By Susan Gately - 21 August, 2015
In the wake of horrific revelations that International Planned Parenthood is selling aborted baby body parts in the United States, including body parts harvested while there is still a foetal heartbeat, Irish pro life protesters will gather outside the Marie Stopes centre in Belfast today, Friday 21 August from 2 to 4pm.
The demonstration is part of the ‘Stop Marie Stopes Campaign’ which also calls on the public to send postcards to local MLAs to ensure the Stopes abortion clinic is closed “to prevent them from committing criminal offences of abortion in Northern Ireland”.
“Some people might wonder, ‘What does Planned Parenthood have to do with Northern Ireland?’,” asked Bernadette Smyth, the director of Precious Life.
“Just like the profit-driven abortionists in Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes’ mission is to exploit as many vulnerable women as they can. They lie to their ‘clients’ and lead them to believe that their unborn children are worthless ‘clumps of cells’ or ‘blood clots’ that can be flushed down a toilet.”
On Wednesday this week, the Center for Medical Progress, an American pro-life organisation, released its seventh undercover video which featured an interview with a former ‘procurement technician’ at a company StemExpress which supplies “human blood, tissue products, primary cells and other clinical specimens” to biomedical researchers around the world.
Holly O’Donnell gave a harrowing testimony of the practice of the harvesting of foetal body parts at an International Planned Parenthood clinic in Mar Monte’s Alameda, San Jose, California.
The horrific incident that caused Ms O’Donnell to quit her job occurred when her supervisor called her over one day.
A late term male baby had been aborted intact. “I want you to see something kind of cool,” said her supervisor.
“And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this foetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
Immediately after, Ms O’Donnell was asked to help harvest the brain of the baby.
Her supervisor began slicing open the baby’s face, and then asked Ms O’Donnell to continue.
Afterwards Ms O’Donnell described how she put the rest of the baby in a waste bin.
“I can’t even describe what that feels like,” she said. The visibly shaken woman decided immediately after that she could not continue to work at StemExpress.
The director of the Center for Medical Progress, David Daleiden, said the latest video (which can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzMAycMMXp8 ) contained “heartrending admissions about the absolute barbarism of Planned Parenthood’s abortion practice and baby parts sales in which foetuses are sometimes delivered intact and alive”.
He went on, “Planned Parenthood is a criminal organisation from the top down and should be immediately stripped of taxpayer funding and prosecuted for their atrocities against humanity.”
California law prohibits any kind of experimentation on a foetus with a discernible heartbeat, said Mr Daleiden, calling for the federal government to cease its $500 million a year support to Planned Parenthood and for it to be investigated.
In the wake of the undercover investigations, five states have defunded Planned Parenthood — Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Utah and New Hampshire and StemExpress, based in Placerville, California, has terminated its “activities with Planned Parenthood”.
This Saturday almost 300 rallies and protests are to take place at Planned Parenthood clinics across the US.
The Friday demonstration in Belfast takes place outside the Marie Stopes centre at Great Victoria Street from 2 to 4pm.
