As Congressional hearings into Planned Parenthood’s fetal body parts business get underway on Capitol Hill, the Center for Medical Progress released both a new video and a white paper further detailing the abortion organization’s methods of harvesting and profiting on the sale of aborted children.

Their latest undercover video explores the relationship between Planned Parenthood’s late-term abortion clinic in Orange, CA and for-profit biotech company Da Vinci Biosciences. During the eight-minute video, Dr. Jennefer Russo, the Medical Director at Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties, details how her affiliate provides aborted fetal body parts to the company, in particular, “intact specimens.”

“They take the whole specimen,” Russo explains, before asking undercover investigator David Daleiden who’s posing as a buyer, “You’re looking ideally for an intact specimen?”

In CMP’s first undercover video, the wine-swilling Senior Director of Medical Services for Planned Parenthood, Dr. Deborah Nucatola described using an ultrasound-guided procedure to flip the fetus to feet-first position in order to get intact specimens. Does Dr. Russo use the same procedure to harvest more intact body parts? “Yeah,” she says, “we like to do that too.”

The law requires doctors to certify that “no alteration of the timing, method or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy was made solely for the purpose of obtaining the tissue.” In a Wall Street Journal column last August, Scott Gottlieb made the case that the word “solely” is a loophole used by Planned Parenthood to skirt the clear intent of the law. As CMP notes, “Using ultrasound guidance to manipulate the fetus from vertex to breech orientation before intact extraction is the hallmark of the illegal partial-birth procedure (18 U.S.C. 1531.).”

Asked a second time about producing intact fetuses in late 2nd-trimester cases for organ harvesting, Russo admits, “It happens sometimes, but it’s pretty rare.” She continues with a smile, “But, we try.”

Russo also divulges that her Planned Parenthood affiliate is not using digoxin, the chemical used as a feticide in later 2nd-trimester abortions to kill the fetus and prevent a live birth. This is confirmed in a call to Da Vinci Biosciences. When inquiring about fetal brain from 18 to 24 weeks gestation, the caller is assured, “It is feticide-free, considering that we have such a large catalogue of fetal tissue, I believe that would be a requirement for us, in order to have so many fetal products available.”

As CMP notes, “Without a feticidal procedure like digoxin, it is possible for a fetus extracted intact during an abortion to be born alive.”

The video also shows invoices indicating Da Vinci Biosciences charges $350 for fetal liver, $500 for fetal thymus and $750 for fetal brain.

One might argue that it is not Planned Parenthood making the money. But Da Vinci Biosciences and its sister company, DV Biologics, have been partnered with Planned Parenthood Orange & San Bernardino County since 2008; and that very same year — according to the Planned Parenthood affiliate’s annual report — Da Vinci Biosciences became one of their largest donors.

How Planned Parenthood Profits From Fetal Tissue “Donation”

But does Planned Parenthood also make money directly off the harvesting of aborted children? The Center for Medical Progress explains how in a white paper released Wednesday titled “How Planned Parenthood Profits from Fetal Tissue ‘Donation’.”  The entire white paper is here.

Its introduction states:

Planned Parenthood uses two primary models to harvest and sell fetal body parts: 1) partnership with tissue procurement organizations like StemExpress, and 2) direct supply to local buyers. In practice, both models operate in a way to minimize Planned Parenthood’s cost while maximizing the fees and profits it can receive for high-quality body parts.

Model 1: Tissue Procurement Organizations (TPOs)

In the first model, the Planned Parenthood affiliate uses a Tissue Procurement Organization (TPO), like StemExpress, to manage fetal organ harvesting at their surgical abortion clinics. The TPO model virtually guarantees that the Planned Parenthood clinic will profit from supplying fetal tissue, because the TPO handles all of the costs of procurement while still paying the abortion clinic a fee per usable body part harvested.

Whistleblower Holly O’Donnell helped expose how StemExpress technicians did all the preparation work at Planned Parenthood clinics. And yet, according to Planned Parenthood’s contracts with StemExpress, StemExpress still paid Planned Parenthood “fifty five dollars ($55) per POC [product of conception] determined to be usable.” The CMP white paper explains.

 That is, not only did Planned Parenthood still get paid for the baby parts after StemExpress did all the work, but Planned Parenthood would only get paid if the body parts were high enough quality for StemExpress to sell to research customers. This is a clear admission that the fees Planned Parenthood received for aborted baby parts were based on market value.

“Product of conception” is Planned Parenthood’s euphemism for what we would call a fetus or baby. But even the euphemism reveals much. “Product” is defined as “an article or substance that is manufactured or refined for sale.”

CMP crunches some numbers and concludes that under its StemExpress arrangement, Planned Parenthood Mon Monte in California could have made over $264,000 per year on its “product.”

Model 2: Direct Supply

CMP says Planned Parenthood’s second profit model is to directly supply body parts to local biotech companies or university laboratories. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, they say, has been using this model for years. Although Planned Parenthood may incur more actual costs, the middle man is eliminated and the clinic can charge higher fees per fetal specimen. An earlier Planned Parenthood undercover video introduced us to Melissa Farrell, Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, who detailed the “two levels of invoicing” system that allowed her affiliate to hide what it was actually making per specimen. That’d be a $150 net profit per usable tissue specimen.

Farrell said that with a company called Amphioxus Cell Technologies “somedays we’d have as many as 6 or 10 [specimens] in a day.” Allowing eight specimens a day, CMP calculates Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast would have profited $300,000 per year.

Congressional Hearings Begin

Congressional hearings began Wednesday investigating the procurement of fetal tissue from aborted children, an investigation sparked by the Center for Medical Progress’ undercover efforts. During Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn) posed this question: “Have we reached a point in our society where there effectively is an Amazon.com for human parts, including human babies?” If the testimony of Wednesday’s witnesses, of CMP’s latest sting video, and of CMP’s white paper are any indication, the answer is a resounding, shameful “Yes.”