Video on Planned Parenthood shows connection with IVF and abortion

While the fifth video released by the Center for Medical Progress certainly has provided damaging insight into Planned Parenthood, the full footage–at 5 hours and 45 minutes–contains even more about Planned Parenthood employees and the abortion industry.

At about 2 hours and 41 minutes into the full footage, corresponding with pages 55-56 of the transcript, Melissa Farrell, who is the Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, discusses working for a facility that “performed abortions in the IVF department.”

PP: …At the facility I worked at we didn’t provide abortions. We performed abortions in the IVF department, we did reductions, we had… [there are standards]… (inaudible) They have to agree to that.

Buyer: They have to what?

PP: They have to agree to reductions. Some people say no.

Buyer: What happens if they say no? They already agreed to it right?

PP: They can agree not to, but we don’t know until they become pregnant and have however many. They so no, and the the doctors council [sic] them. A lot of them pay thousands of dollars for IVF and then they lose all the fetuses

Buyer: Because they don’t do induction?

PP: (inaudible) because they body is not meant to have a litter.

Buyer: Right. My feeling is that they’re just not understanding (Inaudible)

PP: We try. But you know, whatever their religious beliefs are, it’s ok to have IVF, and everything that’s involved with the evasiveness of that but when it comes to preserving the lives you just created-

Buyer: They’re not willing to eliminate in order to save- I’m really not familiar with that patient population, but if they knew an excess fetus could be donated to research could that make those conversations easier?

PP: Usually the mindset of the folks who are against it is for any reason. It will not be removed for any reason scientific, genetic, nothing. You could say all six fetuses are going to have [you know, trisomy issues]… (inaudible) it doesn’t matter. If that is the mindset, that is the mindset. How’s the fish?

As one can see from the transcript, Farrell’s mention of the IVF procedure is a bit nonchalant. But the points that she does briefly mention are telling.

The process of IVF involves implanting multiple eggs into a woman, to ensure that at least one takes, since people “pay thousands of dollars for IVF…” But this is at the expense of going through “reductions,” because a woman may only want to be pregnant with so many children to begin with, or because “the doctors counsel them.”

Not only does Farrell say they are actually abortions at one point, but she refers to the newly formed being in the context of “preserving the lives they just created.” How does it make sense to refer to them as actual “lives” and abort them, simply because there are too many? Doesn’t that suggest that the IVF implantation system, specifically with its “standards,” is inherently faulty, if there are purposefully so many eggs implanted?

Farrell and the buyer suggest that one argument for reduction is if all of the fetuses will be lost, or if there is a risk of an abnormality. It still is too complex, and in such an unethical way, to be able to justify a reduction so simply.

Comments such as “the doctors counsel them,” and “the body is not meant to have a litter” suggest that not only does the medical community have a certain mindset regarding reduction, but they seek to influence and pressure people. The argument may be that IVF helps childless people to have children, but one may wonder how much “help” is going on with the pressure involved.

Live Action News has written on Dr. Mark I. Evans, considered a pioneer in “selective reduction,” or as he calls it, “pregnancy management.”

Evans has a list of reasons he would selectively reduce – one recent addition merely being for the sake of gender, appealing to parental preferences for a certain sex.

Also described in the piece is just how brutal these reductions actually turn out to be. If we weren’t talking about the violent and needless deaths of preborn children, such terms then could almost be comical. “Pregnancy management” ought to occur before pregnancy, not when a woman has already conceived her child(ren).

Any abortion is a horrible act that kills a defenseless, innocent and vulnerable human being. But the reality that a person would be killed simply because he or she was purposefully created ‘in bulk’ has an added layer of tragedy. It is also ironic that people have to kill some of their children in order to give birth to others. It is bad enough that the fertility industry already considers children as commodities to be bought and sold, but the fact that children are senselessly killed off makes the whole IVF process even more cruel.