The Center for Medical Progress has released another video of a former StemExpress employee discussing the harvesting of aborted fetal body parts at Planned Parenthood clinics.
In the video, episode 2 of its “Human Capital” series, Holly O’Donnell, a former blood and tissue procurement technician for StemExpress, criticized Planned Parenthood, saying, “I’m not going to tell a girl to kill her baby so I can get money. And that’s what this company does. Straight up, that’s what this company does.”
O’Donnell would go to Planned Parenthood clinics to collect the tissue, which they referred to as the “products of conception.”
She said that her StemExpress supervisors told her that approaching patients in the Planned Parenthood clinic about donating their tissue is “not an option, it’s a demand.”
“Pregnancy tests are potential pregnancies, therefore potential specimens. So it’s just taking advantage of the opportunities,” O’Donnell said.
She said that fetal organs were sometimes obtained without the mother’s consent.
“If there was a higher gestation, and the technicians needed it, there were times when they would just take what they wanted,” O’Donnell said. “And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
O’Donnell said that after one woman didn’t give her consent, her tissue was nevertheless collected by another staffer.
“What did you say to her to get that blood?” O’Donnell asked the staffer.
“Nothing,” the staffer replied.
Under federal law, patients must consent in order to donate their fetal tissue.
O’Donnell said that a failure to obtain tissue was viewed as a missed opportunity.
“There’s a reason why they keep journals in the recovery room,” O’Donnell said. “If abortion was a good thing, there wouldn’t be so much emotional damage from it. End of story.”
Planned Parenthood spokespersons have called the Center for Medical Progress videos “heavily edited” and the allegations against them a “manufactured controversy.” They have denied that they profit from their tissue donation program.
The Center for Medical Progress has made the full, unedited videos of its meetings with Planned Parenthood executives available on YouTube.
The Center for Medical Progress’ David Daleiden, who led the project, said in a statement:
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 saleable human ‘product.’ 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.
In a statement provided to The Daily Signal, a spokesperson for StemExpress said:
StemExpress unequivocally denies the allegations made by Holly O’Donnell and the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), reaffirming that it has never obtained blood or tissue samples from a patient without first obtaining consent. Ensuring that patients have provided consent for blood or tissue donation to support medical research, education, or treatments is a threshold issue that is non-negotiable for StemExpress. Like all of their previous material, today’s video by CMP is deceptively edited and falsely worded to suggest impropriety or illegality where none exists. CMP’s continued efforts to malign StemExpress—a life sciences company that predominantly supplies adult cells, blood and tissue to the nation’s leading researchers—will only serve to slow the pace of life-saving medical research aimed at curing disease and extending quality of life for millions of Americans.
This post has been updated to include a response from StemExpress, who returned our request for comment after this article’s publication.
