Dr. Mary Gatter, PPFA Medical Directors’ Council President, Calls Per-Body Part Price Offer “A Little On the Low End” But Admits Clinic Does No Work For It
Contact: Kate Bryan, kbryan@crcpublicrelations.com, 703.683.5004
LOS ANGELES, April 26--New undercover video shows Dr. Mary Gatter, the Planned Parenthood senior executive who infamously laughed “I want a Lamborghini” about payments for aborted fetal parts, again haggling over per-specimen pricing for livers, lungs, and brains, even while insisting the purchaser must do all the work to harvest.
The video is the second of a never-before-seen batch of undercover footage being released by The Center for Medical Progress.
At a Planned Parenthood conference evening reception, CMP investigators posing as buyers from a biotech company are introduced to Dr. Gatter for the first time by Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services.
“I wanted you to meet Mary Gatter,” says Dr. Nucatola, before Dr. Gatter steps forward.
Gatter was for many years the Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, before moving to the same position at the Pasadena affiliate, and then being elected President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council. As Medical Director at PPLA, Gatter oversaw the affiliate’s partnership with Novogenix Laboratories, LLC, a local for-profit fetal organ and tissue harvesting company.
“I did it in LA, I’m committed to it, I think it’s a great idea,” says Gatter to the purported body parts buyers. Discussing the number of abortions at her Pasadena clinic, Gatter asks, “What kind of volume do you need and what gestational ages?”
During the conversation, Gatter advises, “You know, you have to pay a little money to use the space.” After asking for a ballpark figure, the buyer observes, “Most people now seem to be doing per specimen.”
“Per specimen. Like $75 a specimen?” Gatter replies. After the buyer asks for clarification, Gatter repeats, “$75 a specimen, or $50 a specimen?” The buyer replies, “What we’ve been quoting is $50 per specimen. I think some people are doing more, some slightly less.”
Gatter then comments, “Yeah, $50’s on the low end, $50 [per specimen] was like 12 years ago.”
The buyer then explains, “What we like about per-specimen is that way we’re not paying for [fetal] material that we can’t use, you know?” Gatter nods, saying, “Yeah yeah, yeah.”
Federal law permits reimbursement for specified costs in a fetal organ or tissue donation, but prohibits the purchase and sale of the organs and tissues themselves (42 U.S.C. 289g-2).
The buyer continues, “If we can get a liver, a lung, and you know, a brain--” before Gatter interjects, “But you would show up to do this? You would send somebody,” to which the buyer answers affirmatively. Gatter concludes the conversation saying, “Yeah I’d be willing, give me a call.”
According to contracts and invoices, the real-life fetal organ and tissue wholesaler companies Novogenix, StemExpress, and Advanced Bioscience Resources all made monthly payments to Planned Parenthood based on the number of resalable fetal specimens the wholesalers’ workers could harvest inside the abortion clinics. Planned Parenthood told Congressional investigators it kept no contemporaneous records of actual costs for reimbursement under the law.
The Novogenix contract promises Planned Parenthood Los Angeles $45 “per donated specimen.” Planned Parenthood Los Angeles does over 15,000 abortions every year, but has never publicly admitted how much money they received total under their contract with Novogenix. In December 2016, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Select Investigative Panel both referred Planned Parenthood Los Angeles and Novogenix to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice for further investigation and criminal prosecution.
CMP project lead David Daleiden notes, “The fact that Novogenix, StemExpress, and ABR stationed their own workers inside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics to perform the harvesting, packaging, and transport of aborted baby body parts demonstrates that Planned Parenthood had no reimbursable costs under the law. The volume-based sums that Planned Parenthood charged these businesses for baby parts are criminal trafficking and profiteering in fetal body parts. The U.S. Department of Justice should take heed of the Congressional investigations’ criminal referrals and prosecute Planned Parenthood to the full extent of the law, and taxpayers must stop being forced to subsidize Planned Parenthood’s criminal abortion empire.”