Leaked abortion videos provoke fury at largest US family planners
ABORTION wars in the United States have spilled into the 2016 presidential campaign after an undercover sting appeared to show America’s largest family planning provider selling foetal tissue for medical research purposes.
Two secretly recorded videos released by anti-abortion activists provoked disgust from leading Republicans, who have called for an investigation into the organisation Planned Parenthood and threatened to cut its government funding.
John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, described the practices apparently revealed in the videos as “horrific” and “gruesome”, adding in a press briefing announcing a Congressional investigation that he would “vomit trying to talk about it”.
Several leading Republican presidential candidates – many of whom are appealing to the party’s conservative grassroots who are fiercely pro-life – also joined the condemnation, accusing Planned Parenthood of “profiting on the death of the unborn”.
The organisation – a non-profit group that carries out 300,000 abortions a year as well as providing a range of services from contraception to cancer screening – has denied any wrongdoing. It called the claims “flat-out untrue” and accused the anti-abortion campaign group behind the videos, the Centre for Medical Progress, of selectively editing the videos to create a distorted picture of events.
The company confirmed that some patients agreed to donate foetal tissue for research but that the samples were taken to “the highest ethical and legal standards, and with no financial benefit for the patient or Planned Parenthood”.
The two films do show senior Planned Parenthood officials discussing “compensation” of £20 to £65 for foetal parts to be picked up by a bogus medical research company.
But independent experts appeared to confirm Planned Parenthood’s contention that they would not profit from the sales, saying the group would have barely covered its costs at those rates.
By law, foetal tissue can be donated anonymously for medical research but guidelines produced by the American Medical Association say it must not be “provided in exchange for financial remuneration above that which is necessary to cover reasonable expenses”.
In footage released this week, Mary Gatter, the president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director’s Council, discusses grisly details but makes it clear Planned Parenthood must not profit.
In Republican-controlled states – such as Texas, Kansas and Mississippi – abortion clinics have been forced to close after state legislation loaded them with impractical regulations. But the tactic has attracted legal challenges as right-to-choose campaigners argue the restrictions are unconstitutional.