{"id":13111,"date":"2015-10-14T08:04:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T15:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/planned-parenthood-changes-fetal-tissue-reimbursement-policy\/"},"modified":"2015-10-14T08:04:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T15:04:24","slug":"planned-parenthood-changes-fetal-tissue-reimbursement-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/planned-parenthood-changes-fetal-tissue-reimbursement-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Planned Parenthood changes fetal-tissue reimbursement policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2014 Responding to a furor over undercover videos, Planned Parenthood says it will maintain programs at some of its clinics that make fetal tissue available for research, but will cover the costs itself rather than accepting any reimbursement.<\/p>\n

Anti-abortion activists who recently released a series of covertly filmed videos have contended that Planned Parenthood officials sought profits from their programs providing post-abortion fetal tissue to researchers. Planned Parenthood said the videos were deceptively edited and denied seeking any payments beyond legally permitted reimbursement of costs.<\/p>\n

The new policy \u2014 forgoing even permissible reimbursement \u2014 was outlined in a letter sent Tuesday by Planned Parenthood\u2019s president, Cecile Richards, to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlanned Parenthood\u2019s policies on fetal tissue donation already exceed the legal requirements,\u201d Richards wrote. \u201cNow we\u2019re going even further in order to take away any basis for attacking Planned Parenthood to advance an anti-abortion political agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

The videos were released, starting in mid-July, by a group of anti-abortion activists calling themselves the Center for Medical Progress. Activists posed as representatives of a biomedical firm and sought to negotiate the purchase of fetal organs from some Planned Parenthood personnel.<\/p>\n

David Deleiden, who led the undercover video effort, depicted Planned Parenthood\u2019s shift as \u201can admission of guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the money Planned Parenthood has been receiving for baby body parts were truly legitimate \u2018reimbursement,\u2019 why cancel it?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Republicans in control of Congress have responded to the undercover videos by launching several investigations of Planned Parenthood, along with efforts to cut off the organization\u2019s federal funding. Most of that funding is reimbursement for Medicaid patients receiving cancer screenings, contraception and other non-abortion services.<\/p>\n

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, described Planned Parenthood\u2019s policy change as \u201ca good, tangible result\u201d of the various House investigations. He said his own panel would continue its inquiry into Planned Parenthood\u2019s use of federal funding.<\/p>\n

Thus far, none of the congressional investigations, nor separate investigations in six states, have verified any law-breaking by Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood says its fetal tissue programs currently take place in only two states \u2014 California and Washington \u2014 at about a half-dozen of the 700 health centers run by the organization nationwide.<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood\u2019s executive vice president, Dawn Laguens, said the Washington state affiliate already had a policy of accepting no reimbursement for its costs, and the California affiliate will now follow the same policy. Staff members in California indicated earlier that reimbursement per specimen generally ranged from $30 to $100, but Laguens said she could not say how much the affiliate received annually in reimbursements or how much it will cost to cover the expenses of the fetal-tissue program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it will have a huge impact on their budget,\u201d Laguens said. \u201cFor Planned Parenthood, this was always about one thing \u2014 honoring the desire of women to contribute to lifesaving research. It was never about money.\u201d<\/p>\n

While selling fetal tissue for profit is illegal, a 1993 law passed by Congress with bipartisan support allows women who undergo abortions to donate fetal tissue for use in scientific research. The law allowed entities supplying the tissue to recover the costs of running such programs.<\/p>\n

During the three-month controversy over the videos, some of Planned Parenthood\u2019s critics have called a ban on research using donated fetal tissue. However, there has been strong defense of the practice from within the medical and scientific establishment.<\/p>\n

The Department of Health and Human Services, in a letter to Congress in August, said fetal tissue \u201ccontinues to be a critical resource for important efforts such as research on degenerative eye disease, human development disorders such as Down syndrome, and infectious diseases, among a host of other diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center\u2019s Department of Population Health, said Planned Parenthood\u2019s move was strategically wise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fees are being used to promote the canard that PP is killing babies for profit. They are not,\u201d Caplan wrote in an email. \u201cBut deciding not to accept reimbursement for any processing or handling would effectively end the lying about what PP is and has been doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

University of Notre Dame law professor O. Carter Snead, a bioethicist, had a contrasting view.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlanned Parenthood\u2019s decision is clearly an effort at damage control \u2014 to preserve its carefully cultivated (and ferociously defended) image as merely a women\u2019s health care organization,\u201d said by email. \u201cNothing Planned Parenthood has done today will change its role as the world\u2019s leading abortion provider.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early reaction to the announcement divided along party lines in Congress, where Democrats have depicted the multiple Republican investigations as baseless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am pleased that Planned Parenthood has taken this additional step, removing a distraction, and, in the process, returning focus to the high-quality health care they deliver to millions of Americans,\u201d said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Rep. Diane Black, a Tennessee Republican, said she remained intent on seeking to defund Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is curious that, while Planned Parenthood officials maintain there has been no wrongdoing, they still find it necessary to change their policy,\u201d Black said. \u201cClearly, this was a decision motivated by optics rather than the organization\u2019s conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow David Crary on Twitter at http:\/\/twitter.com\/CraryAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Responding to a furor over undercover videos, Planned Parenthood says it will maintain programs at some of its clinics that make fetal tissue available for research<\/a>, but will cover the costs itself rather than accepting any reimbursement. Anti-abortion activists who recently released a series of covertly filmed videos have contended that Planned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13111"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}