In a letter released on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wrote that the group and its affiliates would no longer accept money to pay for costs associated with procuring fetal tissue from abortions.
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But in light of the controversy stirred up by the videos, the decision to stop payments of any kind for fetal tissue takes away ammunition from critics who have been calling on the government to defund the organization.
The backlash was mostly due to the misconception that the organization was profiting off of its clients’ aborted foetuses, when in reality they were simply abiding by a law passed by Congress in 1993 that allows women who get abortions to donate the fetal tissue for use in scientific research, as per their discretion.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Planned Parenthood is quick to point out reimbursements for the cost of providing fetal tissue are legal.
Plannned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, announced the change in policy in a letter to the National Institutes of Health. “We are really taking away the cover they hide behind in going after Planned Parenthood and other women’s health providers”.
In July, an anti-abortion group released a series of secretly filmed videos, which claimed that Planned Parenthood employees “harvested organs” and “sold baby parts”.
The Center for Medical Progress called Planned Parenthood’s policy change a “PR stunt” that is essentially an admission of guilt.
Anti-abortion activists have given Congress lengthy, unedited videos they recorded showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing their retrieval of fetal tissue, a Republican House committee chairman said Wednesday.
According to 2013 data, the latest available, Planned Parenthood says abortions represent 3 percent of the total services its facilities provide.
Richards recommended the NIH convene an “expert independent panel” to review the practice of fetal-tissue procurement, noting that “there is now proposed federal and state legislation to ban fetal-tissue donation for research”.
In 10 undercover videos, Planned Parenthood is accused by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress for profiting off their donation program. While Planned Parenthood won’t provide specific figures for how much its giving up in fees, the group maintains it’s a small number. She said the campaign did not taste success, but it is still not over.
Chaffetz argued that his comments shouldn’t have been taken as “some grand conclusion” about every facet of the Planned Parenthood investigation, since his particular committee hearing was “narrowly focused” on Planned Parenthood’s finances, not other issues like fetal tissue research.
Representative Diane Black, a Republican from Tennessee, who helped lead the defunding effort, said the decision not to accept reimbursement was “motivated by optics”.
Chaffetz’s committee has so far reviewed 22,000 pages of documents from Planned Parenthood, the group said, and has not found any wrongdoing.
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A few experts are highlighting the fact that abortion and the Planned Parenthood video leaks were ignored in the Democratic debate that took place last Thursday.
