In what appears to be the next installment of the Planned Parenthood controversy, the
Center for Medical Progress has released an interview with a former technician who claims that the harvesting of fetal body parts was often undertaken without the knowledge or consent of the pregnant women.
Holly O'Donnell, a former blood and tissue procurement technician, worked for StemExpress, a company that partners with Planned Parenthood to purchase aborted fetal parts and resells them for scientific experimentation.
O'Donnell said that the pressure from her employer to harvest organs was not an "option" but a "demand," and that technicians at Planned Parenthood would often forgo consulting mothers in cases when parts were in high demand.
"If there was a higher gestation, and the technicians needed it, there were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don't know. And there's no way they would know."
The testimony contradicts assertions by Planned Parenthood that its procedures were always performed with the full knowledge and consent of pregnant women, in keeping with federal law.
O'Donnell described the abortion clinics as "morbid" environments that "really wore me down."
"You could hear screaming, you could hear crying," from inside the clinics, she said.
O'Donnell added that Planned Parenthood had a sophisticated system for securing fetal body parts, often giving StemExpress advance notice of busy abortion days, and in some cases notifying it when women were there for simple pregnancy tests.
"They give you a sheet, and it's everybody for that day, who's coming in for an ultrasound, who's coming in for an abortion, medical or a late-term abortion," O'Donnell said.
"Some women come in, they do a test, and you find out they're pregnant… then you can consent them. Pregnancy tests are potential specimens," she said. "So it's just taking advantage of opportunities."
She said there were times when she was concerned about the ethics of pushing for consent from women in distress but that staff at Planned Parenthood did not have any qualms.
In one case, she refused to push for consent from a patient who was physically ill and vomiting from abortion medications. However, the following day, other technicians started the process of taking blood samples and harvesting the fetus without the mother's knowledge.
"The women I worked for were … cold. They don't care," O'Donnell said. "They just wanted their money. They didn't care that a girl was throwing up in the trash can, and crying … and even, there were times when the patients would ask me, they would come in and be crying and say, 'Should I do this? Should I be doing this?'"
"Experiences like Holly O'Donnell's show that Planned Parenthood's abortion and baby parts business is not a safe place where vulnerable women can be cared for, but a harvesting ground for salable human 'product,'" said CMP head David Daleiden.
"Taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood's barbaric abortion business should be revoked immediately, and law enforcement and other elected officials must act decisively to determine the full extent of Planned Parenthood's offensive practices and hold them accountable to the law."
The Center for Medical Progress has released
five undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the harvesting and sale of fetal body parts.
Daleiden has previously said that his organization has 300 hours of undercover video gathered during a 20-month investigation into how
Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of the fetuses it aborts.
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