A pro-life organization, Operation Rescue (OR), has released
documents that may show Planned Parenthood (PP) illegally profited from the
sale of aborted babies’ body parts, furthering a Texas state investigation and
possibly triggering a new grand jury in Harris County. Receipts show that PP charges for each body
part obtained … just as pro-life advocates have maintained all along.
OR attorney Briscoe Cain held a press conference in front of
the PP abortion facility in Houston, which is run by Planned Parenthood Gulf
Coast (PPGC). After undercover
investigators filmed PPGC officials discussing how such profit could be hidden
in “line items,” it touched off a series of investigations at the national,
state, and local level. One of those was
in Harris County, where the grand jury (last week) took no action against PP but
indicted David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP)
investigators who shot the video footage. They face up to 20-years in prison for using a
fake ID.
New invoices show PPGC partnering with the University of
Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston to furnish aborted babies’ tissue for
medical research and experimentation. An
e-mail from September 7, 2011, shows a UTMB official telling PPGC Director of
Research Melissa Farrell, “We are needing to collect tissues as soon as
possible.” Farrell sent UTMB two
invoices: one for $5,750 covering February-August 2010, and another for
$2,374.98 for January-June 2011. Each
has a flat-fee charge - listed alternately as “reimbursement for study supplies”
or “annual admin fee.” Both also contain
a line charging $150 for each “consent” obtained - something lawyers say proves
that PPGC charged a fee per specimen. That
designation is how Farrell was able to hide its profit in “line items,” as she
told CMP investigators on film.
“Farrell admitted on camera to undercover investigators that
PPGC ‘worded’ the per-specimen charges for fetal specimens as ‘per consent’ in
order to ‘frame’ the project budget in a way that will look legal ‘on paper,’” said
Daleiden. “Whether the ‘consent fee’ for
fetal tissue is $25” (the amount Farrell mentioned on film) “or $150, it is
completely outside the letter and spirit of Texas Penal Code 48.02.”
There is also an aspect of public funding for PP in the UTMB
study. “Because Planned Parenthood was selling to publicly funded
universities, this means that our tax dollars went to buy aborted baby remains
and ended up in the pockets of Planned Parenthood executives,” said OR Senior
Vice President Cheryl Sullenger. Yet, she said, Harris County District Attorney
Devon Anderson “turned a blind eye to this crime while charging the people that
reported the crimes. This injustice must
not be allowed to stand.”
“Because of this new evidence, we renew our call for a new
grand jury to investigate Planned Parenthood to be directed by an independent
special prosecutor not related in any way to Devon Anderson, anyone in the
Harris County District Attorney’s office, or Anderson’s friend, Chip Lewis” (the
attorney for Houston abortionist Douglas Karpen and a longtime Anderson ally), Sullenger
said.
“The purpose of releasing these documents is to shed light
on previously unseen evidence of criminal activity by Planned Parenthood Gulf
Coast and to publicly release for the first time financial documents exposing
the practice of purchasing aborted fetal tissue by Texas medical schools,” Cain
said, according to Breitbart. Cain said he expected the documents to be “key
evidence used by the State of Texas as they continue their investigation of
Planned Parenthood’s activities.”
CMP Daleiden says, “Governor Abbott and Attorney General
Paxton must hold Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast accountable for their flagrant
violation of the Texas Penal Code and their abuse of Texas taxpayers’ dollars.”
As a related aside, I would remind you that the State of Texas
is investigating PPGC who paid $4.3-million to settle allegations of Medicaid
fraud back in 2013.
Rev. Dr.
Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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