United States: A large-scale traffic of organs from aborted fetuses uncovered

Videos diffused online since July 2015 have revealed a lucrative traffic of human organs taken from aborted fetuses in some clinics of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) network, in Florida. Founded in 1916 in the United States, PPFA is an organism dedicated to family planning that fights for sexual education, access to health care and so-called reproductive health care. It receives 500 million dollars in subsidies from Medicaid, the state's public insurance, and 60 million directly from the federal government.

When questioned by pro-life militants with a hidden camera, Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of the PPFA medical services, gave details on the organization's collection and trafficking, that involves selling organs taken from fetuses to a biotechnology society. Among other details she mentioned ultrasounds used during abortion to keep the fetus intact. In another video, Mary Gatter, medical director of the PPFA in Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley, in California, discusses the prices the organs are sold for, and pointed out that the price of a liver or a heart is negotiable. According to certain sources, this organ traffic organized within the American Family Planning could earn a single clinic up to $100,000 a year, explains Radio Vatican.

American federal law formally prohibits any such traffic. So several pro-life groups gathered before the Capitol and the White House mid-July to demand answers and a public suing. Unexpected inspections of these clinics revealed illegal late-term abortions and the disappearance of the registers on abortion remains. The group denied any guilt in the traffic of human organs and claimed that these dissected fetuses could potential help heal certain sicknesses and alleviate suffering.

On August 10, 2015, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of Philadelphia, O.F.M., forcefully denounced this "repugnant and barbaric" commerce on the diocesan website; he recalled that abortion is the murder of children, by millions. These, he insisted, are deliberate murders of innocent lives. - From September 22 to 27, Archbishop Chaput will receive Pope Francis, who will be attending the eighth World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, shortly before the synod on the family.

(sources: apic/radiovatican/catholicphilly – DICI no.320 dated Sept. 11, 2015)