Pro-Abortion Attorney Testifying at Planned Parenthood Hearing Defended Partial-Birth Abortions

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 9, 2015   |   10:21AM   |   Washington, DC

When the House Judiciary Committee conducts its first hearing this morning on Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted babies and their body parts, Congress will from pro-life advocates but the committee will also hear from a prominent pro-abortion attorney Democrats invited to testify.

This is the first hearing in Congress’ multi-committee investigation of the abortion business after a series of nine videos exposed how it is potentially illegally selling aborted babies and profiting from the sales.

In media accounts of her participation today, Priscilla Smith is billed as a yale attorney and little additional information is given about her background. But Smith is an ardent abortion advocate who is the director of Yale Law School’s Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice. But Smith is better-known as the attorney who defended partial-birth abortions at the Supreme Court, which eventually upheld a ban on the gruesome abortion procedure.

During the oral arguments at the Supreme Court Smith claimed Congress’s findings that the partial-birth abortion procedure is never medically necessary were “simply unreasonable” and should carry no legal weight. Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed and asked Smith if the “marginal benefit in safety” from using the partial-birth abortion procedure is “enough to override the state’s articulated interest” in protecting unborn children.

In fact, during the hearings, Smith could not give any reason why partial-birth abortions were supposedly a safer procedure for women than other abortion procedures that kill unborn children.

SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately

“We have no evidence in the record” as to how often such a situation arises when such an abortion is supposedly needed, Chief Justice John Roberts asked.

“No, your honor,” Smith responded.

Smith also complained about the hearings leading up to Congressional passage of the ban on partial-birth abortions. Smith, then a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion law firm based in New York, claimed that the testimony that Congress heard before passing the law did not reflect the neutral venue that a court offers.

“Their job is not to be objective. Their job is to represent majority views,” Smith said then.

Smith, whose firm filed the lawsuit for late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart against the partial-birth abortion ban, infamously said before the Supreme Court’s ruling that she thought the high court would strike down the ban.

“It’s a hands-down winner,” she said of Carhart’s case against the ban. But the Supreme Court eventually upheld the legislation.

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Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is planning a vote on legislation in a couple weeks that would de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business. The two votes would follow one the Senate had weeks ago, which saw Senate Democrats filibuster and block legislation to revoke $550 million in taxpayer funding. The Senate is expected to vote soon on a second attempt to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

The Center for Medical Progress recently released its most recent video — the 9th in its series of videos catching the Planned Parenthood abortion business selling aborted babies and their body parts. This latest video catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.

The Center for Medical Progress also released the full, uncut video of the conversation between undercover investigators form CMP and top officials with StemExpress, which buys aborted babies and their body parts from Planned Parenthood. The full footage is of a shorter video that summarized the meetings earlier this week.

In Congress, two committees in the House of Representatives have already launched investigations of Planned Parenthood. One committee is looking into whether or not the abortion business is breaking federal law by altering abortion procedures to better obtain aborted baby body parts for sale. Another committee, among other things, is investigating the Obama administration and whether there is any connection between it and the abortion giant.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants to know if the Obama administration, via the Department of Health and Human Services, provided any federal grants to Planned Parenthood that ultimately went to pay for the sales of aborted baby body parts and if they were used by Planned Parenthood to “support transactions involving fetal tissue.”

The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all nine:

  • In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
  • In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
  • In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
  • In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
  • In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
  • In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
  • In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
  • In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
  • The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.

SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must Investigate Planned Parenthood for Selling Aborted Baby Parts

So far, 12 states have responded to the Planned Parenthood videos and launched investigations into their abortion and organ harvesting business including South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, KansasMissouri, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana. The district attorney in Houston Texas is also investigating after the Houston-based Planned Parenthood abortion facility was caught selling aborted babies.

Congress has expanded its investigation into the Planned Parenthood abortion business and five states have revoked taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood’s abortion business, including Utah, Arkansas, Alabama, New Hampshire and Louisiana and Iowa’s governor has ordered a review of Planned Parenthood funding.

The full, unedited videos have confirmed that revelations that some aborted baby remains sold by Planned Parenthood go to biotech companies for the purpose of creating “humanized” mice. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood has been exposed as having sold body parts from aborted babies for as much as 15 years.

The federal law that technically prohibits the sale of aborted babies and their body parts was written by a pro-abortion Congressman decades ago and essentially spells out a process by which sellers of aborted baby body parts can meet certain criteria that allows the sales to be legal. That’s why a Colorado congressman has introduced legislation to totally ban the sales of aborted baby body parts.

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