Planned Parenthood official appears to share how to circumvent laws against partial-birth abortions

In a new video released on Thursday by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), a Planned Parenthood medical director has apparently shared how abortionists circumvent laws banning partial-birth abortions.

Dr. Suzie Prabhakaran, vice president of medical affairs for Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, is seen in the video seemingly discussing late-term "dismemberment" and partial-birth abortion protocols in the context of fetal body part harvesting.

According to Life News, the federal partial-birth abortion ban prohibits abortions in which the fetus is extracted alive up to certain anatomical landmarks.

Prabhakaran told undercover investigators that abortionists can get around the federal ban by using a feticide such as digoxin to kill the baby before the procedure, or they can simply state their "intent" to use a different procedure.

"So some people train to just document that like, you know to comply with the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, you basically have to say, 'I intend to utilize dismemberment techniques for this procedure,'" she said.

She further explained that there's a checkbox in a document that abortionist can use to state their intention to perform dismemberment abortion, but later perform a partial-birth abortion.

"That's how you comply. I'm not doing digoxin, and we're just going to document and there's never been a problem," she said.

According to The Stream, the use of digoxin, which stops the baby's heart prior to the abortion, would make the baby's organs unviable for harvesting.

The medical director also told undercover investigators that her affiliate is merging with a Planned Parenthood clinic in Orlando that performs abortions up to 22 weeks and six days into pregnancy. She noted that the Orlando clinic does a high volume of procedures with "18 abortions at 18 weeks and above scheduled for the next week."

Prabhakaran's explanation of protocols for second-trimester abortion procedures seemed to corroborate statements from another Planned Parenthood official in CMP's first undercover video, showing a lax attitude toward the partial-birth abortion law.

In a clip from an earlier video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, can be heard saying that "laws are up to interpretation."

"So there are some people who interpret [the partial-birth abortion ban] as, it's intent," Nucatola said. "So if I say on Day One I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn't matter," she added.

In a statement, CMP founder David Daleiden called on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation on Planned Parenthood regarding its late-term abortion practices. He also urged the U.S. Congress to "stop forcing taxpayers to subsidize Planned Parenthood's brutal abortion empire."