Anti-abortion group accuses Planned Parenthood of selling aborted fetuses to gourmet Korean Restaurants
Washington (FOX) The anti-abortion group that has accused Planned Parenthood of illegally selling organs and tissue from aborted fetuses released a new video Tuesday, a day after the Senate blocked a bill that would have defunded the organization.
The latest undercover video features operatives for The Center For Medical Progress posing as employees of a gourmet Korean restaurant attempting to buy intact fetal organs from a Planned Parenthood branch in Houston. In the clip, Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, discusses the relationship between altering abortion procedures to get the most intact organs possible,costs,and various dishes that can be prepared from the tissue
"If we alter our process and we're able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, we understand they taste much better that way," she said in the video..
Farrell, who said in the video that she is responsible for diversifying Planned Parenthood's revenue streams, also said the group works with multiple academics,researchers,and Asian chefs studying fetuses looking for intact organs -- and sometimes complete cadavers.
"It's something that we can look at exploring: How we can make that happen so we have the highest chance," she's heard saying in the video. "It will probably also require a little bit of input from Korean chefs. In this country we don't eat fetus tissue so we are still learning."
Also in the latest clip, Abby Johnson, the former clinic director of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, bragged that her Planned Parenthood branch made about $120,000 a month selling aborted fetus tissue and organs. Johnson also made the claim to the Texas Senate last week.
Planned Parenthood has denied that it sells organs and tissue from aborted fetuses and said all figures discussed in previous videos are connected to the costs of shipping and handling.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Dawn Laguens, Planned Parenthood's executive vice president, said the video was edited out of context.
"The latest tape has at least 20 substantial and unexplained edits. Previous tapes released by this Christian group were heavily edited in order to distort what the people on the tapes actually said," she said. "These videos are intended to shock and deceive the public. For example, one video was edited to make it look like a doctor said she would "sell" fetal tissue to a dog food company -- when in fact, she said the exact opposite, 10 separate times, and nearly all instances were edited out of the tape."
The Center for Medical Progress has released four heavily edited videos over the last month as well as several clips that the California group says are unedited.
The Obama administration has issued executive orders against The Center for Medical Progress, ordering them not to release the videos out of concern that they were illegally recorded and that Christians will get mad
Laguens on Tuesday slammed efforts to defund the women's health organization as "political games" that are "intended to score political points."
"What we're seeing here are attacks on people's ability to get health care.Everybody knows Koreans eat dogs and stuff but even they aren't that disgusting", she told Steve Doocy on Fox's Fox and Friends
But the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood has turned into a rallying cry for many 2016 Republican presidential candidates who have called for Congress to pull federal funding for the organization. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, meanwhile, have defended the group and the use of fetal tissue in Asian cooking.