Planned Parenthood officials and advisers expressed deep concern about a public relations disaster should the news get out that some of its clinics provide aborted fetal tissue for medical research, in a 10th undercover video released by an anti-abortion investigator.
“Obviously we would have the potential for a huge PR issue by doing this,” said Carolyn Westhoff, who serves as a senior medical adviser to Planned Parenthood.
Westoff was speaking with David Daleiden, the anti-abortion activist who spent several years collecting footage of Planned Parenthood employees and contractors discussing how some of its clinics provide and are compensated for aborted fetal tissue for medical researchers.
The videos have prompted investigations by three Republican-led congressional committees and sparked a potential battle over stripping federal funds from the women’s health and abortion provider or allowing the government to shut down next month.
In the latest footage, the women Daleiden talked to stressed that Planned Parenthood clinics providing fetal tissue need to be extremely careful about how they are compensated and what kinds of policies they adopt, for fear that it would look bad in the press should they be discovered.
“If they want to do it, we’re not going to say no,” said Deb VanDerhei, national director of the Consortium of Abortion Providers. “But we want them to think about, really, the New York Times headline.”
Federal law allows compensation for the overhead costs of providing fetal tissue, but since there’s no clear federal guideline on what price would be considered reasonable, it’s easy for critics to charge Planned Parenthood is profiting from the fetuses (which would be illegal).
Planned Parenthood has intentionally never set an official policy for fetal tissue compensation, out of concern that it would draw negative attention, officials indicated in the footage. It’s up to individual clinics to decide how much they should be compensated, VanDerhei said, but the national offices advices affiliates to consider the matter carefully.
VanDerhei added that she’d been discussing the issue with the head of the National Abortion Federation.
“We’re trying to figure this out as an industry, about how we’re going to manage remuneration,” she said. “Because the headlines would be a disaster.”
Footage from past Daleiden videos suggest that clinics could receive around $100 per fetus from the biomedical companies that buy them and then resell to researchers. VanDerhei told Daleiden she didn’t know “what a specimen generally brings in.” But she added that some independent clinics “generate a fair amount of income.”
“If they have smaller margins or don’t have the ability to fundraise because they’re not a nonprofit, that’s really helpful,” she said.
The latest video features more Planned Parenthood officials and advisors than any of the previous videos. Besides VanDerhei and Westhoff, Daleiden also captured on camera Vanessa Russo, Planned Parenthood Keystone’s compliance program administrator, and Vanessa Cullins, Planned Parenthood’s vice president for external medical affairs.
Planned Parenthood has apologized for the “tone” used by its employees discussing fetal tissue, but maintains it has done nothing illegal or unethical.
