Bioethicists on Latest PP Video: Partial-birth Abortion Likely Used

Two bioethicists who sometimes disagree over the abortion issue have agreed on one thing: Planned Parenthood's described abortion procedures sound like partial-birth abortions.

Dr. Dennis Sullivan, director of the Center for Bioethics at Cedarville University and Art Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University have both raised questions and concerns over Planned Parenthood's abortion.

According to the videos, some abortion doctors performing the abortion might also be thinking about trying to harvest tissue, and because of this might alter their procedure in order to obtain in-tact tissue.

Sullivan, a pro-life Christian, also told TheBlaze that the way in which Dr. Deborah Nucatola, a director from Planned Parenthood, described how some baby organs can be harvested causes questions over how the organ procurement might be taking precedence over the abortion itself.

Medical practitioners generally believe an abortion should be as safe and beneficial to the woman as possible.

"Plainly stated: For those seeking an abortion, it's the procedure — and not organ donation — that should be on physicians' minds," TheBlaze reports.

"In abortion the primary goal is to give the safest abortion possible. Your sole concern has to be the mother and her health," Caplan told CNN.

Critics of Planned Parenthood have pointed out how the videos could be evidence that the abortion giant is using procedures identical to partial-birth abortion to gather in-tact specimens.

In the video, Nucatola described her methods of abortion that help keep the fetus as in tact as possible for specimen donation. "... I'm gonna see if I can get it all intact. And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it's not vertex,..." she explained.

Caplan focused on Nucatola's mention of ultrasound guidance being used to help doctors know where to grab the unborn baby with forceps. He voiced concern that any efforts to change an abortion procedure simply to procure tissue are problematic.

Caplan compared it to the example of doctors hypothetically changing the treatment of a patient for donation purposes. "That's a huge conflict of interest. … If you modify how someone dies, that's unethical."

"I delivered a lot of babies. I've done a lot of OB," Sullivan told The Blaze's Billy Hallowell. "The normal way that the fetus sits in the womb is head down."

Sullivan said Nucatola's statements also caught his attention.

"We've got this director who's saying, 'You know what? Sometimes for our convenience … we're going to rotate the baby … that might even help preserve the calvarium, so we can get some of the brain tissue in tact for use for fetal research," he said. "So, sounds awfully close to saying that 'We're willing to do an illegal procedure in order to provide this tissue.'"

"Dr. Kaplan and I agree that it is wrong if we're willing to change a procedure … in order to accomplish our goal of having more tissue to sell for fetal research," he told the news website.