The CEO of a company that purchases aborted fetuses and distributes the parts to researchers says abortion clinics and buyers should and do profit from the exchange, in new undercover footage released Tuesday by The Center for Medical Progress.
“We’re going into it knowing that it has to be financially beneficial for you,” an undercover actor posing as a fetal tissue buyer tells StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer in the video.
“Yeah,” Dyer agrees. “Yeah, and both of us for sure.”
The undercover actors are discussing an arrangement in which their front company would harvest fetuses from abortion clinics and deliver them to StemExpress, which would then process and ship the desired cells off to researchers. (RELATED: Planned Parenthood Whistleblower: ‘This Is Not Political To Me’)
“You feel like there’s [Planned Parenthood] clinics out there that have been burned?” Dyer asks. “That feel like they’re doing all this work for research, and it hasn’t been profitable for them?”
“No, I don’t,” one of the fake buyers replies.
“Oh okay good,” Dyer says. “Yeah, I was going to say, I don’t see that either.”
It’s a felony to receive “valuable consideration” for aborted baby parts, but it is legal to receive “reasonable payments” for costs associated with the exchange, including but apparently not limited to: transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of the aborted baby tissue.
CMP alleges Planned Parenthood is breaking this law by profiting from the sale of aborted fetal tissue, but Planned Parenthood maintains it is charging legal fees and does not make any money on the exchange. The middlemen who receive tissue, such as StemExpress, sometimes charge thousands of dollars to the actual researchers working with their prepared samples. (RELATED: Nearly 1 in 3 Abortions Happen At Planned Parenthood ‘Health’ Clinics)
Dyer says its expensive to isolate the tissue and cells researchers want. Neural tissue is particularly fragile, she says in the video, and is the “hardest thing in the world to ship.”
“The procurement for us, I mean it can go really sideways depending on the facility,” Dyer says. “And then our samples are destroyed, and we’re like, really? This was all so much work, and then just to have them be destroyed is awful.
“Researchers wait forever, and they want certain things perfectly done,” she adds.
To ensure neural tissue is intact, Dyer says they’ve had success simply shipping off the entire head to researchers.
“Yeah, make sure the eyes are closed,” one of the fake buyers jokes.
“Yeah, tell the lab it’s coming,” Dyer laughs. “So they don’t open the box and go, ‘oh god!”
“Its almost like they don’t want to know where it comes from,” she adds. “I can see that. From where they’re like, ‘we need limbs but we don’t need the hands and feet to be attached.’ And you’re like [what] They want you to take it all off, like ‘make it so that we don’t know what it is.'”
“Yeah, bone the chicken for me and then I’ll eat it,” a fake buyer chimes in. “But not before.”
“Thats it,” Dyer says. “But we know what it is.”
One of the fake buyers suggests it has to do with the “stigma” surrounding fetal tissue procurement and research.
“Oh yeah, and their lab techs freak out, and have meltdowns,” Dyer says. “I think, quite frankly, that’s why a lot of researchers, some of them get into other things. … They want to look at adult human, kind of adult based sampling, because they want to get away from having to publish a paper that says they derived this from fetal tissue.”
StemExpress is a for profit company that reportedly grew 1,316 percent in three years, making $2.2 million of revenue in 2013. It no longer obtains fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood clinics. (RELATED: Planned Parenthood Allegations Turn On Squishy McConnell-Backed Law)
In a statement Thursday, StemExpress called the videos “highly edited” and “highly deceptive,” and Dyer called the video “a sad attempt to malign StemExpress and me personally.”
WATCH:
CMP has released seven other videos, which are a combination of undercover footage and cuts of an extended interview with a whistleblower who used to work in the clinics.
1. “People want liver.”
A top doctor talks frankly about how the clinics harvest and distribute the body parts and organs of aborted babies, while munching on a salad.
2. “Violating the protocol”
Planned Parenthood’s medical director haggles over the price “per specimen” with undercover actors posing as fetal tissue buyers, and appears willing to alter abortion procedures to get better tissue.
3. “This is a leg.”
A phlebotomist who used to harvest and dissect fetuses in Planned Parenthood clinics describes her work experience, saying the procedures were so shocking she passed out on her first day.
4. “And another boy!”
Planned Parenthood employees dissect fetuses in front of undercover actors posing as buyers, while the group negotiates a contract and haggles over the price.
5. “Mixed up together in a bag”
A Planned Parenthood clinic director says skirting fetal tissue laws is “just a matter of line items,” and a technician pulls an aborted 20-week old fetus out of the freezer and shows it to the fake buyers.
6. “Cold-hearted”
The phlebotomist who worked in the clinics describes them as ‘morbid’ places where women with unborn babies were seen as profit opportunities by staff who sometimes took their fetus without their consent.
7. “What did I just do?”
The phlebotomist says she decided to quit after cutting through the face of a late-term male fetus to procure its brain for research, and struggling to stuff its remains into a container packed with aborted fetuses.
CMP also published full footage and transcripts for the undercover videos.
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