SoCal Lawmaker Leads Charge for Audit of Planned Parenthood

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, tomorrow will urge the state Legislature to investigate Planned Parenthood’s alleged involvement in a black market in infant organs.

“Planned Parenthood is running its own body part chop shop,” said Melendez. “The taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for this illegal activity.”

Melendez’s proposed audit of the organization, which provides abortions and other reproductive health services, is slated to be heard by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee in Sacramento. The hearing will get underway at 9:30 a.m. in the Capitol building.

According to the assemblywoman’s office, a former procurement technician for Placerville-based StemExpress, a self-identified worldwide provider of clinical specimens for research, will be among the witnesses testifying.

StemExpress has been directly implicated in the alleged harvesting of infant intestines exposed in a series of undercover videos first released in mid-July by the nonprofit Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group that targeted Planned Parenthood in its “human capital project.”

The project has resulted in a total of five investigative videos documenting instances in which Planned Parenthood doctors and executives were caught on tape allegedly detailing how aborted fetuses -- sometimes fully developed babies -- could be used to extract hearts, lungs and livers for sale.

In one video, the senior director of Planned Parenthood’s medical services branch, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, was taped allegedly telling how it’s possible to preserve and “evacuate an intact” baby skull for fetal tissue collection.

Trading in human body parts is a federal crime.

Planned Parenthood has released statements denouncing the videos as “heavily edited” and intended to “falsely portray” the organization as a baby parts broker. The group insists that its “tissue donation programs support life-saving scientific research” and are carried out with the full consent of women receiving abortions.

Bills were introduced last month in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to defund Planned Parenthood at the federal level. The Senate proposal failed to garner enough votes earlier this month, but is expected to be re-introduced this fall. A House vote is anticipated after lawmakers return from summer recess.

Several Republican presidential candidates have called for the government to divorce itself from the organization, which received more than a third of its $1.3 billion in revenue last year from federal and state sources, according to published reports.

The California Department of Public Health and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine both have relationships with Planned Parenthood.

“Planned Parenthood is subsidized with millions of taxpayers’ dollars each year and should be held accountable and defunded for involving California taxpayers in their black market human tissue schemes,” Melendez said.

--City News Service, photo courtesy of Planned Parenthood