Planned Parenthood: claims director offered to sell fetal body parts are ‘false’

Planned Parenthood blamed the video on a group ‘established for the purpose of damaging’ their reputation. Photograph: Whitney Curtis for the Guardian

Planned Parenthood’s US headquarters has denied that an eight-minute undercover video shows the abortion provider’s medical director offering to sell fetal body parts to a tissue procurement company, as a pro-life group has claimed.

“In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, such as treatments and cures for serious diseases. Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different,” Planned Parenthood’s vice president for communications, Eric Ferrero, said in a statement.

“There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood,” the statement said. “In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.”

In the video, which was taken via hidden camera by activist group the Center for Medical Progress, Planned Parenthood’s national senior director of medical services Deborah Nucatola can be seen eating a meal and discussing fetal tissue donation using medical terminology.

“Every provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue and they absolutely want to accommodate them,” said Nucatola. “They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘This clinic is selling tissue, this clinic is making money off of this,’” she said in the clip.

Asked about the cost of each specimen, Nucatola said: “You know, I would throw a number out, I would say it’s probably anywhere from $30 to $100 depending on the facility and what’s involved.”

Planned Parenthood called the allegation “false” and said such claims have been “put forth by opponents of abortion services for decades”.

The organization blamed the video on a “well funded group established for the purpose of damaging” the abortion provider’s reputation.

The Center for Medical Progress bills itself as a “group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring ... medical ethics”. The undercover video of the Planned Parenthood doctor appears to be the organization’s only publication.