HHS was right to terminate a contract for “fresh” aborted fetal organs and tissues with Planned Parenthood-linked Advanced Bioscience Resources, and to launch a “comprehensive review” of all HHS experimentation with aborted baby body parts. However, these are only small first steps to stop the epidemic of taxpayer-funded trafficking in tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains taking place in government-run HHS laboratories. CMP has now filed a detailed Freedom of Information Act request to obtain all the relevant facts about the $100 million in taxpayer money spent on HHS’ most recent round of baby parts contracts, and to hold this government agency accountable for the number of aborted American children it has sought to purchase for taxpayer-funded experimentation.
The Center for Medical Progress releases the following statement on the announcement this evening that HHS is terminating a contract signed in July with Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) for “fresh” aborted fetal organs and tissues. CMP founder and project lead David Daleiden remarks:
So long as HHS trades taxpayer dollars for freshly-aborted baby body parts, the U.S. government is setting its own abortion quotas and sending the message that these children are worth more dead than alive. By terminating a grotesque contract for “fresh”aborted baby parts from Planned Parenthood’s business partners ABR that never should have been signed in the first place, HHS has taken a small first step to stop the epidemic of trafficking tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains from late-term abortion clinics into government-sponsored laboratories for taxpayer-funded experimentation. HHS’smission to “serve all Americans from conception to natural death” cannot permit trafficking unborn children to stitch their body parts into lab rats.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that ABR was one of multiple entities under federal investigation for the illegal sale of baby body parts for profit based on criminal referrals by twoCongressional committees. Now that HHS has found cause for termination of ABR’s continuing baby body parts sales, DOJ must do its job and follow through on the criminal referrals for ABR, Planned Parenthood, and similar entities with vigorous prosecution.
HHS’s newly-announced review of fetal tissue procurement and experimentation must be exacting, and it must terminate all other agreements for baby body parts with ABR, StemExpress, and similar business partners with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. HHS should provide 110% transparency about the extent of taxpayer-funded harvesting from and experimentation on unborn children, and to this end, CMP will file a federal Freedom of Information Act request in the coming days to surface all the relevant facts and details about the $100 million in taxpayer money spent on HHS’s most recent round of baby body parts contracts and projects.
After Cecile Richards’ sudden and unexplained departure in the wake of the U.S. Department of Justice’s active investigation of Planned Parenthood for selling aborted baby body parts, the nation’s biggest abortion business has announced its new president will be pro-abortion advocate Dr. Leana Wen. Dr. Wen previously ledinitiativescalling for “radical transparency” from doctors about their views on controversial issues like abortion. In this spirit, Planned Parenthood and its new president should immediately disclose how many abortions Dr. Wen has performed, whether she will perform abortions as Planned Parenthood president and up to what gestational age, and if she supports contracts for baby body parts like the ones the biggest Planned Parenthood affiliates entered into under Richards’ leadership. CMP also asks Dr. Wen directly: does “radical transparency” for doctors include undercover video?
CENTER FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS ISSUES SPECIAL REPORT ON GOVERNMENT ABORTED BABY BODY PARTS CONTRACTOR Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. Purchased Body Parts from Planned Parenthood and Sold to Government-Funded Researchers
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 10–The Center for Medical Progress issued a whitepaper special report today on the fetal body parts procurement company Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR), in response to recent reports that the Health & Human Services Department is again contracting with the organization that paid Planned Parenthood for aborted fetal specimens, which is now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 2015, CMP released a series of undercover videos of senior-level Planned Parenthood leadership discussing the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal organs and tissues. The video series also included interviews with representatives of ABR, one of the largest and oldest companies dedicated solely to harvesting and reselling body parts from abortions. ABR stations technicians inside Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics across the country, where the ABR technicians identify and dissect fetal body parts from abortions and then package and ship them directly to ABR’s customers, oftentimes government-sponsored research laboratories.
In CMP’s previously-released footage of ABR, the company’s Procurement Manager admits to having observed fully intact fetuses being delivered inside the abortion clinics during ABR harvesting cases: “I literally have had women come in and they’ll go in the OR, and they’re back out in 3 minutes, and I’m going, ‘What’s got’ on?’ ‘Oh yeah, the fetus was already in the vaginal canal, whenever we put her in the stirrups, it just fell out.'”
ABR, based in the San Francisco bay area, has contracted for decades with Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, based in southern California, to harvest aborted fetal specimens at Planned Parenthood in San Diego and Riverside for $60 per specimen and then resell them to taxpayer-funded researchers for up to $6,000 per specimen. After the release of the videos, two detailed Congressional investigations at the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel issued criminal referrals for ABR and Planned Parenthood to the FBI, USDOJ, and Riverside County District Attorney. In December 2017, the DOJ announced it had an active investigation based on the criminal referrals.
Also in December last year, a District Attorney in southern California credited CMP’s investigative reporting with prompting the successful civil prosecution of two companies like ABR that illegally sold fetal organs and tissue from the local Planned Parenthood. Those companies, DV Biologics and DaVinci Biosciences, admitted guilt for selling fetal body parts for profit in a $7.8 million settlement.
CMP’s new report presents primary-source evidence that ABR sold aborted fetal specimens at prices far higher than its legally reimbursable costs, and that it admitted in emails obtained through a Public Records request to massively overbilling researchers for fetal organs at prices far above ABR’s actual costs. The report also highlights previous experimental cell-based therapy products, made with fetal specimens provided by ABR, that ultimately proved ineffective and dangerous.
Yet according to recent reports, this summer the FDA renewed a purchase order with ABR for nearly $16,000 in “fresh” aborted fetal organs and tissues to implant into laboratory mice. Last year, the NIH spent nearly $100 million on projects using aborted fetal body parts, $20 million of which went to intramural, government-run projects engaging in fetal experimentation.
CMP Project David Daleiden notes, “Advanced Bioscience Resources is under federal investigation right now for colluding with Planned Parenthood to sell aborted baby body parts for profit. It is unconscionable that the United States government is still paying top-dollar in taxpayer money for the freshest, most high-quality dismembered baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains. By custom-ordering late-term aborted baby body parts for sale from Planned Parenthood partners like ABR, the FDA is directly complicit in these abortions and implies that these kids are worth more to the U.S. Government dead than alive. HHS must provide full transparency and immediately terminate any and all such contracts, and the U.S. Department of Justice needs to do their job and hold ABR, Planned Parenthood, and those like them accountable to the law.”
On August 15, The Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden filed three motions in San Francisco federal court to dismiss Planned Parenthood-proxy the National Abortion Federation’s lawsuit and dissolve the preliminary injunction gag order that censors CMP’s remaining undercover video of Planned Parenthood leaders negotiating the sale of aborted baby parts.
CMP Statement: “Three years ago, Planned Parenthood’s abortion doctors with the National Abortion Federation stormed into federal court demanding a gag order over the most damning undercover footage. Now they have largely retreated, dropping all of their federal claims and allegations of unlawful video recording, leaving only a simple contract dispute between fellow Californians. Since the gag order was issued, two Congressional investigations, a successful case against Planned Parenthood’s business partners in southern California, and the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation prove that CMP’s videos are accurate and Judge Orrick’s reasons for placing the gag order were false. This case should be thrown out of federal court, and the censored undercover videos must be released.”
Key Points:
NAF, largely made up of Planned Parenthood abortion leaders, stormed into federal court 3 years ago falsely accusing CMP and David Daleiden of trespass, fraud, illegal videotaping, and even RICO. This summer, NAF dropped the majority of their claims–now all they have left is a contract dispute.
NAF is suing on behalf of its members, who include many of the largest Planned Parenthood affiliates in California who are suing on some of the same claims in PP’s related federal lawsuit. Because NAF has now dropped all of its federal claims, this lawsuit is now just a contract dispute among several Californians and there is no longer any jurisdiction for it in federal court. Judge Orrick cannot make any more rulings in this case and must throw it out.
NAF and its members cannot allege any plausible violation in their contract disputes–their argument boils down to asserting they were harmed because CMP’s actors did not actually buy aborted baby parts from them instead of just talking about it.
In February 2016, Judge Orrick granted NAF’s request for a Preliminary Injunction blocking the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood directors filmed at its annual meetings by CMP, based on NAF’s representation that CMP’s undercover work had not found any wrongdoing, and allegations that the videos placed NAF members under threat. In the past two years, Judge Orrick’s findings supporting his injunction have been proven false.
Since the injunction was issued, two Congressional investigations prompted by CMP’s videos confirmed serious wrongdoing and “systematic violations” in Planned Parenthood and NAF’s fetal body parts supply, yielding over a dozen criminal and regulatory referrals, now being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. A California District Attorney specifically credited CMP’s undercover work with prompting his successful prosecution of Planned Parenthood business partners the DaVinci companies for selling fetal tissue for profit, which the companies admitted in a $7.8 million settlement.
Planned Parenthood has admitted since the injunction was issued that CMP’s videos are not responsible for any specific violent threat to abortion providers, and NAF’s own statistics published since the injunction shows no increase in actual threats to NAF members attributable to the videos. CMP has never released a video calling for harm to anyone and has instead always directed the public to seek recourse through elected representatives and First Amendment speech.
Since the injunction, the California Attorney General has brought a legally unsupported prosecution against David Daleiden based on the California video recording law, at the behest of Planned Parenthood and many NAF members. The undercover videos subject to Judge Orrick’s injunction are now key evidence in the criminal case, and any restriction on them from the federal court would unconstitutionally interfere with the California justice system and David Daleiden’s 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th amendment rights to defend himself from the AG’s and Planned Parenthood’s false charges.
Advanced Bioscience Resources is under federalinvestigation right now for colluding with Planned Parenthood to sell aborted baby body parts for profit. It is unconscionable that the United States government is still paying top-dollar in taxpayer money for the freshest, most high-quality dismembered baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains. By custom-ordering late-term aborted baby body parts for sale from Planned Parenthood partners like ABR, the FDA is directly complicit in these abortions and implies that these kids are worth more to the U.S. Government dead than alive. HHS must provide full transparency and immediately terminate any and all such contracts, and the U.S. Department of Justice needs to do their job and hold ABR, Planned Parenthood, and those like themaccountable to the law.
Three years ago, citizen journalists at The Center for Medical Progress caught Planned Parenthood’s senior leadership in a series of undercover videos casually negotiating the sale of aborted baby body parts. Today, the Trump Administration begins to defund Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer-funded abortion business so that Americans will no longer forced to prop up this criminal abortion empire. Now, the Department of Justice must do their job and hold Planned Parenthood accountable under the law for their lawless profiteering off the broken bodies of aborted children.
Cecile Richards was the most devoted practitioner of Planned Parenthood’s “out of sight, out of mind” mantra to cover up their barbaric abortion business from the public. After CMP’s revealing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood’s top abortion doctors and the damning findings of multiple Congressionalprobes, Richards’ departure shows that the old strategy is no longer working as Planned Parenthood faces federal criminal investigation for selling aborted baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains. Planned Parenthood’s new leadership should commit to full transparency with the Department of Justice and with the public, and to ending this taxpayer-funded criminal abortion enterprise once and for all.
The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) filed a petition for a writ of mandamus today at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking the disqualification of San Francisco federal Judge William Orrick III from the lawsuits against CMP by Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, on account of Judge Orrick’s close ties to Planned Parenthood.
The facts about Judge Orrick’s extrajudicial support of Planned Parenthood include:
1) While in a leadership role at a San Francisco family resource center, Judge Orrick helped open, run, and fund a Planned Parenthood clinic in partnership with the family resource center. That clinic is part of Planned Parenthood Northern California, which has NAF membership and is now suing CMP in Judge Orrick’s courtroom.
2) Judge Orrick and his wife together donated significant financial resources to the partnership between the family resource center and Planned Parenthood, which the Planned Parenthood affiliate CEO said helped maintain and expand their operations.
3) Mrs. Orrick uses her husband’s image on Facebook to support Planned Parenthood in posts attacking CMP’s videos as “domestic terrorism” and weigh in on issues disputed in the lawsuits.
4) Judge Orrick’s ongoing public relationship and duties toward the family resource center in San Francisco housing Planned Parenthood Northern California’s clinic, and the center’s continuing partnership with Planned Parenthood.
Two of Planned Parenthood’s business partners, DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics, have admitted guilt in a $7.8 million settlement with the Orange County District Attorney for selling aborted baby body parts from Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties for profit in violation of federal and California law. The OCDA’s press release credits citizen journalism reporting from The Center for Medical Progress for prompting the investigation of baby body parts trafficking in Orange County.
“The DaVinci companies’ admission of guilt for selling baby parts from Planned Parenthood is a ringing vindication of CMP’s citizen journalism methods and accuracy,” says CMP Project Lead David Daleiden. “In light of the news that Planned Parenthood is now under federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for the sale of fetal body parts, the next step is for Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties to be held accountable under the law for their 7-year-long aiding, abetting, and profiting in DaVinci’s criminal scheme to sell baby parts for profit.”
