The District Attorney’s Office of Orange County, California, has filed a lawsuit accusing two medical firms with ties to Planned Parenthood of profiting illicitly from the sale of human body parts from abortions.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday names DaVinci Biosciences and sister company DV Biologics, both of whom were mentioned in the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) undercover video investigation accusing the nation’s largest abortion provider of profiting from the sale of human body parts from abortions. Planned Parenthood has denied the allegation.
District Attorney Tony Rackauckus said at a Wednesday press conference that the legal action was motivated by neither political nor moral questions surrounding the issue of abortion.
“This case is not about whether it should be lawful to sell fetal parts or whether fetal tissue research is ethical or legal,” Mr. Rackauckus said. “This lawsuit is aimed at taking the profit out of selling body parts.”
The lawsuit alleges the companies impermissibly profited from at least 500 transactions between 2012 and 2015, overcharging for shipping and processing while generating $1.5 million in revenue directly from the sale of fetal tissue between 2013 and 2015.
DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics were two fetal tissue procurement firms spotlighted by the CMP in its investigation into the trade of human body parts from abortions.
David Daleiden, lead investigator at the CMP, characterized the firms as Planned Parenthood’s “business partners” in the market for fetal tissue.
“For eight years, Planned Parenthood supplied aborted baby hearts, lungs, brains, and intestines to DV Biologics, which DV Biologics then resold for profit,” Mr. Daleiden said in a statement. “In exchange for merely providing access to aborted baby body parts, Planned Parenthood received kickback contributions from DaVinci Biosciences over the course of their eight-year contract.
“Planned Parenthood is not above the law, and law enforcement and elected representatives everywhere must now hold Planned Parenthood accountable for their barbaric profiteering off of pregnant women and the body parts of their aborted children,” he said.
The Orange County lawsuit is the latest repercussion of the CMP investigation, which sparked a movement to defund Planned Parenthood at the federal and state levels.
Kristina Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, commended Mr. Rackauckus for taking action in the aftermath of the video series.
She expressed optimism that “this lawsuit is the beginning of the unraveling of the entire for-profit fetal tissue industry” in which Planned Parenthood is complicit.
“If a California District Attorney can file suit for illegally profiting off of baby body parts, there’s no excuse for law enforcement in other parts of the country not to do their jobs and put a stop to this criminal activity,” Ms. Hawkins said in a statement.
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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