More Investigations into U.S. Group's Policies on Aborted Fetuses

Officials in Georgia, Indiana and Ohio have ordered investigations of Planned Parenthood facilities in their states to determine if organs from aborted fetuses were being sold.

The investigations — as well as probes announced Wednesday by three Republican-led congressional committees — come in response to the release of an undercover video made by anti-abortion activists. The video shows Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, discussing procedures for providing fetal body parts to researchers.

Planned Parenthood officials said Nucatola has been "reprimanded." They did not elaborate. The organization's president, Cecile Richards, apologized for the tone of some of Nucatola's recorded statements.

Nucatola is heard in the video referring to fetal hearts, lungs and livers and to efforts to retrieve these organs intact rather than crush them during an abortion procedure. She also is heard giving a range of monetary estimates for their procurement.

The commercial sale of fetal tissue is outlawed. Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other reproductive health services, says it legally helps women who want to make not-for-profit donations of their fetus' organs for scientific research.

According to Planned Parenthood, the monetary sums mentioned by Nucatola were for reimbursement of the clinics' costs in handling the tissue donations. "Nobody should be 'selling' tissue. That's just not the goal here," Nucatola says at one point.

The video, made covertly last year, was produced by the California-based Center for Medical Progress, which released it with the support of several national anti-abortion organizations. It shows a lunchtime conversation between Nucatola and anti-abortion activists posing as potential buyers for a human biologics company.

Ohio's top lawyer, Attorney General Mike DeWine, said he'll investigate whether Planned Parenthood may have violated its nonprofit status and made money from the sale of fetal organs.

But in a video, Richards describes as "outrageous" the claims that Planned Parenthood clinics were breaking the law by selling fetal tissue for profit.

In Congress, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said Planned Parenthood has embraced "gruesome practices," and he voiced skepticism at the suggestion that its procedures were legitimate.

"I could talk about the video, but I think I'd vomit ... It's disgusting," he said.