In a new video released Tuesday by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress, a former StemExpress employee said that Planned Parenthood shared private patient information with the biomedical company in an effort to meet quotas for aborted fetal body parts.
In the video, Holly O’Donnell, a former StemExpress procurement technician who was featured in previous CMP videos, alleged that “there was a lot of coordination” between Planned Parenthood and StemExpress.
O’Donnell said that as a procurement technician, she would start her days inside Planned Parenthood clinics by looking at a list of what the researchers were looking for and informing clinic staff what they were seeking.
“It was like a grocery list of what to get for that day,” she said.
O’Donnell said that in an effort to find the “specimens” the researchers were seeking, Planned Parenthood gave the procurement technicians access to private patient information.
“We’d go to the head nurse, let the nurses know, 'Hey, this is what I’m looking for today,'” O’Donnell said. “They’d give you a sheet of the appointments, which women were coming in, and it would tell you how many patients, what time they were coming in, their name, and if they knew how far along they were.”
She added that clinic staff “would even let us look at the charts.”
“They let us look at the physical charts outside of the room,” O’Donnell said. “I was even asked to write on the charts at one point.”
In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress released undercover videos that raised allegations that Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion provider — was selling aborted fetal body parts to researchers for profit.
Profiting from the sale of human organs, including those of the unborn, is illegal in the United States. Spokespersons for both Planned Parenthood and StemExpress have denied illegal conduct. StemExpress reportedly cut ties with Planned Parenthood in 2015.
Last year, in the wake of the allegations, the House Select Panel on Infant Lives referred StemExpress to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for potentially violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 – or HIPAA — a law that protects patient privacy.
The Senate Judiciary Committee also referred several Planned Parenthood affiliates and StemExpress — among others — to the FBI and the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation.
The new Center for Medical Progress video is the latest in a series of videos featuring O’Donnell’s allegations against Planned Parenthood and her former employer.
David Daleiden, the founder of the Center for Medical Progress and the filmmaker behind the undercover videos, said in a statement last week that “Holly O’Donnell is a brave whistleblower who witnessed shocking violations of the law, medical ethics, and human dignity inside of Planned Parenthood and StemExpress.”
“CMP’s undercover work was directly informed by the real-life business relationship between StemExpress and Planned Parenthood to sell aborted baby parts, and Holly’s testimony corroborates the reports of the House Select Panel and Senate Judiciary Committee investigations,” Daleiden said. “We look forward to Holly’s experiences reaching the public through this new format in the weeks ahead.”
