Planned Parenthood’s decision to forego federal reimbursements for fetal tissue donation serves as an admission of its guilt and should not halt the congressional effort to defund the organization, its critics say.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) announced Oct. 13 that none of its centers will accept federal reimbursement in the future for expenses accrued in tissue donations from aborted babies for research. In a letter to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, PPFA President Cecile Richards said the action was taken to “completely debunk the disingenuous argument” used by opponents in the wake of undercover videos providing evidence that the country’s leading abortion provider trades in baby body parts.
The letter followed the release of 10 secretly recorded videos that show various PPFA officials in different locations discussing the sale of organs from aborted children. The videos recorded and released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) also display PPFA employees acknowledging their willingness to manipulate the abortion procedure to preserve body parts for sale and use. In addition the videos include evidence of the dissection of live babies outside the womb to remove organs.
Continual denial
In the three months since CMP released the first video, Richards and other PPFA officials have denied any legal wrongdoing or profit from fetal tissue donation. They attacked CMP, alleging that the videos are fraudulent and deceptively edited.
Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore said PPFA’s announcement “is an acknowledgment of what they have denied all along.”
“They traffic in human organs from nonconsenting victims,” said Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), in a written statement. “This is essentially Planned Parenthood’s way of saying, ‘We never did this and we won’t do it again.’
“It is time for the United States government to hold this predatory corporation accountable.”
Rep. Diane Black, R.-Tenn., sponsor of a bill approved by the House of Representatives to defund PPFA, found it curious that PPFA officials say they have done nothing wrong but “still find it necessary to change their policy following the recent undercover videos. Clearly this was a decision motivated by optics rather than the organization’s conscience.”
The announcement “does not change my conviction that PPFA should not be subsidized by American taxpayers,” Black said in a written release.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) said Richards’ letter does not address charges that PPFA affiliates have participated in what it says appear to be various crimes related to trafficking in baby organs for profit, modifying the abortion technique to procure intact body parts and performing partial-birth abortions.
Richards’ letter “amounts to an admission of guilt,” said Kellie Fiedorek, ADF litigation counsel. “The fire that Planned Parenthood’s misdeeds started has been too hot and [Richards] mistakenly thinks this will put water on it.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the investigation into PPFA will continue because the letter does not explain why “a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization reporting approximately $125 [million] in revenue over expenses annually needs a subsidy from the American taxpayer.”
(BP)
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