Why This Pro-Life Group Is Giving an Award to an Abortionist in the Planned Parenthood Videos

A pro-life group has chosen a surprising recipient for its new Veritas Award  — one of the abortion providers featured in an undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress.

Operation Rescue has bestowed the award upon Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola.

Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, is seen in a video released by the Center for Medical Progress. (Image source: YouTube)

Nucatola was featured in the first video released by the Center for Medical Progress, in which she described procuring “heart, lung [and] liver,” and estimated a price of $30 to $100 “per specimen.”

“Veritas,” is the Latin word for “truth,” and Operation Rescue said in a statement that the award will be granted annually “to an abortion supporter whose words or actions are so powerfully truthful about the reality and barbarity of abortion that they advance the pro-life cause.”

“For abortionists, there are two ways to speak about abortion,” Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue and a board member of the Center for Medical Progress, said in a statement. “First is the scripted ‘Orwellian’ rhetoric that sanitizes abortion, which is used to influence public support. Then there is the unvarnished truth spoken in unguarded moments without public relations in mind. When abortionists speak about their work candidly and truthfully, they actually prove in the most powerful ways why abortion cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.”

The video sparked a national controversy, and was followed by several others. Profiting from the sale of human organs — including those of the unborn — is illegal in the United States.

Spokesmen for Planned Parenthood have denied illegal conduct, and they have dismissed the videos as “heavily edited.”

“While other Planned Parenthood abortionists featured in the CMP videos each had their own shocking revelations, it was Deborah Nucatola’s cavalier discussions about Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue harvesting that first captured America’s attention and shifted the national debate on abortion. Her words did more to set back the Abortion Cartel than nearly any spoken by pro-life spokesmen,” Newman added. “For this reason, Deborah Nucatola is the natural choice for our 2015 Veritas Award.”

In the video, Nucatola also appeared to suggest that some abortion providers are willing to alter their surgical “technique” to ensure that the desired body part remains “intact” during the abortion procedure “if they’re reasonable people.”

“If you maintain enough of a dialogue with the person who’s actually doing the procedure, so they understand what the end-game is, there are little things, changes they can make to increase your success,” Nucatola said.

The full video of their meeting with Nucatola was also made available by the Center for Medical Progress: