Tissue company cuts ties with Planned Parenthood over pro-life videos

Tissue procurement company StemExpress announced today it is cutting ties with abortion giant Planned Parenthood over bad press generated by an undercover pro-life investigation.

In a statement sent to Politico, which first reported the news, StemExpress said it didn’t want backlash over the practice of harvesting tissue from aborted babies to detract from its other work.

“We value our various partnerships but, due to the increased questions that have arisen over the past few weeks, we feel it prudent to terminate activities with Planned Parenthood,” the statement said. “While we value our business relationship with Planned Parenthood, that work represents a small percentage of our overall business activity and we must focus our limited resources on resolving these inquiries.”

StemExpress and its work with Planned Parenthood has been the focus of a sting operation conducted by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), a new pro-life group that so far has released six videos about the tissue procurement industry. In undercover footage, Planned Parenthood executives haggled over prices for dead baby parts with actors posing as tissue buyers. Abortionists also talked about how they would alter the abortion procedure to procure the best, and most valuable, parts—heart, liver, lungs, brains.

In an interview featured in several videos, a former StemExpress employee talked about how the company’s technicians would sometimes take tissue from an aborted baby without the mother’s consent. She also detailed the horror of picking through pieces of unborn babies that had been torn out of the womb, looking for usable specimens.

Both Planned Parenthood, which claims it only gets procurement fees for fetal tissue, and StemExpress insist they did nothing immoral or illegal. Selling fetal tissue is a federal crime, as is altering the abortion procedure for any reason other than the mother’s health.

StemExpress, a 5-year-old company based in Placerville, Calif., sells the tissue it collects to scientists conducting research, including those at state universities. After CMP started releasing its videos, two congressional committees asked StemExpress to explain its relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Earlier this month, StemExpress sued CMP to prevent the group from releasing footage of a meeting with company executives secretly recorded in May. A judge granted a preliminary injunction preventing CMP from making the video public, but another judge on Thursday said she doubted StemExpress would prevail when the case goes to court.

CMP’s undercover videos have created an unprecedented backlash against Planned Parenthood, whose employees come across as callous and jaded as they discuss pieces of dead children. In one video, a technician picking through remains in a petri dish excitedly announces, “And another boy!” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards apologized for the tone in at least one video but was unrepentant about her organization’s practices.