed to abortion.
Holly O’Donnell unsuspectingly took a job as a “procurement technician” for a fetal tissue company in 2012, when she was assigned to harvest and dissect aborted fetuses in Planned Parenthood clinics, according to The Center for Medical Progress. The fetal dissection procedures were so shocking she says she passed out in shock her first day on the job.
“I remember grabbing the leg, and I said ‘this is a leg,'” O’Donnell says in the video. “And the moment I picked it up, I could just feel like death and pain — like I’ve never felt that before — like shoot up through my body. And I started to, I blacked out basically.” (RELATED: Planned Parenthood Doctor Discusses Harvesting Of Aborted Baby Parts)
When O’Donnell came to, one of the nurses said, “Don’t worry, it still happens to a bunch of us,” adding, “Some of us don’t ever get over it.”
O’Donnell worked for StemExpress, but spent her days working in Northern California Planned Parenthood Clinics. “The owner, Cate Dyer, she used to be a procurement tech, and then she went and started her own business,” O’Donnell says, referring to StemExpress. “And now she’s making a lot of money based off the poor girls who half the time don’t even want to get abortions.”
“It’s a pretty sick company.”
StemExpress did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
O’Donnell’s job was to dissect and draw blood from the dead fetuses for distribution. She also identified women planning to abort fetuses that could be useful to StemExpress and asked for their consent to harvest the blood and tissue.
“We were asked to procure certain tissues, like brain liver, thymus, pancreas, heart, lungs and pretty much anything on the fetus,” O’Donnell says. “It’s basically trafficking of fetal tissues.”
The president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Directors’ Council, Mary Gatter, is seen haggling over the fee for procurement in the video with undercover actors posing as officials from a biotech company interested in procuring aborted fetuses. Gatter throws out a fee of $74 per specimen in the video.
“The harder and the more valuable the tissue, the more money you get,” O’Donnell says. “So if you can somehow procure a brain or a heart you’re going to get more money … ”
It is legal to harvest and distribute human organs and tissue in the U.S., and to receive compensation for the cost of the procurement and distribution. The government requires the compensation be “reasonable,” but does not specify how much fetal providers, such as Planned Parenthood, can charge for services.
Selling human body parts, tissue or organs is illegal. (RELATED: Dem Candidates Silent On Alleged Planned Parenthood Felonies)
O’Donnell says the Planned Parenthood clinics are benefiting from their partnership with companies, such as StemExpress. “For whatever we could procure, [the Planned Parenthood affiliate] would get a certain percentage,” O’Donnell says. “The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens.”
The Center for Medical Progress is alleging Planned Parenthood clinics are selling the parts and tissue for profit. “Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby parts is an offensive and horrifying reality that is widespread enough for many people to be available to give first-person testimony about it,” David Daleiden, Project Lead for The Center for Medical Progress, said in a statement Monday.
This video is the first episode in a documentary web series, “Human Capital,” produced by The Center for Medical Progress, and follows two other undercover videos. (RELATED: Planned Parenthood Blames Militant Wing Of Anti-Abortion Crowd For Undercover Videos)
The first shows a top Planned Parenthood doctor, Deborah Nucatola, discussing the harvest and distribution of fetal parts for research, and the second shows Gatter apparently entertaining the idea of “violating the protocol” that prohibits doctors from altering their abortion methods to obtain fetal tissue.
Planned Parenthood has released a series of statements denying the allegations in the first two videos and saying they are legally donating the body parts per the patients request, for “scientific research.”
“If anyone were ever to ask [Planned Parenthood affiliates], ‘well what do you do for this $60, how can you justify that, or are you doing something completely egregious that you should be doing for free?'” Nucatola says in the undercover footage. “I think for affiliates, the end of the day, they’re a non-profit. They just don’t want to, they want to break even.”
“And if they can do a little better than break even, and do so in a way that seems reasonable, they’re happy to do that.”
Planned Parenthood received $528.4 million dollars in federal grants and reimbursements for the year ending June 30, 2014, according to its 2013-2014 annual report, and performed 327,653 abortions. (RELATED: Nearly 1 In 3 Abortions Happen At Planned Parenthood ‘Health’ Centers)
Planned Parenthood did not respond to a request for comment regarding the latest video.
WATCH:
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.