by Joshua Pinho
This morning, the Center for Medical Progress released a fourth video of their sting investigation into Planned Parenthood. In the newest video, which can be viewed below, Dr. Savita Ginde, Vice President and Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, can be seen negotiating the sale of body parts as well as discussing ways to avoid public relations or legal fallout:
In fact, in this new video, Dr. Ginde actually provides a tour of the clinic’s laboratory in which Ginde and a medical assistant dissect a fetus in order to identify intact parts and continue to haggle over the price-per-specimen. When asked by the buyer whether Dr. Ginde would prefer compensation that is specific to the individual specimen, Ginde replies: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”
Dr. Ginde also expresses concern that if their practices came to light, all of the Planned Parenthoods that are participating would have to be “on the same page.”
Ginde: We have to be, um, I think we have to be coordinated with each other.
Buyer: To keep the stories straight.
Ginde: Yeah. Well, and to make sure we’re all saying the same thing and that the CEOs are saying the same thing.
The conversation then turns to the legal concerns with the purchase of the body parts and tissue:
Buyer: I want to come in and pay you top dollar because I know what you’re going to be facing, and I want to make sure our suppliers are happy, so compensation, okay, your cost is negligent. [sic] So it could look like we’re paying you for specimens.
Ginde: Right.
Buyer: So let’s talk about it correctly.
Ginde: Mhm.
Buyer: We all know that, yes, that’s what we’re doing.
Ginde: So processing and time, and yeah.
Buyer: Exactly. So yes, I am paying you, but how we’re talking about it out there in the ‘public square.’
Further in the conversation, Dr. Ginde brings up concerns with how the contracts are drawn up because, “[p]utting it under ‘research’ gives [Planned Parenthood] a little bit of an overhang over the whole thing.” The buyer responds that it would “make it look better,” and Ginde agrees, stating that “in public it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein than. . . business venture.”
It seems that as things continue to get worse for Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards can tell the press all she’d like that Planned Parenthood isn’t benefiting from these practices. But when her own doctors admit that the costs involved are negligible, and that they would like to “see how much [they] can get out of it,” it paints a very different picture than their official story.
Joshua Pinho works for American Principles in Action.
Joshua Pinho is a Digital Communications Associate for the American Principles Project.