Planned Parenthood, Black Market Organ Sales and International Organ Theft Documented Long Term

Many publications carry research articles about black market organ dealing, even Psychology Today (Psychology Today. Body Snatchers: Organ Harvesting For Profit; 11/13/2013). The medical and other research literature contains much evidence since the 1980s, including books made available to the public from author Nancy Scheper-Hughes and other scientific researchers in this topic.

A recent worldwide university database search for the topic of organ theft yielded over 55,000 results since 1984. Still, voices of opposition declare that the black market for human organs does not exist and that rumors of it began later, in 1986 or 1987. The use of aborted fetal tissues for organ development, even an allegation of the sales of these tissues, is a related issue.

In a mid-1990s survey, I visited abortion clinics in my large city and applied for a job as a counselor at each. I learned a lot about these clinics.

I saw that the busiest area of each clinic was the Accounts Receivable room, the desks filled with several people processing insurance forms, both private and some Medicaid. Stacks of insurance claims were several inches thick. Stacks of incoming checks were also thick. Abortions cost between $370 - $400 in my city then, so the stacks looked like a lot of money.

In 2015, news surfaced alleging that Planned Parenthood sells baby body parts. Opposition voices point out that the "sales" are actually fees used to recoup transportation costs. A second part of the allegation is that illegal partial birth abortions are used to obtain whole organs rather than destroyed organs. A thorough investigation is necessary, although undercover videos about this situation are pretty disgusting.

I want to see the "Usual and Customary" price schedules of the transport companies and the actual bills for transport of these organs or tissues of aborted fetuses so that I can compare them. Why? --

My first thought was a recollection of eBay sellers that charge cheap prices for products and then charge quadruple the usual shipping fees. For that matter, I unwitting paid five times the usual and customary price for a particular item before the Internet was available for price comparisons. Might an abortion clinic charge more than the Usual and Customary fees for shipping, make blatant sales, or even falsify paperwork to cover sales? This all is the dark side of business. Does healthcare have a dark side? Remembering investigations into insurance fraud in Ohio, I think it does.

If the prices for Planned Parenthood transport of organs and tissues actually checks as accurate, Usual and Customary, then I think that no legal problem about sales of fetal tissues presents itself - but I am not an attorney.

If shipping prices are higher than Usual and Customary - or someone picks up tissues at the clinic and pays shipping anyway - then I think there is a crime related to sales. NBC in Chicago reported that illegal sales of an organ carries a fine of up to $50,000 plus a possible prison sentence (NBC Chicago, Market For Black Market Organs Expands; 5/21/2014).

Las Vegas in 1986 surprised me by having newspaper dispensers on every corner that did not dispense news. The papers inside them advertised women.

Years later, I learned that intergenerational trafficking rings in Toledo, Ohio had been supplying Las Vegas, as well as Detroit, Chicago, the Province of Ontario, and international ports with humans to traffic for unpaid work and for the sex trade. Since 2010, this problem in Toledo has been addressed by city mayors, state governors, and the state and federal legal, education and social services systems and is improving.

Appallingly, some of the unpaid work included involuntary organ donation.

At a 1986 writers' convention in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to hear about a deceased woman found in a hotel bathtub and missing some organs. I put the news out of my mind until attending graduate school classes a couple of years later in the Midwest, where I heard about this event and other organ theft in my classes. Whether the 1986 case was true or false, it was copied in reality in Central Ohio. We had news reports and photos of women left in dumpsters, some organs missing, in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.

• Andre, C. & Velasquez, M. (2013) Kidneys for Sale. Santa Clara University. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v1n2/kidneys.html Retrieved July 23, 2015.
• Budiani‐Saberi, D., & Mostafa, A. (2011). Care for commercial living donors: the experience of an NGO’s outreach in Egypt. Transplant International, 24(4), 317-323.
• Connors, C. M. (2014). The Deserving And Undeserving: Examining Ontario's New Strategy For Organ And Tissue Donation.
• Frederick, D. (2010). Competitive Market in Human Organs, A. Libertarian Papers, 2,
• Fry-Revere, S., & Fry, S. (2012). A Federal Organ Grab Without Consent. The Tea.
• Hench, S., & Zartman, J. The Ethics of Organ Sales and Donations: A Global Perspective.
• Scheper-Hughes, N. (2015). The Ghosts of Montes de Oca. The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, 72(02), 187-220.
• Scheper-Hughes, N. (1990). Theft of life. Society, 27(6), 57-62.
• Shelton, W. (2001) The Ethics of Organ Transplantation (Advances in Bioethics). Emerald Group Publishing Limited; 1st edition, 329.
• Woan, S. (2007). Buy Me a Pound of Flesh: China's Sale of Death Row Organs on the Black Market and What Americans Can Learn From It. Santa Clara Law Review, 47(2).