In an article for Cosmopolitan, much-interviewed abortionist Willie Parker, attempts to defend Planned Parenthood’s top doctor, Deborah Nucatola.
Sadly for Nucatola – but happily for the American public who deserves the truth – Parker condemns Nucatola accidentally. I suppose this is what happens when, as Parker said, “I, by the way, have intentionally not watched the video…I know I don’t need to watch the video…I don’t need to watch it…”
Willie Parker tried to shed light on what he claims are Planned Parenthood’s practices with any fetal tissue collection. But what Parker reveals digs Nucatola’s – and Planned Parenthood’s – hole even deeper.
Parker writes:
“I know from the inside as a medical director, as a former medical director in Planned Parenthood, that even at the individual affiliates where they may have an affiliation with an medical institution, if there’s any program at all where they might be seeking tissue for a certain type of study, it is heavily protocol-driven under a research protocol, which does not happen for the purpose of profit. The only other time that I, as a medical director of an abortion provider, have interacted with people around fetal tissue has been with the request of parents or a person having an abortion who wanted to coordinate securing the remains for a particular ritual, burial ritual or the like, or they’ve asked me, ‘Is there a way to have the tissue that would be collected donated to science for research?'”
Ok, so Parker is basically saying that there are only two ways Planned Parenthood uses fetal tissue. One, to give the baby’s remains back to her parents. And two, to participate in a protocol-driven research study.
But there’s just one little, teeny-tiny problem. Nucatola flat-out contradicts Parker. (Perhaps he did need to view the video after all.)
Here’s what Nucatola tells the buyer:
“Yes, one thing I can promise you, it won’t have to go through the rigorous role of a research project, because there is precedent for this now, and affiliates know how to deal with it. Like I said before, it was a nightmare, it had to go through an IRB, not just your IRB, it had to be an IRB for the affiliate. It would have to go through the national office, it had to go through contracts and all these other things.”
[Page 56 of the full footage transcript]
“If they’re gonna participate in something like this, you know there are mechanisms by which contracts can be reviewed and things like that, but there are no guidelines. This is something that the national office is not involved in. For the first few years that it happened, it was treated as research, and then we realized that this was kind of overkill because we didn’t have a particular IRB approved study, it just didn’t fit into our framework. So we just kind of backed off of it.“
[Page 47 of the full footage transcript]
For those wondering, an IRB is an Institutional Review Board, “a committee established to review and approve research involving human subjects. The purpose of the IRB is to ensure that all human subject research be conducted in accordance with all federal, institutional, and ethical guidelines.”
Convenient that Planned Parenthood found working under research guidelines to be “a nightmare” and something that “just didn’t fit into our framework.”
Maybe next time Willie Parker will think about listening to the actual words of Planned Parenthood before spouting off talking points in their defense.
