A doctor for a Planned Parenthood tissue harvesting partner appears to admit a baby’s “heart actually is still beating” at times following abortions and an ex-procurement tech gives a first-person account of watching a baby’s heart beat before she dissects its brain in the latest release from an anti-abortion group.
The allegations are part of a new video from the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion activist group that has released a series of undercover and first-person interview videos focusing on Planned Parenthood and its partners.
Wednesday’s 11-minute, edited release features first-person interviews with Holly O’Donnell, a former procurement technician for StemExpress, a tissue harvesting company that worked with Planned Parenthood. It also features clips from previous CMP releases and new undercover audio and video.
CMP has been the target of two restraining orders by federal judges – including one from StemExpress – banning them from releasing some of their recordings. But the Los Angeles Superior Court order only bars CMP from releasing video of three StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May. Wednesday’s video does not appear to violate that limited order.
“So you know there are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating”
– Dr. Ben Van Handel
A recorded conversation heard during the new video features a voice identified as belonging to Dr. Ben Van Handel, the executive director of Novogenix Laboratories, LLC. Novogenix provides researchers with “human primary tissue-specific stem cells” according to its website.
“So you know there are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating,” Handel tells an undercover CMP investigator during the conversation.
O’Donnell, who has been featured in previous videos, describes a co-worker showing her a beating heart in an aborted baby.
“‘Hey Holly, come over here, I want you to see something kinda cool. It’s kinda neat,’” O’Donnell said the coworker told her. “So I’m over here, and the moment I see it I’m just flabbergasted. This is the most gestated fetus and the closest thing to a baby that I’ve seen. And she’s like, ‘Okay I want to show you something.’ And she has one of her instruments and she just taps the heart and it starts beating and I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus and its heart is beating and I don’t know what to think.”
Following the demonstration, O’Donnell said she and the co-worker cut the face of the baby open and dissected its brain.
“It had a face,” O’Donnell said. “It wasn’t completely torn up. And its nose was very pronounced. It had eyelids. Its mouth was pronounced.”
In one of the most disturbing portions of the video, CMP shows a clip of a baby seeming to move its arms and legs post-abortion. The clip is from the Grantham Collection and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and is not new undercover material.
Previous videos have appeared to show Planned Parenthood officials admitting the organization alters abortion procedures to procure fetal tissue, delivers intact fetuses and sells fetal tissue for profit. Each of those practices is against federal law. A video last week featured O’Donnell alleging that StemExpress sometimes did not obtain consent from mothers to use their fetal tissue, which would be a serious ethical breach if true.
Planned Parenthood has denied breaking any laws and has said payments discussed in the videos relate to reimbursement costs for procuring the tissue – which is legal.
“These extremists show a total lack of compassion and dignity for women’s most personal medical decisions,” an Aug. 4 statement from Planned Parenthood said.
“Human Capital Episode 3: Planned Parenthood’s Custom Abortions for Superior Product” is the seventh release from CMP.
The videos have brought investigations of Planned Parenthood’s policies on aborted fetuses by three Republican-led congressional committees and three states. Investigators in Florida cited four Planned Parenthood clinics for violations earlier this month.
The Senate failed to advance a Republican-led measure to halt federal aid to Planned Parenthood before its summer recess. But the issue of defunding Planned Parenthood has become a rallying cry for many groups on the right and is a top issue in the Republican primary battle.
“Exactly what is being done to obtain these intact bodies needs to be investigated,” a statement released Wednesday from pro-life group Priests for Life said. “Federal law prohibits abortion procedures that partially or fully deliver a living baby. Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell is serving life in prison because he aborted babies who were still alive when they came out of the mother’s body. If Planned Parenthood is not fully investigated and prosecuted for these offenses, then we owe Gosnell an apology.”
Well, and Gayle, never mind getting pregnant and “shaming” anyone – how about just being broke and having to worry about money for the rest of your life?
Here’s something, and it’s no lie. My 75-year-old aunt was telling me about a book directed at Catholic girls when she was young, where they were told that they shouldn’t think about what they might want to do with their lives, because they should get married and let their husbands decide that.
Well, I was an ugly girl! (If I’d ended up pregnant, the thought in everyone’s mind would have been how the poor guy managed to stick a paper bag over my head long enough to do the deed!) No man in his right mind would have wanted to marry me, unless he was blind, so it’s a good thing for me that, although ugly, there was a place in the world for smart girls.
Too bad the pretty ones couldn’t be at least a LITTLE bit smart, as you say, to get some pills.
Resistance to prevention, yes yes. That’s what’s bugging me about this whole thread. Grody abortions! Cutting off fetus parts! Plane crashes should be illegal!
How about this, we do some Googling and find an organization that DOESN’T provide abortions, but provides contraceptives. Know of any? Would that make everyone happy?
Bill Clinton said abortion should be rare and safe. Ideally it should. Even though legal, it remains a dirty business and it always will be, because killing innocent things day after day warps people. I think this is the point of this thread. The whole issue of refusal to use birth control could be a thread for another day.
Ugly girls have a way of getting prettier at closing time.
It’s a teenage conceit to judge women on the basis of a youthful beauty.
Some girls just take a few more years to become beautiful women.
And some dreamboats actually become shipwrecks quite early.
Did you guys ever see my comment of big nose girls? They are hot. I mean, I can look at a cute girl with a tiny nose but for real hots, a girl with a big honker is awesome (no trannies, please).
I don’t buy this story about handsome guys with ugly girls. Good-looking guys are queer, so your premise is faulty. But if I did buy that story, I would guess it’s because the bitch can cook. Lucky fucker.
But Gayle,
“The whole issue of refusal to use birth control could be a thread for another day.”
These should absolutely be the SAME discussion. If you want to address the former in an effective way, you must address the latter first. You really want to get rid of abortion? Are you really and truly outraged by whatever you saw in that video, to the point where you are willing to effectively address the problem? Not just pass a law, or something else that won’t work, but really truly stop it from happening? Then “the issue of refusal to use birth control” is your project. Get to work.
This one is for El Corizo:
Sorry, I meant CHorizo – I spelled it wrong. I probably called you a guinea pig or something instead of a sausage.
Good for you Pirate Jo, prevention IS the solution but these Bible Thumpers and Catholics are screwed up in the head. They WANT the babies but don’t want to SUPPORT them! And any Woman that supports this point of view, IMO, is a traitor to her own gender.
Westcoast, nice dodge again. DId you watch the videos? You and PJ are making total assholes of yourselves. The thread (or the videos) isn’t about contraception. It’s not even about abortion. It’s about sub-humans who have turned aborted babies into a cash cow, and slice and dice them without a shred of remorse. Shut Planned parenthood down. Put these scumbags in prison, right next to kermit gosnell. Or do you like him, too
El Chorizo is a recovering bible thumper. No, we don’t want the babies. Unwanted and illegitimate babies are the result of irresponsible players. Hardly the fault of Catholic or bible thumping folks.
Starfuck, If people don’t want to watch and have the images seared into their memory, how is it a mandatory thing? That’s like insisting that people view and accept Jenner’s cross-dressing antics because there might be a test.
Can somebody ‘splain the down thumbs on my Caitlyn comment? I said Jenner can never be a real woman and at least 3 trannies got offended.
EC,, they don’t even know what they are defending. Jump up and defend baby killers and butchers without watching the films? That’s beyond stupid, and I’m a pro choice democrat.
Is the video some sort of aversion therapy? Do we really need to be ‘scared straight’ to understand your anti PP position? I believe part of the PP program was eugenics and limiting the birthrate of minorities. We want things done, we just don’t want to know how it’s done.
Since PJ is waving the prevention flag, I am with her. I don’t side with the vivisectionists who have graduated from cutting up live animals to cutting up live babies.
Then again, nobody says anything when organs are harvested from ‘brain-dead’ people.
I guess all it takes is sublimating all feelings of sympathy, empathy or humanity.
Dude, come on. WC is defending people hacking live 23 week fetuses up with scissors. Editing doesn’t change that fact. Not watching the video doesn’t change that fact. There just aren’t two sides to that.
How ugly are we talkin pirate jo? Are you short and fat and look like a troll? Is yer septum elongated and yer cheeks sunken? Are yer mammaries shriveled? Are you balding? Acne scars? I always envisioned yew in mah minds eye as Elaine from Seinfeld but with a goth sense of style, now I’m starting ter see gimley.
BW, If I didn’t recognize the reference to the bible verse, “through a glass eye gimley”, I would’ve thought you were not a church type.
Beauty is relative. In your case, more so.
Like I said, they get prettier at closing time.