Planned Parenthood's Deborah Nucatola sipped wine over lunch and explained how to crush a baby without damaging the liver.
That supply chain still runs, and new purchase orders show a taxpayer-funded UCLA lab buying baby livers by the piece.
And when the paperwork got awkward, the broker told UCLA in writing exactly why the invoices had to change.
UCLA Paid $765 Apiece for Aborted Baby Livers and Thymus Glands
The Center for Medical Progress pried the records loose with a California Public Records Act request.
They show a UCLA lab placed orders in August and September 2023 with a company called Cercle Allocation Services.
Twenty-one body parts – fourteen livers and seven thymus glands.
Every one billed separately at $765, for a total of $16,065.
Then the haggling started – not over the price, but over the wording.
At Cercle's insistence, UCLA rewrote the orders several times to scrub out the sales-tax language.
A Cercle account manager laid out the problem in a September 2023 email: "The overriding issue is the use of terminology that we must not use due to their improper implication that we are selling taxable items."
The manager warned that lines like "Total Tax" and "Total Price Includes Sales Tax" "would imply that we are selling the items received (which are illegal to sell)."
Read that parenthetical again.
The company knew exactly what the law says.
Its answer was to change the paperwork.
The Federal Fetal Tissue Law Has a Loophole Built Right In
Federal law, 42 U.S. Code 289g-2, makes it a felony to transfer human fetal tissue for "valuable consideration."
The same statute lets companies collect "reasonable payments" for transportation, processing, preservation and storage.
That carve-out is the entire business model.
Call it a procurement fee, and a $765 baby liver becomes a "service."
Records show Cercle has charged up to $7,000 for a single fetal organ.
Planned Parenthood's Baby Parts Partner Was Flagged By Congress in 2016
Cercle used to go by another name – Advanced Bioscience Resources.
In December 2016, the House Select Investigative Panel chaired by Marsha Blackburn referred the company for investigation alongside Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and StemExpress.
Its pipeline of baby parts from Planned Parenthood clinics dates back to the 1990s.
Perrin Larton ran procurement for ABR and still works for Cercle.
In 2019, she told a court under oath that intact aborted babies were harvested "every couple months."
She also admitted that, more than once, she watched a baby's heart keep beating after it was cut out.
What Happened To Clementine? and the Baby Born Alive At Cherry Hill
CMP says a baby girl roughly five months along was born alive at the Cherry Hill Women's Center in New Jersey and handed to Cercle in March 2024.
The clinic charts featured in the documentary What Happened To Clementine? note a fetal heartbeat and mark the injection meant to kill her before delivery as "Not Administered."
Experts who went through the chart timestamps say the operating-room record leaves barely a minute for her removal.
Her mother signed Cercle's consent form while in labor.
"I felt like I had no choice," she said.
Her parents gave her a name, Clementine, and they want her body back.
The clinic and Cercle have both said no.
Her father, Thomas Kearns, read the UCLA price list.
"These body parts came from children just like my daughter Clementine – children who were more than just a liver or a thymus," he said.
David Daleiden, who founded CMP, said the invoices "show the extreme financial incentives that exist for 'research' abortions to deliver whole, preemie-size babies alive."
Trump's NIH Fetal Tissue Ban Stops At California's Checkbook
Donald Trump hit this trade in his first term and hit it again in his second.
In 2018, his HHS killed a $15,900 FDA contract with this very company.
In January 2026, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya ended federal funding for research using tissue from elective abortions, saying taxpayer-funded research "must reflect the best science of today and the values of the American people."
That ban covers NIH dollars.
Nothing in it stops a University of California lab from paying a fetal organ broker with state money.
Gavin Newsom sits as president of the UC Board of Regents, and he owes California taxpayers an answer on these orders.
A liver and a thymus gland are different organs, yet Cercle billed both at the identical $765.
That is not a cost calculation.
That is a price tag.
Florida Rep. Scott Franklin already wrote the fix.
His Prohibiting Abortion Industry's Lucrative Loopholes Act bans the "reasonable payments" gimmick outright and carries up to 10 years in prison for violators.
"I urge my colleagues to take immediate action to eliminate these loopholes," Franklin said when he reintroduced it in January 2025.
Speaker Mike Johnson can put it on the floor.
Every one of those 21 line items was somebody's child.
Sources:
- Steven Ertelt, "Company Sold Body Parts From Aborted Babies for $765 Each," LifeNews, October 1, 2026.
- Jasmine Baehr, "Fetal Tissue Supplier Billed $765 Procurement Fee per Organ, Warns Records Could Imply Illegal Sales," Fox News, September 30, 2026.
- Rachel Wolf, "Trump Admin Stops Funding for Research That Involves Aborted Baby Tissue," Fox News, January 22, 2026.
- Fred Lucas, "Trump Administration Kills Contract to Buy Fetal Tissue," The Daily Signal, September 25, 2018.
- Susan Berry, "House Select Panel Refers Abortion Clinics, Biomedical Companies for Investigation for Potential Violations," Breitbart, December 22, 2016.
- Office of Rep. Scott Franklin, "Franklin Reintroduces Bill to Ban Organizations from Profiting off Fetal Tissue," January 28, 2025.
