StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer says that it isn’t easy keeping up with the demand for fetal organs procured from abortions — she could use “another 50 livers a week” — which is one reason she relies on Planned Parenthood.
“I mean, Planned Parenthood has volume, you know, because they’re a volume institution,” says Ms. Dyer in an undercover video released the same day Planned Parenthood upped the ante on its side of the issue by suing Louisiana for cutting off its funding.
Ms. Dyer’s comments appear in the latest footage released by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress, along with scenes of her assuring undercover investigators over lunch at a restaurant that she can meet their needs for fetal tissue, given that she contracts with nearly 100 abortion clinics.
“So it’s a lot on volume. And we still need more,” says Ms. Dyer, adding, “I don’t think you’re going to hit a capacity with us any time in the next 10 years.”
David Daleiden, the project lead for CMP’s Human Capital investigation, called Tuesday for Congress and law enforcement to “immediately seize all fetal tissue files from StemExpress and all communications and contracts with Planned Parenthood.”
SEE ALSO: Planned Parenthood asks court to block Louisiana’s defunding effort
StemExpress is a for-profit company whose brochures to abortion clinics, including those operated by Planned Parenthood, advertise the “fiscal rewards” and “financial profits” of fetal tissue transactions.
Federal law prohibits profiting from the sale of fetal tissue from abortions, although there is an exception for costs related to storage, transportation and other expenses.
“StemExpress is the ’weakest link’ that unravels Planned Parenthood’s baby parts chain — they readily admit the profit motive that Planned Parenthood and their proxies have in supplying aborted baby parts,” said Mr. Daleiden in a statement.
Critics counter that the videos are designed to stir outrage without showing actual violations of federal and state law governing fetal tissue donations for research.
The company released a statement blasting the “heavily edited, highly-deceptive videos targeting StemExpress,” noting that it has filed a criminal complaint against the center alleging that the recordings were obtained illegally.
StemExpress also accused CMP of mischaracterizing Ms. Dyer’s comment about an “intact case.” The center says an “intact case” refers to an intact abortion with a whole fetus, but the company argued that Ms. Dyer was referring solely to “intact livers.”
SEE ALSO: Planned Parenthood videos energize pro-life movement, fuel protests nationwide
“Consistent with the company’s prior public statements, StemExpress has never requested, received or provided to a researcher an ’intact fetus,’” Ms. Dyer said in a statement.
“My use of the term ’intact cases’ is a medical term of art that refers solely to ’intact livers,’ as there was absolutely no mention of ’intact fetuses’ at any point in over two hours of illegally recorded video,” she said.
Ms. Dyer added that “CMP’s and Daleiden’s continued lies reflect a sad attempt to malign StemExpress and me personally.”
The latest footage — the eighth full-length video since July 14 — shifts attention from officials at Planned Parenthood to the bioservice industry that acts as a middleman between the abortion clinics and the medical laboratories that purchase the tissue for research purposes.
Ms. Dyer, who heads the company based in Placerville, California, said in the video she’s seen doctors mistakenly provide blood clots rather than a liver. She also says that “yeast contamination” can be a problem at some clinics.
Over the lunch and wine, she laughs as she describes how those working in research labs that purchase fetal tissue are startled to receive fetal tissue that looks like body parts.
“Tell the lab it’s coming! So they don’t open the box and go, ’Oh God!’” Ms. Dyer says jokingly. “So, yeah, whereas many of the academic labs cannot fly like that, they’re not capable.
“It’s almost like they don’t want to know where it comes from,” she says in the footage. “Where they’re like, ’We need limbs, but no hands and feet need to be attached.’ And you’re like [t]hey want you to take it all off, like, make it so that we don’t know what it is.”
Ms. Dyer added that some of the lab techs “freak out and have meltdowns.”
“And I think, quite frankly, that’s why a lot of researchers ultimately, some of them, get into a lot of other things,” she said. “They want to look at bone marrow, they want to look at adipose — they want to look at, you know, adult human, kind of adult-based sampling. Because they want to get away from having to publish a paper that says they derived this from fetal tissue.”
The videos have prompted five states to take steps to defund Planned Parenthood affiliates, but the 99-year-old organization is fighting back.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and three clients asked a federal judge Tuesday to grant a preliminary injunction to halt the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals’ move to terminate the contract, which is expected to take effect Sept. 2, and which Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican presidential hopeful, has touted on the campaign trail.
The department announced Aug. 3 that it would cancel its nearly $300,000 contract, but Planned Parenthood argues that the cancellation violates federal Medicaid law by preventing its clients “from receiving services from the qualified, willing provider of their choice.”
“When Governor Jindal and other politicians try to cut Planned Parenthood’s funding to score political points, what they’re actually doing is ensuring that some women’s cancer will get worse before it’s caught and that HIV and other infections will spread,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood for America, in a statement.
Jindal spokesman Mike Reed said the state health department is well within its rights to cancel the contract.
“Planned Parenthood is flailing,” Mr. Reed said in an email. “This lawsuit is without merit, and the state will aggressively defend our right to cancel the contract.”
Other states have launched investigations into Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue donation program, but most have concluded quickly that the program does not operate in their states.
Planned Parenthood officials have said that the procuring of fetal tissue from donors at abortion clinics only occurs in a handful of states.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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