Planned Parenthood drops fetal tissue fees

In a letter to the National Institutes of Health on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood announced it will no longer charge for the fetal tissue it provides to researchers.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said her organization would give fetal tissue to researchers for free in order to undercut accusations that Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue “donation” program is financially motivated.

“As I have stated repeatedly, the accusations leveled against Planned Parenthood are categorically false,” Richards said. “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 sudden shift in policy comes as Planned Parenthood tries to defend itself from an ongoing conservative push to cut off its federal funding. A series of undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress this year show Planned Parenthood employees haggling over the payments they would receive in exchange for providing organs from babies aborted in Planned Parenthood facilities.

Federal law prohibits the sale of baby body parts for profit, though it allows “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.” The law also forbids abortionists from changing the abortion procedure to procure tissue—a practice some employees admitted to in the undercover videos.

Two weeks ago, Richards denied Planned Parenthood profited from fetal tissue during a Capitol Hill grilling. She said the undercover videos mischaracterized her organization.

In today’s letter, Richards said only Planned Parenthood affiliates in California and Washington state currently provide fetal tissue to researchers, with only one of those accepting payments for tissue. (The Oregon Planned Parenthood affiliate donates placenta tissue.) But in a video CMP released in August, a Planned Parenthood executive in Houston claimed her fetal tissue research department was the largest in the country. Abby Johnson, a former facility director for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast who is now a pro-life activist, told Texas legislators the affiliate made as much as $120,000 per month selling fetal body parts.

Planned Parenthood did not say how much income it stands to lose by ending fetal tissue payments.

But by giving away the fetal tissue for free, Planned Parenthood could become an even more popular source for procurement organizations. Other abortion providers also participate in the fetal tissue trade and may find themselves at a disadvantage if they charge a fee.

“It’s about time,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a statement responding to Planned Parenthood’s announcement. “However, there are still many questions yet to be answered surrounding Planned Parenthood’s business practices and relationships with the procurement organizations.” Blackburn is vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is leading an investigation of Planned Parenthood’s practices.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, said the Planned Parenthood announcement was a smokescreen to distract attention from its ongoing practice of destroying living babies in the womb and harvesting their livers, eyes, hearts, and brains: “Those horrors are unchanged and the congressional and state investigations into Planned Parenthood’s gruesome practices should not stop.”

David Daleiden, who led the undercover video operation for the Center for Medical Progress, called Planned Parenthood’s move an “admission of guilt.”

“If the money Planned Parenthood has been receiving for baby body parts were truly legitimate ‘reimbursement,’ why cancel it?” he said. “This proves what CMP has been saying all along—Planned Parenthood incurs no actual costs, and the payments for harvested fetal parts have always been an extra profit margin.”

Pro-life groups renewed their call for Congress to defund Planned Parenthood in a letter last week. Planned Parenthood’s nearly 700 centers received $528 million in federal and state funding in 2013. They perform about 325,000 abortions each year in the United States.