“This will give me something to strive for”, Dermish adds in the video.
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Buyer: Good. I was just curious what we might be working with. But CMP Project Lead David Daleiden says more investigations are needed. Selling fetal tissue is a felony.
As the Center for Medical Progress reports, such a practice bears striking resemblance to the illegal practice of partial birth abortions. The payments were for contraceptives for low-income women. PPSE and other affiliates reported an increase in death threats and incidents of harassment following the release of the videos, according to Thompson’s order.
The governor was referring to several videos released by pro-life groups this summer showing PP doctors cold-bloodledly negotiating the price of body parts taken from aborted children with biotech representatives.
When the journalist tells her that intact fetal brains are in demand, Dermish replies, “I haven’t been able to do that yet, the intact calvarium [head]”. She regrets that she has not yet mastered the technique. However, she said she would continue trying to make an intact extraction.
A department spokeswoman said she could provide little information about the inspections, but confirmed regulators made a similar visit to the Bellevue clinic. “The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000”.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens responded that “it is completely outrageous that Texas officials are using these thoroughly discredited, fraudulent videos to cut women off from preventive health care”, and vowed that Planned Parenthood would “fight back against this outrageous, malicious, political attack in Texas with everything we’ve got”. She filed suit against her former employer over the fraud in 2012.
Sometimes the procedures don’t go as planned and they have to improvise, Dermish explained.
The video then shows a graphic showing how the procedure described by Dermish is “identical” to the partial-birth abortion procedure. However, officials have been quick to try to undo the public relations damage caused by CMP.
The Planned Parenthood facility where Dermish works does not harvest fetal tissue for scientific experimentation. Such procedure is illegal under both state and federal law.
Abbott, now the state’s governor, said that Planned Parenthood’s “barbaric practice” of harvesting babies for research must end.
“I don’t believe Planned Parenthood could be what it is today without the millions of dollars they get from the federal and state government”, Lynn Mills, director of Pro-Life Detroit, said.
But even so, I anxious that pro-lifers had over-estimated what the Center for Medical Progress had accomplished.
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The video released Tuesday reportedly shows undercover antiabortion activists approaching Amna Dermish, a doctor at Planned Parenthood’s Austin abortion clinic, and another staffer with Whole Woman’s Health at a national conference for abortion providers last October.
