How to 'get a toe in' the aborted tissue trade

Editor’s note: Updates an earlier report by Lynde Langdon.

The Center for Medical Progress’ latest undercover video release takes a look inside Advanced Bioscience Resources Inc. (ABR), a longtime tissue procurement partner that pays Planned Parenthood for aborted babies’ remains.

The video features actors posing as an owner of a procurement company and a researcher. Its release follows five days after Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, sent a letter to Congress denying any illegal activity.

In today’s video, one actor told Katharine Sheehan, medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest until 2013, that they offer a courtesy payment to abortion facilities. “We return a portion of our fees to the clinics,” she said.

“Oh! … Right, get a toe in and make it, make a pro — Alright,” Sheehan responded.

Sheehan had just renegotiated a contract with ABR, a non-profit procurement company that already had a 10-year relationship with her organization.

In the letter to Congress, Richards said some facilities receive a $45 to $55 per specimen reimbursement and one California facility receives a “modest” amount of $60 per specimen. CMP countered that the reimbursement can add up to hundreds of dollars because one abortion can provide multiple specimens.

CMP also identified ABR as the company that pays Planned Parenthood $60 per specimen.

“We now know from Cecile Richards’ letter that $60 per collected tissue specimen is what will ‘get a toe in’ to harvest baby parts at Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest,” CMP’s project leader David Daleiden wrote in a response letter to Congress.

Perrin Larton, the procurement manager at ABR, also described some of the procurement process to an actor posing as a researcher. Because the abortion instruments usually rip the babies’ abdomens, “whenever we have a smooth portion of liver, we think that’s good,” she said. Occasionally, ABR can procure an intact fetus if a woman’s cervix is dilated enough, but Larton said ABR avoids born-alive infants.

“The whole point is not to have a live birth,” Larton said. But ABR can’t use fetuses killed with chemicals like digoxin, which CMP said last week indicates the infant is likely to be born alive.

“We’ve been in the business long enough, I can tell if its been dig’ed or not,” Larton said, referring to the use of digoxin. “I just look at it, and I go ‘ugh!’ And they have a smell, it’s just, it’s not right. So it’s just kind of icky.”

ABR had no comment on the video.