“Ultimately, there is no question that money was discussed and would be exchanged, that ways to better kill an unborn baby were included, and that the brochure explains how your clinic can financially benefit from such things. That’s called “selling” no matter how you want to spin it.”

There are things not to be outraged about, and there are things to be outraged about.

Watching people have discussions about how best to kill and dismember an unborn baby would be one of the things to be outraged about.

Yesterday, much news was made in the conservative world about a new video from an undercover conversation with a Planned Parenthood executive. In that video, over a casual lunch, people described horrific things like how best to kill an unborn baby and how some clinics aren’t as good at it as they could be. The news coverage has been fascinating to say the least.

The Washington Post was probably the first in the mainstream media, and if you look at the URL, you can see they used the word “harvesting” at first and then changed the title to “Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood official discussing fetal organs used for research.” There is no mention of the title change in the post, but this is more than “discussing fetal organs for research.” For what it is worth, the process is technically called “organ harvesting,” so no change was needed.

Christianity Today works hard to write a balanced article. At the end of the day, what Christianity Today could be summarized as saying is, “The video doesn’t really say what the Center for Medical Progress says, but a brochure doesn’t really say what Planned Parenthood says either.” Here is an excerpt:

Under federal law, “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.”

And there are strict guidelines on how tissue can be donated. The woman having an abortion must give her consent, she must be made aware of all the risks, and “no alteration of the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy [can be] made solely for the purposes of obtaining the tissue.”

Still, no federal agency tracks how much tissue is donated or the details of those donations. And groups like Planned Parenthood can collect fees to reimburse their costs.

That’s when things get complicated. In the taped conversation, Nucatola described the process almost like haggling:

You know, I would throw a number out, I would say it’s probably anywhere from $30 to $100 [per specimen], depending on the facility and what’s involved. It just has to do with space issues, are you sending someone there who’s going to be doing everything, is there shipping involved, is somebody gonna have to take it out. You know, I think everybody just wants, it’s really just about if anyone were ever to ask them, “What do you do for this $60? How can you justify that? Or are you basically just doing something completely egregious, that you should be doing for free.” So it just needs to be justifiable.

As CT reported in 2000, payments for fetal tissue donations are allowed under a loophole in the 1993 rule that bans the sale of fetal remains.

When it comes down to it, we have a conversation about language, and the question is whether or not Planned Parenthood is selling the body parts of aborted children.

Here is a brochure from a Planned Parenthood partner, StemExpress. Notice they pitch their services to potential business partners as “providing a financial benefit to your clinic” and “contributing to the fiscal growth of your own clinic.” The recovery of shipping costs accomplishes neither of those things.

Ultimately, there is no question that money was discussed and would be exchanged, that ways to better kill an unborn baby were included, and that the brochure explains how your clinic can financially benefit from such things. That’s called “selling” no matter how you want to spin it.

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[Editor’s note: The original URLs (links) referenced in this article have been removed. Those links may still be available at the article source.]