Videos spur protests outside Pittsburgh Planned Parenthood, nationwide

An anti-abortion group Tuesday released another video purporting to expose potentially nefarious activity tied to Planned Parenthood, the latest in a series of secretly recorded footage fueling a nationwide outcry.

Dozens of protesters filled sidewalks from about noon to 1 p.m. near Planned Parenthood's clinic in Pittsburgh's Downtown, among similar rallies in a reported 65 cities. The protest began within hours of the release of a video by a group that calls itself the Center for Medical Progress.

“We're asking the government to investigate and bring charges against the people who have done this,” said protester Nicole Craig of Verona, who said she thinks the undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood staffers discussing profiting illegally from the sale of fetal tissue.

Craig wants the government to stop funding the organization.

Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania blasted the videos for being heavily edited, deceptive and obtained illegally. It urged media organizations not to publish the footage and dismissed the group leaking the videos as an “extreme activist organization whose sole mission is to prevent women from accessing health care and to destroy Planned Parenthood.”

“CMP has used footage obtained through deceit and unlawful behavior, including possible violations of state recording laws, federal tax laws and falsified state identification,” Planned Parenthood said in a statement. “Then, they concoct wildly false stories through selective editing.”

The videos have triggered investigations into Planned Parenthood in Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio and Texas, but not Pennsylvania.

“Gov. Wolf condemns the inexcusable comments made by Planned Parenthood officials in recent videos, and these videos have raised serious concerns,” Wolf spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan said by email.

An initial review by the state Department of Health did not flag any complaints or violations with providers, Sheridan said. The department “will continue to ensure that Pennsylvania clinics are always in compliance with the law,” he said.

There have been “a lot of (legislative) member requests on how much money” Planned Parenthood gets in Pennsylvania, said Stephen Miskin, spokesman for House Republicans.

Pennsylvania does not allocate any money directly to Planned Parenthood, but the state funds nonprofits called Family Planning Councils, which may award subgrants to Planned Parenthood for services such as breast cancer screenings.

From July 2014 to June 2015, those councils reimbursed Planned Parenthood $584,000 in state and federal money for nearly 29,000 claims, according to a document the Wolf administration provided Tuesday to lawmakers who requested the information.

The third video in two weeks includes graphic footage and testimony by a young woman identified as phlebotomist Holly O'Donnell, saying she fainted during her first day of work for a Planned Parenthood contractor when asked to pick up the leg of an aborted baby with tweezers.

“The storage and examination processes that CMP used to get this footage are medically necessary,” Planned Parenthood said. “It is necessary medical professionals ensure an abortion is complete so that patients do not get an infection. When tissue is donated for medical research, these steps are also necessary for the donations to be completed.”

It is illegal to sell fetal tissue for profit but legal for a group providing it to recover the costs of the procedure.

Planned Parenthood has said it has done nothing illegal or improper. It receives more than $500 million annually in government aid, including some state funds. Federal funds cannot be used for abortions except for pregnancies involving rape, incest or when the mother's life is in danger.

The U.S. Senate will vote before its August recess on an effort to block federal aid to Planned Parenthood, said GOP presidential hopeful and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a physician.

Anti-abortion senators will need 60 of the Senate's 100 votes to prevail. There are 54 Republicans and just a few anti-abortion Democrats, though some abortion-rights Democrats have avoided defending the comments that Planned Parenthood officials made in the videos.

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 so-called “house of horrors” Philadelphia abortion clinic, state Department of Health records show.

Pennsylvania's Act 122 requires clinics to meet the same standards as surgical centers, including monthly safety inspections and registered nurses on staff. Twenty-one other states have such requirements.

Pittsburgh's Planned Parenthood spent more than $300,000 to comply with the law, including money for renovations. The Liberty Avenue clinic had to expand the size of some rooms, replace tile floors with laminate flooring and hire staff.

Clinic volunteers wearing neon-pink vests escorted patients past protesters, who carried signs displaying phrases such as “Women & Children Deserve Better” and images of aborted fetuses.

Henry Caruso, 63, of Carrick, a longtime anti-abortion protester, said the video leaks helped to quadruple the number of protesters he usually joins.

“The difficulty for so long has been to make people see the humanity of the unborn, to make them look at the tiny hands and feet, to make them really see that yes, this is a person, a tiny, little person,” Maggie Anderson, 30, of Greenfield said to the group of protesters from a microphone.

The Center for Medical Progress, which did not return a call for comment, has suggested it plans to release as many as a dozen more videos.

Natasha Lindstrom is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Staff writer Brad Bumsted and The Associated Press contributed.