'DEFUND 250': 10 shocking moments from the Planned Parenthood body parts scandal

On July 4, 2026, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of her founding — but unless Congress votes to continue banning federal Medicaid dollars from abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, July 4 will also be the day that America's most prolific killer of preborn children will see those taxpayer dollars once again pouring into its bank accounts.

Planned Parenthood deserves to be permanently defunded — and Live Action News' series, 'DEFUND 250,' plans to remind the public of many reasons why.

Ten years ago, undercover video footage released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) revealed that, in addition to financially profiting from aborting preborn babies, Planned Parenthood appeared to be selling the body parts of those children for additional monetary gain. Though it tried to claim the videos were heavily edited, that the body parts were mere donations, and that any money it received was to cover basic costs, the videos seemed to show the opposite.

Key Takeaways:

• Planned Parenthood was implicated in a body parts trafficking scandal by the Center for Medical Progress in a series of undercover videos.

• Planned Parenthood staff discussed on camera how a partnership between it and a (fake) tissue procurement company could be "mutually beneficial."

• Procurement company staff members discussed on camera how babies' hearts were often still beating when their organs were harvested.

• Other videos showed Planned Parenthood staff haggling over pricing, doctors admitting that babies are born alive during abortions, and that there is a demand for fetal body parts.

The Details:

CMP's undercover investigation, led by David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, exposed a hidden atrocity. As Planned Parenthood kills preborn babies, they search through the aftermath for tissue and organs that are marketable to tissue procurement companies. Some moments from the undercover videos and the subsequent legal battles were more damning than others.

1. "Its heart is beating"

In one of CMP's videos, a former blood and tissue procurement technician for StemExpress, the late Holly O'Donnell, exposed what was happening inside Planned Parenthood Mar Monte's Alameda facility in San Jose, CA. She was there to collect tissue and organs of aborted babies for StemExpress when another technician called her over to look at one of the aborted babies. O'Donnell recalled:

"And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I'm... looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don't know what to think."

She was then told to harvest the brain from the aborted baby by cutting open the child's face from the chin upward.

Testimony from Dr. Ben Van Handel, executive director of Novogenix Laboratories, which harvests organs from aborted children, supports O'Donnell's eyewitness account. He said that "there are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating."

2. "I can see hearts... that are beating independently"

A similar comment was heard during an under-oath admission from Perrin Larton, the procurement manager for Planned Parenthood's partner Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. She said some "women come in and they'll go to the OR and they're back out in three minutes and I'm going, 'What's going on?' 'Oh yeah, the fetus was already in the vaginal canal, and whenever we put her in the stirrups, it just fell out.'"

Larton said that "once every couple of months," an intact baby would be born during an abortion and then dissected in the lab for organs and tissues that had been requested by researchers. She noted that sometimes the baby still had a heartbeat.

"There are... I can see hearts that are in, not in an intact POC [product of conception, aka baby] that are beating independently," she said. This would imply that babies, born intact, had their beating hearts removed.

3. "We need limbs, but no hands and feet need to be attached"

During the undercover investigation, StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer joked and laughed about shipping the heads of aborted babies to unsuspecting lab workers. In a conversation with an undercover journalist posing as a body parts buyer, she explained that fetal heads were "the hardest thing in the world to ship" and said that researchers want "limbs" and "long bones."

Buyer: You do it as the whole calvarium [head].
SE: Yeah, that’s the easiest way. And we’ve actually had good success with that.
Buyer: Make sure the eyes are closed!
SE: Yeah! [laughter] Tell the lab it’s coming!
Buyer: Yeah.
SE: They’ll open the box, go, ”Oh God!” [laughter] So yeah, so many of the academic labs cannot fly like that, they’re not capable.
Buyer: Why is that? I don’t understand that.
SE: It’s almost like they don’t want to know where it comes from. I can see that. Where they’re like, “We need limbs, but no hands and feet need to be attached.” And you’re like, ? Or they want long bones, and they want you to take it all off, like, make it so that we don’t know what it is.

4. "We've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver..."

Planned Parenthood Federation of America's then-Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, was caught on camera discussing the sale of fetal body parts with people she thought were potential buyers. Trying to strike up a deal, she told them:

"We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact. And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex. …

So if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last step, you can evacuate an intact calvarium at the end."

She went on to describe how abortionists are careful not to crush the valuable organs, "I'd say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they'll know where they're putting their forceps."

5. Harvesting fetal body parts is "mutually beneficial" to Planned Parenthood and procurement companies

During the Planned Parenthood v. The Center for Medical Progress civil trial, employees of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast took the stand, and videos of depositions were also played.

During the video deposition for Melissa Farrell, director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, she responded to a question about an email she sent to "Robert Sarkis," who was actually Daleiden.

She wrote, "We have processes in place that will make a working relationship for a procurement project mutually beneficial." This clearly implies that it would be beneficial to Planned Parenthood to supply fetal tissue and organs to the (fake) BioMax procurement company.

6. "I want a Lamborghini"

If any portion of the undercover investigation was going to demonstrate that Planned Parenthood and its executive team financially benefited from the supposed "donations" of fetal body parts, it was this quote from Dr. Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood's Medical Director's Council and the Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley.

In a video, Gatter was seen and heard negotiating the pricing for the fetal body parts she would sell to BioMax if they struck up a deal. While she claimed she didn't want to make it appear as though Planned Parenthood was "selling tissue," she noted that "there are costs associated with the use of our space." She paused the conversation to check on what other Planned Parenthood affiliates in California were being compensated so that "if they're getting substantially more [than $100 per specimen], then we can discuss it then."

Trying to finalize a price, saying that what they had discussed was less than what other Planned Parenthood facilities were getting, she said:

"The money is not the important thing for me but it has to be big enough that it makes it worthwhile for me... We can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini."

It's clear from this conversation that Planned Parenthood wanted to make it "worthwhile" to deal in body parts.

7. There was "a demand for certain organs"

During the Planned Parenthood v. The Center for Medical Progress civil trial, Dr. Thomas Moran, Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest's associate medical director, testified that it was his understanding that there was a demand for specific organs from aborted children. He had been helping to supply fetal body parts from aborted babies to Advanced Bioscience Resources.

CMP attorneys asked him, "... as a result of abortions that would be performed there, including abortions you did, [ABR] would sometimes place a demand for certain organs, correct?"

Morgan replied, "That was certainly my understanding, yeah."

This implies that ABR was placing orders for specific organs just as StemExpress had a dropdown menu box on its website so clients could order specific human body parts from aborted babies.

8. Abortionist earned "oohs and aahs" for procuring intact babies

Dr. Leslie Drummond-Hay of Planned Parenthood Northern California took the stand during the civil trial, where she admitted to receiving support and praise for procuring intact babies for dissection.

To accomplish this feat, she simply skipped a step in the second and third trimester abortion procedures: administering digoxin to stop the fetal heart.

This would mean that these babies were potentially born alive, only to be killed after birth.

During her testimony, she said her ability to procure intact preborn children for researchers earned her “oohs and aahs” from StemExpress.

9. 'No question' babies are born alive

During a hearing in the criminal case against CMP, Dr. Forrest Smith, an abortionist for five decades, took the stand to support the pro-life undercover journalists from CMP. Under oath, Smith testified that babies are, in fact, born alive for their organs to be harvested.

Originally angry at CMP for going undercover in the abortion industry that he had worked in for so long, Smith had a change of heart after meeting Daleiden and watching some of the videos.

He was secured as an expert for the defense to review video of a presentation at a Planned Parenthood conference, during which Alisa Goldberg spoke about using large doses of the drug misoprostol (the second drug of the abortion pill regimen, which causes contractions) in order to carry out second-trimester induced abortions in one day. It typically takes four.

Smith testified that using misoprostol in this way would lead to live births. He explained that large doses of misoprostol would cause “tumultuous labor” that leads to “fetal expulsion” — meaning the baby would be born without any assistance from the abortionist and no instruments would be used, protecting the organs and tissue from harm. He testified that very few abortionists do this, but Planned Parenthood does.

“In this case clearly the intent is same-day surgery. They fully intend to put the uterus into labor,” said Smith, adding:

"There’s no question in my mind that at least some of these fetuses were live births." 

Smith went on to say that abortionists in the undercover video were illegally changing the abortion procedure from electric to manual vacuum aspirator. They are doing this to get intact babies and organs, he explained, despite the fact that it increases blood loss for the mother, requires more cervical dilation at a greater risk to the mother, and makes the procedure last longer.

These were all negatives for the women, but they gave Planned Parenthood the most intact specimens to sell.

10. "Everything we provide is fresh"

In the tenth video from the CMP investigation, Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, then-Senior Medical Advisor for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, was seen discussing the business of buying and selling fetal body parts with a potential buyer. She said (emphasis added):

"We’ve just been working with people who want particular tissues, like, you know, they want cardiac, or they want eyes, or they want neural. People want spinal cords, so I mean, that sort of thing,” Certainly, everything we provide–oh, gonads! Oh my God, gonads. Everything we provide is fresh."

As Live Action News previously reported, "The connotations of her comment are disturbing. Fresh baby parts are a familiar idea in these videos since multiple videos have discussed babies born alive and hauled off from the clinics on dry ice to the labs. Fresh baby body parts are sold to the highest fetal tissue bidder so some scientist can cut it up and use his or her federal grant money to support a research agenda."

The Bottom Line:

Planned Parenthood staffers were caught on camera casually discussing how fetal body parts are collected and sold to buyers, yet it continued to receive millions in taxpayer funding every year.

This year, as the United States turns 250, there is the opportunity to defund the abortion giant for a decade and protect Americans from being unwilling participants in Planned Parenthood's deeds.