COLUMBUS – Ohio’s attorney general joined the governors of Georgia and Indiana and on Thursday ordered investigations of Planned Parenthood facilities in their states to determine if organs from aborted fetuses were being sold.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
The state investigations — as well as probes announced Wednesday by three Republican-led congressional committees — come in response to the release of an undercover video made by anti-abortion activists. The video shows Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, discussing procedures for providing fetal body parts to researchers.
“The video showing Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services calmly discussing the best way to kill an unborn child in order to preserve the condition of the baby’s internal organs is truly horrifying,” Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a statement announcing the investigation.
DeWine says, because Planned Parenthood operates three facilities in Ohio where abortions are performed the clinics their directors are required to make sure that the organization “does not support illegal activity.”
Officials from Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio said they are following Ohio law, which forbids experimentation upon, and sale of, fetal tissues and organs gained through an abortion.
Planned Parenthood officials say Thursday that Nucatola has been “reprimanded.” They did not elaborate. The organization’s president, Cecile Richards, apologized for the tone of some of Nucatola’s recorded statements.
In Congress, House Speaker John Boehner said Planned Parenthood has embraced “gruesome practices.”
Dan Tierney, spokesman for the DeWine’s office, said that although abortion clinics are operated with licenses through the Ohio Department of Health, DeWine’s office has “some civil jurisdiction over clinics that operate under nonprofit status.”
While illegal in Ohio, donating tissue is legal in some other states with the woman’s consent. Buying and selling fetal tissue or organs is illegal in the United States, however.