Report: Planned Parenthood Isn’t Harvesting Fetal Tissue in Pa.

Planned Parenthood’s offices in Center City. (Google Streetview)

Planned Parenthood clinics in Pennsylvania do not participate in the controversial practice of fetal tissue donation, the state’s top health officer says.

“Although donation of fetal tissue is lawful under the Abortion Control Act and federal law, our review has found that Planned Parenthood facilities in Pennsylvania do not participate in this practice,” Secretary of Health Karen Murphy wrote in a letter reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Moreover, there is no evidence that any Planned Parenthood site in this commonwealth is involved in the buying or selling of fetal tissue.”

Planned Parenthood has been under fire nationally after tapes emerged that purported to show organization officials negotiating with a buyer to harvest and sell the body parts of fetuses for medical research. Planned Parenthood’s defenders suggested the tapes were selectively edited to make the organization look bad — and add that federal funds don’t support its abortion activities anyway. (PP’s defenders further suggest that abortion is a very small portion of the organization’s activities.) But critics have gone after the organization, trying to cut off its funding at the federal level and in some states.

“Pennsylvania isn’t immune from abortion-related scandal,” the Tribune-Review reports. “The number of Pennsylvania abortion clinics has dropped from 24 to 19 since a 2011 law passed in response to the discovery of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s ‘house of horrors‘ Philadelphia abortion clinic, state Department of Health records show.”