Source: Andrew Burton / Getty
As a response to undercover videos, Planned Parenthood says it will keep programs at some of its clinics that make fetal tissue available for research. However they will no longer accept any reimbursement to cover the costs of those programs.
Anti-abortion activists who recently released a series of undercover videos have contended that Planned Parenthood officials sought profits from their programs providing post-abortion fetal tissue to researchers. Planned Parenthood claims the videos were deceptively edited and denied seeking any payments beyond those that were legally permitted reimbursement of costs.
The new policy was outlined in a letter sent Tuesday by Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health.
Richards wrote “Planned Parenthood’s policies on fetal tissue donation already exceed the legal requirements. Now we’re going even further in order to take away any basis for attacking Planned Parenthood to advance an anti-abortion political agenda.”
The videos were released in mid-July, by a group of anti-abortion activists called the Center for Medical Progress, activists posed as representatives of a biomedical firm and sought to negotiate the purchase of fetal organs from some Planned Parenthood personnel. David Deleiden, who led the undercover video effort, depicted Planned Parenthood’s shift as “an admission of guilt” by asking “If the money Planned Parenthood has been receiving for baby body parts were truly legitimate ‘reimbursement,’ why cancel it?”
As a response to the undercover videos republicans in control of Congress launched several investigations into Planned Parenthood, along with attempting to cut off the organization’s federal funding. Most of that same funding is reimbursement for Medicaid patients receiving cancer screenings, contraception and other non-abortion services.
Planned Parenthood says currently its fetal tissue programs take place in only California and Washington at about a half-dozen of the 700 health centers run by the organization nationwide. Planned Parenthood’s executive vice president, Dawn Laguens, said the Washington state affiliate already had a policy of accepting no reimbursement for its costs, and now the California affiliate will follow the same policy.
Laguens also said “I don’t think it will have a huge impact on their budget. For Planned Parenthood, this was always about one thing honoring the desire of women to contribute to lifesaving research. It was never about money.”
Under the current law selling fetal tissue for profit is illegal due to a 1993 law passed by Congress with bipartisan support allows women who undergo abortions to donate fetal tissue for use in scientific research. The Department of Health and Human Services, wrote a letter to Congress in August, saying fetal tissue “continues to be a critical resource for important efforts such as research on degenerative eye disease, human development disorders such as Down syndrome, and infectious diseases, among a host of other diseases.”
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