Court Removes Injunction on Planned Parenthood Video, New Video Immediately Released

News Release from Center for Medical Progress, August 21, 2015 

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joanne O'Donnell ruled on Friday afternoon the Center for Medical Progress has First Amendment rights to release videos it covertly took of StemExpress executives talking about buying aborted baby tissue from Planed Parenthood. Almost immediately afterwards, CMP released a new video that among other thing showed the StemExpress CEO Joking about receiving entire dead babies from Planned Parenthood (over lunch).

This latest video is only two minutes long and is more of a trailer of things to come. Most of its content was made up of bits and pieces of previous videos. The one new section featured Cate Dyer, the CEO of StemExpress in a lunch meeting with undercover operatives posing as representatives of a biotech firm. Dyer is seen laughing about how StemExpress purchases fully intact aborted babies from Planned Parenthood. As she paid the check, Dyer is laughing about how shippers of the aborted babies should give a warning to lab workers to expect such a whole (intact) baby.

“Oh yeah, if you have intact cases — which we’ve done a lot — we sometimes ship those back to our lab in its entirety,” she says.

“Tell the lab its coming,” she laughs about the intact unborn babies. “They don’t want to open the box and go ‘Oh my God!'” Dyer adds.

Once the CMP videos began to be released, StemExpress realized a lunch they had back in May was probably an undercover sting, so they sued to preemptively block those videos from being seen.  Judge O'Donnell issued a restraining order barring CMP from releasing any videos showing current or former Stem Express employees, at the end of July - then rescinded the order today.

The Center for Medical Progress isn't off the hook yet because the Judge say that even though they couldn't' be prevented from releasing the video, it was likely that StemExpress prevail in its lawsuit claiming its privacy was violated.

Earlier this week StemExpess announced it was cutting all ties with Planned Parenthood, but denied that it had done anything wrong.

The newly-released video is below, but expect more to come next week.

Preview Quotes from Video of Planned Parenthood Baby Parts Partner StemExpress

Today, the TRO preventing the release of footage from an undercover business dinner meeting with the top leadership of StemExpress, Planned Parenthood’s recent partner for selling baby parts, was dissolved. The following are several significant quotes from the transcript of that conversation. The video, full conversation footage, and transcript will be published shortly:

1) StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits that StemExpress gets intact fetuses from the abortion clinics they work with shipped to their laboratory. “Case” is the clinical term for an individual abortion (cross reference with Planned Parenthood Senior Director of Medical Services Dr.  Deborah Nucatola’s discussion of “this case, that case” in lunch video), so an “intact case” means an “intact abortion.”:

SE: Realistically, if we were to do an agreement with you, what do we think you could get?
Buyer: Volume-wise?
SE: On specifically liver tissue, because that’s such an area of demand for us.
Buyer: So liver, and what about intact specimens, just—?
SE: Oh, yeah, I mean if you had intact cases, which we’ve done a lot, we sometimes ship those back to our lab in its entirety.
Buyer: Okay.
SE: So that would also be great if you guys have those.
Buyer: The entire case.
SE: Yeah, yeah. Because it’s just, and the procurement for us, I mean it can go really sideways, depending on the facility, and then our samples are destroyed, and we’re like, “Really?” This was all so much work, and then just to have them be destroyed is awful. I mean we have researchers wait forever, and they want certain things, you know, perfectly done, so we started bringing them back even to manage it from a procurement expert standpoint.

2) Cate Dyer says that some of the abortion clinics StemExpress works with have unsanitary conditions:

SE: We’ll do testing on our side, so we’ll be able to see, you know. And sometimes we’ll find that it can be clinic-specific. I’ve seen really rampant, rampant problems with bacteria in certain clinics. [laughter] Some where you’re kind of in question of should they really, you know, [laughing]
Buyer: Right.
SE: I’ve seen staph come out of clinics.
Buyer: Wow.
SE: So, I mean, I’ve seen all sorts of things come out of clinics, so.

3) Cate Dyer estimates StemExpress is working with nearly 100 abortion clinics nationwide, and still can’t get enough fetal liver:

Buyer: What would make your lab happy? What would make your lab happy?
SE: Another fifty livers a week.
Buyer: Ok, so you can handle that?
SE: Yea. Just so you guys know, on the collection side for us, we’re also- as you see Megan out there in the clinic, we’re working with almost triple digit number clinics. So, it’s a lot on volume a little more than what we do. It’s a lot. So, I don’t think you’ll hit a capacity with us anytime in the next ten years. I think you’ll feel solid with that standpoint. So, I think, with that you’ll feel like doing an agreement with us. It will be consistent growth and our growth has been consistent, and it’s going to continue to grow from that standpoint.

4) Cate Dyer laughs and jokes about researchers being squeamish about receiving baby parts in the mail:

SE: As you probably know, one of the issues with neural tissue, it’s so fragile. It’s insanely fragile. And I don’t even know—I was gonna say, I know we get requests for neural, it’s the hardest thing in the world to ship.
Buyer: You do it as the whole calvarium.
SE: Yeah, that’s the easiest way. And we’ve actually had good success with that.
Buyer: Make sure the eyes are closed!
SE: Yeah! [laughter] Tell the lab it’s coming!
Buyer: Yeah.
SE: They’ll open the box, go, ”Oh God!” [laughter] So yeah, so many of the academic labs cannot fly like that, they’re not capable.
Buyer: Why is that? I don’t understand that.
SE: It’s almost like they don’t want to know where it comes from. I can see that. Where they’re like, “We need limbs, but no hands and feet need to be attached.” And you’re like, ? Or they want long bones, and they want you to take it all off, like, make it so that we don’t know what it is.
Buyer: Bone the chicken for me and then we’ll—
SE: That’s it.
Buyer: And then I’ll eat it, but.
SE: But we know what it is. I mean, [laughter], but their lab.
Buyer: But then it goes to that whole stigma.
SE: Oh yeah. And their lab techs freak out, and have meltdowns, and so it’s just like, yeah. I think, quite frankly, that’s why a lot of researchers ultimately, some of them  want to get into other things. They want to look at bone marrow, they want to look at adipose- sort of adult human, kind of adult based sampling. They want to avoid publishing a paper that says it was derived from fetal tissue.

5) Cate Dyer says StemExpress has a good relationship with Planned Parenthood leadership:

Buyer: Do you feel that support from Cecile [Richards] and from Deborah [Nucatola]?
SE: Yea, oh yea. You know, everyone at PPFA. I just think that you’re in the cause or you’re not. If you’re not in the cause, they don’t need you around. They need champions and if you’re not a champion, then you should go.  That’s just- I don’t know, the clinics are very guarded, as they should be. Who do they let in their house, they let champions in their house. Right? I think it’s that same concept and ABR has just never understood that.

6) Cate Dyer believes the breakdown of how many independent vs. Planned Parenthood clinics that StemExpress is working with could be split about 50-50:

Buyer: Are you seeing any trends between the independents versus Planned Parenthoods? Your breakdown right now, are things split pretty fifty-fifty?
SE: I think it probably is. I don’t know- it is different. I don’t think that one has more pro’s or con’s than the other. I mean, Planned Parenthood has volume, because they are a volume institution.