Emails shared with the New York Post by a pro-life activist show Planned Parenthood negotiating the terms of donation for aborted fetuses with medical researchers.
According to the Post, the emails discuss tissue from fetuses up to 23 weeks old in a casual manner, much like a commodity.
A heavily-redacted "Research Plan" approved in 2018 by the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Institutional Review Board states that scientists were seeking tissues from 2,500 fetuses "ranging from 4 to 23 weeks gestational age from subjects undergoing elective surgical pregnancy termination at Planned Parenthood in San Diego."
In one email to Planned Parenthood, researchers say they have 27 heart samples but are looking to obtain more of varying fetal ages, including 15 weeks and later.
"She agrees with me that hearts should be pretty easy to collect," one UCSD researcher wrote.
The sale of fetal tissue is illegal, but the donation of such tissue is not illegal. Planned Parenthood appears to retain "intellectual property rights relating to the" fetal tissue under the contract it entered into with UCSD, but the Post reported that the document does not appear to give UCSD the independent right to "commercialize" the tissue.
The emails shared with the Post were obtained by pro-life activist David Daleiden and his organization, the Center for Medical Progress, through a California state public records request.
With modern medical care, the majority of healthy infants born prematurely at 23 weeks can survive. In April 2021, Curtis Means was born at 21 weeks and two days in Alabama, becoming the youngest surviving premature baby.
"These documents show that Planned Parenthood is supplying healthy babies who are old enough to survive outside the womb from late term abortions to the University of California's royalty-generating experiments," Daleiden told the Post.
"After months of pro-abortion forces and media gaslighting the public about whether late term abortions on healthy babies and healthy mothers actually happen — to see it spelled out this explicitly in the records of a government-funded body is truly shocking [and] also extremely clarifying for the conversation on abortion our country is currently having," he added.
It could not be confirmed whether any of the fetuses donated to UCSD were healthy or able to survive outside the womb before being aborted.
Daleiden also accused Planned Parenthood of racism, pointing to the consent forms which are given to pregnant women discussing the donation of fetal tissue from their abortions.
According to the Post, the consent forms in English contain 15 bullet points, including a notification that the donated tissue may have "significant commercial value." The consent forms in Spanish, however, only contain 14 bullet points and do not communicate the information about the tissue's potential for "significant commercial value."
"I don't understand why Planned Parenthood … and UCSD felt that Spanish-speaking mothers did not deserve to know that the body parts of their aborted children would be 'commercialized' while English-speaking mothers did deserve to have this fact disclosed to them," Daleiden told the Post. "The only explanation I can think why this discrepancy persisted for at least four years is blatant institutional racism."
Newsmax has reached out to Planned Parenthood for comment.