WASHINGTON — While criticizing opponents for seeking to end abortion, the president of Planned Parenthood wrote in a letter this week that the organization will stop receiving payments for the body parts of aborted babies in the midst of a Congressional investigation into its practices.
In writing to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, Cecile Richards continued to assert that Planned Parenthood has committed no wrong in its partnerships with scientific companies that provide reimbursement for the organs of aborted children.
“These false claims are being used to advance politically motivated legislation in Congress and in state legislatures across the country to deny women access to basic health care and to impose medically unnecessary restrictions on safe and legal abortion,” she wrote.
“The real goal of these extremists has nothing to do with our fetal tissue donation compliance process but is instead to ban abortion in the U.S. and block women from getting any health care from Planned Parenthood,” Richards stated.
She said that while she believes Planned Parenthood has “exceeded” legal requirements regarding its “fetal tissue donation” program, the organization has decided to no longer receive payments for the body parts of the aborted babies.
“Now we’re going even further in order to take away any basis for attacking Planned Parenthood to advance an anti-abortion political agenda,” Richards outlined. “[O]ur decision not to take any reimbursement for expenses should not be interpreted as a suggestion that anyone else should not take reimbursement or that the law in this area isn’t strong.”
But the Center for Medical Progress, which has released nearly a dozen undercover videos surrounding the abortion giant’s harvesting and sale of aborted children, says that Richards’ move actually implies the acknowledgment of wrongdoing.
“For three months, Planned Parenthood has tried to pass off its baby-parts-for-money scheme as totally legitimate. Today, Planned Parenthood’s latest PR stunt of so-called ‘policy’ change is an admission of guilt,” wrote project director David Daleiden in a statement.
“If the money Planned Parenthood has been receiving for baby body parts were truly legitimate ‘reimbursement,’ why cancel it?” he asked. “This proves what CMP has been saying all along—Planned Parenthood incurs no actual costs, and the payments for harvested fetal parts have always been an extra profit margin.”
Daleiden said that the change does not provide resolution and warrants continued investigation by Congress.
“Without releasing the text of the alleged new ‘policy’ and the exact model from the their Washington affiliate, Planned Parenthood’s stunt today tells us nothing,” he stated. “This only raises more serious questions about what Planned Parenthood leadership has been allowing its clinics to do with money and baby parts, and intensifies the need for Congress to pursue full auditing and oversight of Planned Parenthood’s unaccountable criminal enterprise of baby parts trafficking.”
Some believe that financial retribution is beside the point as Planned Parenthood should not murder unborn children in the first place.
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