Why Is Planned Parenthood Selling Your Babby For Scrap? (Oh Right, It's Not)

Here is some bullshit.

You may have heard about or even watched the horrific and shocking five-alarm Drudge siren alert video released Tuesday, proving, according to its title, that "Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts." The video was released by the Center for Medical Progress. Never heard of it? That's because it didn't really exist before Tuesday.

According to its website, CMP is a non-profit "group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances." Except that neither the site nor its Facebook page show any work by the group other than this video and a few documents it obtained, supposedly supporting the video's allegations. Its Twitter account appears to have been created in May of this year and, other than a "Hello, Twitter" tweet, used solely to promote its Planned Parenthood video.

Here is some more bullshit.

The site lists only one name from this "group of citizen journalists": David Daleiden. Who the fuck is he? Well, before he was seeking your donations for his investigative journalism into medical ethics, he wrote at Live Action News, a "pro-life" site dedicated to "investigating" abortion providers, primarily Planned Parenthood. For example, in 2011 he authored this great piece of "journalism" about Kansas passing a shiny new bill "giving the Health Department enhanced powers to regulate abortion clinics" -- in other words, further empowering the state to investigate reports by "pro-life" organizations that abortion providers were maybe (except never actually) committing criminal behavior. Like abortions, which are not actually criminal, but so what? Report them anyway, shut them down, and then oh well! Anti-choice advocates hoped this exciting law would allow Kansas to finally put out of business the state's few remaining abortion clinics after Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in his church by "pro-lifer" Scott Roeder.

There's no indication of what citizen journalist Daleiden thinks of the medical ethics of murdering doctors. Maybe that'll be his next project? He is awfully concerned about the well-being of "abortionists," after all. In 2010, he wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard, in which he decries the lack of research and studies about the "emotional distress for the abortionist."

Here iseven morebullshit.

In 2009, a wee lad "journalist" named Charles Johnson, writing at his site the Claremont Conservative, reported a riveting tale about "David Daleiden's Group, Live Action" producing a video that showed Planned Parenthood doing naughty crime things, like covering up statutory rape. (Yes, Charles Johnson isthatCharles Johnson, aka Charles C. Johnson, aka Chuck Johnson, aka that orange-haired asshole troll who is now permanently banned from Twitter. It's like all these jerk "citizen journalists" know each other or something, WEIRD.)

That particular video was one of a series of "sting" videos created by Live Action, in which "pro-life" activists like Daleiden go undercover, as pimps and prostitutes, or as minors with their older statutory rapist boyfriends, to try to coax Planned Parenthood employees into breaking the law. Almost all of the time, Live Action failed to get what it wanted, because Planned Parenthood is not actually a criminal enterprise run by Big Abortion's most evil masterminds. So Live Action simply edited its videos to make it appear as if Planned Parenthood workers were breaking the law. Then it released these edited videos and shouted "GOTCHA!" and demanded further investigations into Planned Parenthood's supposed wrongdoing. Just as CMP is doing now, with its GOTCHA! video. Huh, what a strange coincidence.

Here is EVEN MORE bullshit.

CMP claims its video is the result of a "3-year-long investigative journalism study of Planned Parenthood’s illegal trafficking of aborted fetal parts," about which Daleiden concludes:  

Planned Parenthood’s criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization. Elected officials must listen to the public outcry for Planned Parenthood to be held accountable to the law and for our tax dollars to stop underwriting this barbaric abortion business.

The video is a secret recording of some off-camera undercover "journalists" having a lunch meeting with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, so it's hard to understand how it took three years to "investigate" hitting the record button and then uploading it to YouTube. The eight-minute video supposedly (but not really) shows Dr. Nucatola explaining to these prospective customers how Planned Parenthood harvests highly desirable "body parts" -- heads, hearts, limbs, livers -- to illegally sell for $30 to $100. Whoa if true, et cetera.

Planned Parenthood says it's not true, obviously, and the "heavily edited" video in no way accurately portrays what the organization actually does,nor does it provide any evidence of the chamber of fetus-parts horrors the producers promise.But who are you going to believe: Planned Parenthood or some schmuck who's been shouting GOTCHA! at Planned Parenthood for the last five years? Here is what Planned Parenthood actually does, according to its statement:  

At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does -- with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards. There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood. In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.

In case you remain unconvinced, there's more. Snopes apparently viewed the entire "unedited" video, which is almost three hours long, and it is STILL unable to conclude that the video supports CMP's outrageous claims of illegally trafficked aborted fetus parts. Snopes does note, however:

Although it is unlawful “to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce,” it is legal for patients to donate extracted material for medical research. It’s possible that Nucatola is merely outlining the costs (e.g., labor, shipping) of that process, which allows “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.”

Hmm, the cost of extracting and shipping perfectly legal fetal tissue for perfectly legal medical research isn't quite as sensational, is it? But that hasn't stopped "pro-lifers" from denouncing Planned Parenthood, calling for its defunding, demanding that it be investigated, and blah blahing about the Abortion Industrial Complex. Gov. Bobby Jindal has already announced that Louisiana will conduct an investigation into Planned Parenthood, and he has ordered the state's Department of Health and Hospitals "to not issue any licenses until this investigation is complete." There's no indication whatsoever that this video was made in Louisiana or has anything at all to do with his state, but hey, what a convenient opportunity to show Republican primary voters how tough he is on women's health!

Gonna have to go with BULLSHIT.

Maybe Daleiden and his anonymous accomplices are right, and Planned Parenthood is illegally harvesting fetal body parts, for fun and profit, in which case BOO and shame on you, Planned Parenthood. But this SHOCKING! new video proves no such thing. It does prove that the same guy who's spent years trying to destroy one of the nation's biggest and best providers of women's healthcare, with his unapologetically "anti-choice" bias and creatively edited "sting" videos, is still at it, peddling what is, in all likelihood, just more of the Same Old Bullshit.

[ The Center for Medical Progress YouTube / The Times-Picayune / Planned Parenthood / Snopes ]