Planned Parenthood medical director admits abortionists can skirt law banning partial-birth abortions

The Center for Medical Progress has released a new video, despite currently battling with pro-abortion officials in California. This video takes aim at Planned Parenthood, exposing how Planned Parenthood once again has been found skirting abortion laws – this time, laws banning partial-birth abortion.

Planned Parenthood Medical Director: “Dismemberment” Abortion “Checkbox” Skirts Partial-Birth Law

The footage was taken undercover at Planned Parenthood conferences, with abortion providers discussing how they’re able to pull off what amounts to a partial-birth abortion.

“Orlando has maybe two – I think next week they’re doing like, 18, second trimester procedures,” Suzie Prabhakaran, vice president of medical affairs for Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, says to start off the video. Center for Medical Progress investigators were posing as buyers from a biotech company, looking to purchase the body parts of preborn babies being aborted at Planned Parenthood.

Prabhakaran disclosed that her Planned Parenthood affiliate would be merging with the Orlando affiliate, where late-term abortions were performed. She also says that while her affiliate currently commits abortions through 16 weeks of pregnancy, the Orlando affiliate commits them up to 22 weeks and six days…and has a higher “volume” of “procedures” as well. Her affiliate doesn’t commit enough late-term abortions “to make it worthwhile,” she said. But with the merger, they will be able to commit more late-term abortions, at a later gestation, which will also mean more opportunities to potentially break the law banning partial-birth abortion.

Partial-birth abortion is a gruesome procedure where a baby is delivered by the abortionist feet-first, leaving the baby’s head still inside the mother. The abortionist then stabs the baby in the neck, inserts a catheter, and removes the baby’s brain, which causes the skull to collapse. At this point, the baby’s head is delivered from the mother. The violent, horrific procedure is illegal federally and in multiple states across the country.

Planned Parenthood has devised ways to get around these laws.

One of the ways Planned Parenthood abortionists can get around the partial-birth abortion ban is to use digoxin, which kills the preborn baby before the abortion procedure is started. In this way, even if the abortionist does a partial-birth abortion, he can claim he did not, because he did the extra step of digoxin first. The “intent statement” is another way of skirting the ban, during which abortionists promise not to violate the law banning partial-birth abortions, regardless of how the abortion procedure is actually carried out. But according to Prabhakaran, the Orlando Planned Parenthood abortionists aren’t using digoxin. “Just document, and you’re fine,” she explains.

“So, so there’s – the reason people do digoxin at all is for one of two reasons,” Prabhakaran said. “One is to comply with the partial-birth abortion ban, so that’s why. Or that they – and/or they think that the digoxin makes the procedure easier.”

She continued, explaining how Planned Parenthood’s abortionists use documentation, rather than digoxin, to get around the law. “So some people train to just document that like, you know, to comply with the partial-birth abortion ban, you basically have to say, ‘I intend to utilize dismemberment techniques for this procedure,’ which is what we do always,” she said. “Like if you do this procedure with suction, that’s how you do it. So if you document that, then you can just… some people just don’t do dig [digoxin]. Because that’s how they comply with the ban.”

Below is a doctor’s explanation of a D&E abortion, another kind of dismemberment procedure:

2nd Trimester Surgical Abortion: Dilation and Evacuation (D & E)

Prabhakaran describes it as clinical documentation. “If this was your intent, that’s how you did the procedure, and then you’re done. And you don’t do dig,” she summarized. “So every time you do a procedure, that’s how you document. So there’s like a checkbox that says, I intend to – so it would be before the procedure, you do your evaluation, you write, ‘I intend to utilize dismemberment techniques for this procedure’.”

Prahkakaran appears to advocate for abortionists signing the intent form, no matter what they actually intend on doing. Her statements line up with previous footage released by the Center for Medical Progress, in which Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said it was all about supposed “intent.” “The Federal [Partial-Birth] Abortion Ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation,” Nucatola said. “So there are some people who interpret it as, it’s intent. So if I say on day one I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter.”

“So if you do it starting from a breech [feet-first] presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last step, you can evacuate an intact calvarium [head] at the end,” she concluded.

All of this, as usual, enables abortionists to sell the body parts of the babies they abort if they so desire, which is against federal law and is also a second-degree felony in the state of Florida. The horrors and admissions outlined in this new video, along with other Center for Medical Progress videos, need to be spotlighted more than ever, as Congress continues to debate defunding Planned Parenthood.

Should an organization that does its best to skirt the law and constantly kill innocent preborn children – many of whom can feel pain – be permitted to receive hard-earned taxpayer dollars?