The Marketing of Aborted Baby Parts

By: Mark Crutcher | President, Life Dynamics Incorporated
Original Release Date: February, 2000
Updated: March, 2007


In April of 1997, Life Dynamics began an undercover investigation into the marketing of body parts harvested from babies killed by elective abortions. This investigation lasted approximately 31 months. Most of the information in this report was provided by employees who worked at Comprehensive Health for Women (Comp Health) – a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic located in Overland Park, Kansas.

The System


Federal laws, and many state laws, make it illegal to buy or sell human bodies or body parts. However, they can be legally donated for medical research and certain other legitimate purposes. In such cases, the supplier is allowed to recover from the recipient any reasonable out-of-pocket expenses that were necessary to fill the recipient’s order.

Some abortion industry insiders, wanting to financially profit on the growing market for fetal tissue and body parts, have devised a scheme to circumvent these restrictions.

This is how the system works:

  1. A baby parts “wholesaler” enters into a financial agreement with an abortion clinic in which the wholesaler pays a monthly “site fee” to the clinic. For this payment, the wholesaler is allowed to place a retrieval agent inside the clinic where he or she is given access to the corpses of children killed there and a workspace to harvest their parts. In most cases, this retrieval agent is an employee of the wholesaler. In other instances, the retrieval agent is a clinic employee who was trained by the wholesaler.
  2. The buyer – usually a researcher working for a medical school, pharmaceutical company, bio-tech company or government agency – supplies the wholesaler with a list of the baby parts wanted.
  3. When such orders are received by the wholesaler, they are faxed to the retrieval agent at the clinic who harvests the requested parts and ships them to the buyer via FedEx, Airborne or a similar common carrier.
  4. These parts are “donated” by the clinic to the wholesaler who turns around and “donates” them to the buyer. The buyer then “reimburses” the wholesaler for the cost of retrieving the parts.

On the surface, this system does not appear to violate the legal prohibitions against trafficking in human body parts since, technically speaking, no one is buying or selling anything. 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 sets limits regarding these payments. Additionally, no governmental or law enforcement agency is charged with overseeing the system.

This means that the wholesaler is free to set site fees and retrieval fees at any amount. Despite the fact that the baby parts business is teeming with profound moral implications, and despite the fact it has enormous potential for financial abuse, it is allowed to operate on the honor system. It is certainly no secret that this sort of self-policing never works in environments where large amounts of money are involved. In this case, the result is that the corpses of children killed by elective abortion are now marketed like old car parts salvaged from the local junkyard. Rhetoric like “site fees,” “donations,” and “retrieval reimbursement costs” are simply code words designed to conceal that fact.

Shortly after Life Dynamics exposed the abortion industry was selling baby body parts for profit in 2000, ABC’s 20/20 decided to investigate. This interview with Opening Lines founder, Miles Jones, is a clip of their television special. The comments by Jones reveal the abortion industry’s motive is purely profit.

The Players


Although other organizations are well known to be involved in the wholesaling of baby parts, this document focuses on just two companies, the Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF) and Opening Lines.

AGF:

AGF was founded in 1994 by Jim and Brenda Bardsley in a double-wide trailer house on the Satilla River outside rural White Oak, Georgia. This AGF facility is also a catfish farm called Sweetwater Farms. The Bardsleys are the president and vice-president of the organization and Jim Bardsley’s brother, Brent, is its executive director. The group’s headquarters has been moved to Laurel, Maryland, but the White Oak address is still listed among AGF’s several locations.

AGF also has offices in Arizona and Colorado. The Phoenix facility appears to only provide adult tissue and is not known to be involved in the marketing of baby parts. However, the Aurora, Colorado, office is located inside a freestanding abortion clinic (Mayfair Women’s Clinic). AGF’s employee at this facility is a woman named Ying Bei Wang. AGF also claims to have operatives in abortion clinics on the east coast and in the midwest.

Opening Lines:

Pathologist Miles Jones, in West Frankfort, Illinois, founded Opening Lines in 1997. Jones’ business partner, Gayla Rose, handles its daily operations. Opening Lines is currently harvesting baby parts only from abortion clinics in the United States, but claims to be actively pursuing sources in Canada and Mexico.

As for ties between AGF, Opening Lines and the abortion industry, the National Abortion Federation listed AGF as a member in 1998, and in 1991 both Miles Jones and Gayla Rose were cited as donors in the National Abortion Federation’s annual report.

The last known addresses we had for these organizations are:

Anatomic Gift Foundation

96 Satilla Drive
White Oak, GA 31568
(912) 576-5889
(912) 576-3727 fax

Anatomic Gift Foundation

13948 Baltimore Avenue
Laurel, MD 20707
(301) 953-2702
(301) 953-2701 fax
1-800-300-5433
web: anatomicgift.com

Anatomic Gift Foundation of Arizona

1313 N 2nd Street, Suite 2
Phoenix, AZ 85004
(602) 528-3715
(602) 528-3717 fax

Anatomic Gift Foundation (Mayfair Women’s Clinic)

14446 E Evans Avenue
Aurora, CO 80014
(303) 696-9761 (Mayfair)
(303) 755-8601 AGF voice & fax

Opening Lines/Professional Arts Lab

A Division of Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology
PO Box 508
502 W St. Louis Street
West Frankfort, IL 62896
(618) 937-2439
(618) 937-1525 fax
1-800-490-9980