Dr. Jennefer Russo
A video released this week by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) highlights a conversation with Dr. Jennefer Russo, who performs abortions up to 24 weeks as Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties. For this, she earns nearly $300,000 annually.
In the video, Russo confirms that her affiliate is working with a for-profit biotech company, DaVinci Biosciences, to harvest the organs of aborted fetuses to sell nationally and internationally – and, just as other Planned Parenthood affiliates in California have confirmed on video their longtime relationships with fetal tissue procurement agencies, this is not a new relationship. CMP uncovered a document that shows the relationship between Planned Parenthood and DaVinci Biosciences, LLC, and its sister company, DV Biologics, LLC, dating back to 2008.
In the recorded conversation, Russo states that, indeed, they are partnered with the DaVinci “tissue procurement service” and that they come right to Planned Parenthood’s door to get not just parts but “whole specimen[s]” – meaning the entirety of the aborted baby’s body:
BUYER: do they [DaVinci] take the whole specimen though?
PP:Yeah. They take the whole specimen and they, it’s only certain gestations – like – no dig[oxin, feticide], only certain gestational ages because of the dig I think.
BUYER: Yeah.
PP: And then normally their staff will come get it…
As the Planned Parenthood abortionist details to CMP, they are not using digoxin, the drug injected into the fetal heart to cause cardiac arrest in later 2nd-trimester abortions to kill the child and prevent live birth, “because of a nationwide shortage of dig[oxin, feticide].” What that means is more digoxin-free preborn children’s bodies will be able to be sold to procurement companies. When digoxin is injected, the tissues are not usable – so when no digoxin is used, it benefits those who are profiting from the sale of those body parts.
But the other thing that can happen when late-term preborn babies are not injected with digoxin before an abortion is this: a potential live birth. CMP suggests that when the abortionist uses ultrasound guidance resulting in an intact fetus to satisfy the requirements of their procurement company, this is not outside the realm of possibilities:
Without a feticidal procedure like digoxin, it is possible for a fetus extracted intact during an abortion to be born alive.
This is what happened at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte when StemExpress procurement technician Holly O’Donnell was told to harvest a brain from a yet-living aborted baby boy with a heartbeat.
Obtaining intact fetal cadavers is shocking, but we’ve heard this before. In a previous CMP video, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Melissa Farrell discussed how the affiliate’s six abortionists can “alter [the] process” to “obtain intact fetal cadavers” and didn’t bat an eye at a request for 120 fetal cadavers from a research lab.
On their website, DaVinci Biosciences claims they are “dedicated to improving the quality of life for individuals suffering from degenerative disease and injury,” but this dedication comes at a price. After obtaining body parts from abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood, they charge researchers hundreds of dollars per fetal body part.
Also discussed by Russo in the latest CMP video is the illegal altering of abortion procedures. Converting the preborn baby to the breech position to better obtain body parts – which sounds strikingly similar to an illegal partial-birth abortion – was discussed in detail in the first CMP undercover video by Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola.
When asked about using this same procedure to harvest more intact body parts, Orange County’s Russo confesses, “Yeah, we like to do that too.”
Russo asks the undercover CMP investigator what gestational ages he is looking for, and he says, “anything 16 weeks and above.”
PP: “You’re looking ideally for an intact specimen?”
Buyer: “As intact as possible…”
Russo indicates to CMP how they prefer to compress the baby’s head during the abortion. Once again, you can listen as the Planned Parenthood abortionist casually discusses how they kill the preborn child and obtain their “specimens”:
BUYER: So, about your larger case, you said sometimes you’re converting to breech beforehand and then, are those coming out fairly intact, or what is that?
PP: We usually do like a compress the calvarium [head] and then –
BUYER: But it is breech first? So you’re getting like the whole thoracic [chest] cavity?
PP: That’s pretty rare.
BUYER: Oh its rare.
PP: We don’t usually have that much dilation to be able to do that. But, when we do we do.
BUYER: When you can you do.
PP: Yeah.
BUYER: And when that happens do you get a pretty intact specimen or what would you say?
PP: Yeah. But the calvarium [head] is not intact.
BUYER: That’s the tricky part the calvarium [head]. That’s what Deborah had told us that sometimes that’s something that can contribute a lot to getting more intact specimens is if you’re converting to breech beforehand and then you have dilation as the case goes on, and so then even in that case you can sometimes get an intact cal[varium] and everything.
PP: I think most of us have trained to not have fully intact specimens.
BUYER: Oh you’re purposely trying like not to. Yeah.
PP: Even though we use dig et cetera, but that’s how we were trained. So, it happens sometimes but its pretty rare.
BUYER: Yeah that’s where it gets tricky.
PP: Right. But we try.
