Although marketing fetal tissue is a violation of federal law, a major loophole and a carefully devised scheme by abortion industry insiders has allowed for a profitable and growing industry in the sale of baby body parts.

Using a “wholesaler,” who can best be described as a middleman between researchers (at medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, bio-tech companies or government agencies, etc.) and the abortion clinics, requests for certain body parts are made, harvested, and “donated”. In this process the wholesaler pays a “site fee” to the clinic and is reimbursed for the cost of retrieving the parts.

On the surface, this is not illegal. In fact, this process is used in all sorts of medical clinics across the country for medical research. The loophole is that site fees and retrieval reimbursement amounts are unregulated. The law requires that such payments be reasonable and reflect the actual cost of securing the parts; but there are no state or federal laws which establish guidelines or set limits regarding these payments, and no one is appointed to oversee the system.

What we found is typical of the abortion industry self-policing. The bodies of aborted babies are now sold at premium prices and terms like “site fees”, “donations”, and “retrieval reimbursement costs” are simply code words designed to conceal the true activities that are taking place. (For more on the myth of self-regulation within the abortion industry, read Lime 5.)

And make no mistake, the people involved in the trafficking of baby parts were not profit-driven infiltrators, but those who had connections to Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, or both.