Reprinted from Baptist Press (www.baptistpress.com), news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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Under state law, abortion providers must send a “representative sample of tissue” taken at the time of an abortion and send that to a pathologist for examination.
The anti-abortion-rights activist who has targeted Planned Parenthood is declaring the group’s decision to stop taking compensation for fetal tissue procurement an “admission of guilt” in response to his undercover videos.
The group maintains that the undercover videos were unfairly edited. While the group has released several hours of unedited footage online, Democrats have complained that a full copy of the video is not available.
KELLY: Well Richard, Richard, if Planned Parenthood has no problem whatsoever with the investigation, then why don’t they just welcome it?
“They traffic in human organs from non-consenting victims”, said Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), in a written statement.
Planned Parenthood is often incorrectly stigmatized as an evil abortion factory, but the fact is that without it, unsafe abortions would still continue to happen.
“Planned Parenthood’s decision is clearly an effort at damage control – to preserve its carefully cultivated (and ferociously defended) image as merely a women’s health care organization”, said by email.
Richards’ letter “amounts to an admission of guilt”, said Kellie Fiedorek, ADF litigation counsel.
Washington and California were two places where Planned Parenthood has run fetal tissue research. “The price-per-specimen approach she admitted to in her August letter to Congress is a profit-driven system, pure and simple”.
“If the money Planned Parenthood has been receiving for baby body parts were truly legitimate reimbursement, why cancel it”, asked David Deleiden. Ironically, Laguens says that since the well-publicized secret videos, more women are asking about fetal tissue donation and eager to participate, even at facilities where there are no programs set up. Planned Parenthood also denied the accusations. That Planned Parenthood does mammogram screenings and does cancer screenings? “Planned Parenthood’s stunt today tells us nothing”. Officials of the organization, one of the largest providers of reproductive healthcare in the United States, have insisted that they seek only to cover their costs in providing the tissue for medical research, which is legal.
Finally, O’Donnell pointed out that the scrutiny by House Oversight Committee is on the need of federal funding for an “organization, which is a nonprofit, but also shows according to the committee a revenue stream of about $125 million a year”.
But in a almost 40-page memorandum filed last week, the state says “termination of the four disputed contracts does not implicate any constitutionally protected activity”, and that abortion alone didn’t motivate Herbert to cut off funding. The university has said the studies are related to still births and pregnancy complications. He said the videos provided evidence of a criminal conspiracy “to sell baby parts for profit”.
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But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he lacks the votes to defund the organization while President Obama is in office.
