Former StemExpress Worker Says She Passed Out Sorting Through Aborted Baby Parts at Planned Parenthood

A new video released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) features an interview with a former StemExpress worker, who recalls that she passed out on her first day on the job as she was trained in sorting through the body parts of an aborted child at Planned Parenthood.

The video, entitled “First Day at StemExpress Inside Planned Parenthood,” is stated to be the first in a series of whistleblower interviews. StemExpress was a business partner with Planned Parenthood, and would be present in various facilities to procure the desired body parts following the abortions.

“[T]hey have the jars, or they have the clear pie dishes, where they have to make sure that all limbs and the head are within the POC (products of conception) to make sure that the woman doesn’t get sick,” Holly O’Donnell, who worked for StemExpress from December 2012 through April 23 before quitting her job, explains, noting that leaving parts of the baby inside the uterus following an abortion can make the mother sick.

She says that she was shocked upon seeing one of the pie dishes of blood and body parts for the first time.

“[My instructor] put the gloves on, and she took the instrument—the tweezers—and she starts going and fishing around in the pie dish and she’s trying to show me parts,” O’Donnell remembers. “She’s showing me parts of—‘This is a leg, this is an arm.’”

“And then she says, ‘Put some gloves on,’” she continues. “So I put the gloves on. She hands me the tweezers, and she goes, ‘Oh, can you show me some of the parts I just showed you?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’”

But moments later, as O’Donnell actually latched on to a limb with the tweezers, she blacked out.

“I put the tweezers in, and I put it on one of the limbs—and I’ve never felt this in my life—I felt the pain radiate through my hand. You can feel the death go up through; it was something that was just alive,” she recalls. “And I grabbed it, and I felt that, and I started to get woozy.”

“I said, ‘This is a …’ and then I stopped, and she said, ‘Are you okay?’” O’Donnell outlines. “And the next thing I know, I woke up in the recovery room.”

She then asked those around her what had happened.

“[A nurse] said, ‘You passed out when you saw the POC, the remains,’” O’Donnell explains.

She said she was embarrassed for blacking out during the first day on the job, but the nurse told her that she is not the only one bothered at the sight of dismembered babies.

“She said, ‘Don’t worry; honestly, some of us never get over it,’” O’Donnell recalled.

As previously reported, last year, the Congressional Select Panel on Infant Lives issued numerous criminal referrals while investigating Planned Parenthood and its partners, including StemExpress.

Specifically, the Congressional Committee noted in its report that StemExpress, Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) and Novogenics Laboratories purchased the bodily organs of aborted babies from several California Planned Parenthood locations, and then resold them at substantially higher prices. The organizations were also accused of hiking the prices above costs for “transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control or storage of” the body parts.

“[I]n June of 2014, an ABR technician obtained a 20-week-old fetus at a Planned Parenthood clinic, for which it paid $60,” the report outlined. “From that one fetus, ABR sold its brain to one customer for $325, both of its eyes for $325 each ($650 total) to a second customer, a portion of its liver for $325 to a third customer, its thymus for $325 and another portion of its liver for $325 to a fourth customer, and its lung for $325 to a fifth customer.”

StemExpress was accused of similar actions, paying Planned Parenthood $55 for a baby and then selling his or her body parts for $250 each, making $1000 from just one child.

The Committee also noted that despite Planned Parenthood’s “constant statements to the media that [its] affiliates had merely been recovering their costs” in receiving payment from ABR, StemExpress and other companies, its attorneys told the investigative Congressional panel that the Planned Parenthood offices only sought to determine their costs after-the-fact in light of national scrutiny.

“Around that time, Planned Parenthood announced it would no longer accept any payments in connection with its fetal tissue transfer programs,” Sen. Chuck Grassley explained.