The 16 Planned Parenthood offices in Florida that perform abortion procedures are now under investigation by the state.
Governor Rick Scott announced Wednesday that the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) will investigate the offices to ensure they are in full compliance with the law.
Governor Rick Scott released the following statement:
The videos coming out about Planned Parenthood are deeply troubling to say the least. It is against the law for any organization to sell body parts. I asked AHCA Secretary Liz Dudek to begin immediately dispatching staff from their licensure office to evaluate the 16 Planned Parenthood offices in Florida that perform abortion procedures to ensure they are in full compliance with the law.
If a Planned Parenthood office is not following the law, we will move quickly to take legal and regulatory action against them. We hold our healthcare organizations in Florida to the highest standards of safety and we expect them to fully comply with the law at all times.
Earlier this month undercover videos were released by anti-abortion activists aimed at discrediting Planned Parenthood's procedures for providing fetal tissue to researchers.
The videos show Dr. Mary Gatter, a Planned Parenthood medical director in Southern California, meeting with people posing as potential buyers of intact fetal specimens. The conversation focuses largely on how much money the buyers should pay.
David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, the group that released the videos, said it follows all applicable laws when making the videos that he called investigative journalism. He said in a statement that Planned Parenthood is "trying to use the power of their political cronies to shut down free speech" and to "silence the freedom of the press."
The videos have brought investigations of Planned Parenthood's policies on aborted fetuses by three Republican-led congressional committees and three other states.
Gatter says in the second video, which was released on last week, a week after the first, that "We're not in it for the money," while also discussing whether a payment of $100 per fetal specimen would be adequate. Planned Parenthood spokesman Eric Ferrero said in a statement after the release of the second video that the organization behind the videos "is a group of extremists who have intimidated women and doctors for years in their agenda to ban abortion completely."
Florida Planned Parenthood responded Wednesday with this statement:
“These political attacks claiming that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation are simply not true. While we do not have donations programs in Florida, some Planned Parenthood organizations in other states do, and they follow all laws and ethical guidelines. We always seek and welcome feedback from medical experts, but not from politicians.
“We will, of course, cooperate fully with any investigation, but important medical issues shouldn't be politicized. This isn't what people in our state want our elected officials to spend their time doing.”
The controversy has renewed efforts to ban federal aid to Planned Parenthood. Republicans in the Senate and House are pushing the proposal. They hope to vote on it before the August recess. But GOP leaders admit the proposal is a longshot because they don't have enough votes to push it forward.
Fetal tissue long used in medical studies
Controversy over Planned Parenthood's supplying fetal tissue for research has focused attention on a little-discussed aspect of science. This research goes back decades, and has been used to treat numerous diseases and even develop vaccines.
Some basic facts about fetal tissue in research:
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WHAT IS FETAL TISSUE USED FOR?
Tissue from elective abortions and miscarriages is used for a wide variety of purposes. Scientists who want to regenerate organs and tissues may use it to learn how the human body makes them in the first place. Others look for defects in early development that can cause disease or miscarriage, or study normal development, which can guide therapeutic strategies. The tissue is also used to learn how medicines or toxins affect a fetus.
IS USING FETAL TISSUE A NEW IDEA?
Hardly. Scientists have worked with it since the 1930s. The 1954 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded for work with fetal tissue that led to developing a vaccine against polio. The National Institutes of Health spent $76 million on human fetal tissue research in fiscal 2014.
WHAT DISEASES ARE BEING STUDIED TODAY?
AIDS and muscular dystrophy are examples. Some experimental treatments for spinal cord injury and macular degeneration involve transplanting fetal cells into patients. And European researchers recently began a study of putting fetal tissue into patients' brains to treat Parkinson's disease, a strategy that has had mixed results in the past.
HOW IS THE TISSUE PROVIDED?
It comes from hospitals and abortion clinics. Sometimes it goes directly to researchers, and in other cases it is handled by nonprofit organizations or companies that supply researchers.
CAN FETAL TISSUE BE SOLD FOR PROFIT?
No, that's a felony. Organizations or companies that supply the tissue can be reimbursed for expenses associated with costs like processing and storing the tissue, federal law says.
DOES THE WOMAN HAVE TO AGREE TO USING THE TISSUE FOR RESEARCH?
Yes, she has to give consent. And the matter can't be raised until after she has decided to have an abortion.
CAN'T RESEARCHERS JUST USE STEM CELLS INSTEAD?
Stem cells, including those obtained with adult donors, can develop into a variety of tissues in the lab. The European researchers in the Parkinson's study and others hope to learn enough to use them someday for transplant tissue. Experts say stem cells have already substituted for fetal tissue for some purposes, but that scientists still need fetal tissue to learn basic information about how organs form, or help them simulate certain diseases in the test tube.
The Associated Press contributed to this story