Unsealed Invoices in Daleiden Case Show Planned Parenthood Billed Company $25K for Fetal Tissue

“When abortion businesses can make $25,000 a quarter selling baby body parts, it is long past time for the Department of Justice to do its job and hold them accountable.”

(photo: Thomas More Society website)

In a recent development in the legal battle between undercover investigator and pro-life advocate David Daleiden and Planned Parenthood, Judge William Orrick unsealed invoices from 2012 showing that Planned Parenthood Mar Monte billed fetal tissue procurement company StemExpress $24,940 over the course of three months for aborted baby organs and maternal blood.

A 2010 one-year, renewable contract between Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and StemExpress stated that a “fetal organ” means “the human kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas, bone marrow, cornea, eye, bone, and skin or any supbart thereof…as from a fetus.” POC or “product of conception” was defined as “any fetal organ or other fetal or placental material taken from the human uterus during an abortion.” The agreement stipulated $55 per “POC determined in the clinic to be usable” and $10 per maternal blood sample.

The three invoices, dated August and September 2012, feature line items like “65 POCs x $55.00 = $3575.00” and “63 bloods x $10 = $630.00.”

Notably, the invoices detail the costs of the fetal organs themselves and contain no mention of the “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue,” which are permitted under the 1993 law banning “any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.”

This claim of “reasonable payment” or reimbursement for the costs associated with transportation, etc. was Planned Parenthood’s line of defense when Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress initially released its series of undercover videos in 2015 which appeared to show Planned Parenthood employees involved in fetal tissue trafficking. However, the nation’s largest abortion provider did end its practice of receiving any reimbursement for fetal-tissue donation in response to the public outcry over the footage.

In a statement Tuesday, Daleiden emphasized that “Planned Parenthood’s monthly invoices of fetal body parts show zero ‘reimbursements' for shipping or packaging. They show Planned Parenthood selling baby body parts based on the number of specimens ‘determined in the clinic to be usable,’ per contract with StemExpress. Planned Parenthood’s contracts and invoices are proof positive that their payments were tied solely to the marketability of aborted baby body parts.”

“Tying payments to marketable body parts in a quid pro quo is exactly the kind of criminal ‘valuable consideration’ that federal law forbids,” Daleiden continued. “The Department of Justice forcefully prosecutes parties who sell endangered animal body parts for far less than the amount of money reflected in these invoices. When abortion businesses can make $25,000 a quarter selling baby body parts, it is long past time for the Department of Justice to do its job and hold them accountable.”

In December 2017, the Department of Justice requested documents “related to a Senate committee’s report on the transfer of fetal tissue by abortion provider Planned Parenthood,” for investigative purposes but have not yet taken any public action on the matter.

The newly unsealed invoices were initially included as evidence both to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel in 2016, and in a 2017 lawsuit against Daleiden brought by Planned Parenthood. Judge Orrick, who is presiding over that lawsuit as well as a defamation lawsuit Daleiden brought against former Planned Parenthood Dr. Savita Ginde, unsealed the full and redacted invoices for the first time April 8.

Daleiden and his legal team are currently occupied with the civil and criminal cases against him. Planned Parenthood was awarded over $2 million in November in a ruling in the civil suit after the jury determined that Daleiden owed damages for trespass, fraud, breach of contract and illegal recording. Daleiden’s legal team will appeal that ruling.

As for the criminal case, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite’s dismissed five of the counts against Daleiden of recording people without permission. The court found in December that “as to each of these counts that there is an absence of probable cause to establish that these conversations were ‘confidential communications’ as defined by the statute,” in reference to a statute that prohibits the recording of a confidential communication without the consent of the other person.

“There's still a handful of charges that remain, we're going to try to get those tossed out as well, probably on appeal, but the case is falling apart,” Daleiden told the Register at the March for Life in January. “The central tenets of what Planned Parenthood and their allies were contending has been ruled false by a judge already.”