Clift: ‘Tragedy’ That People Are Trying to Defund Planned Parenthood

Daily Beast correspondent Eleanor Clift stated “it’s a tragedy” that Planned Parenthood will “be the center of attempts, mostly by the right, to try to defund them entirely” on Friday’s “McLaughlin Group.”

Clift maintained that the money Planned Parenthood receives is “for storage and shipping. And I acknowledge that listening to them talk about this in what seems to be a very callous way is disturbing, but these are tissues and fetal organs where the women have given their permission, many of them get great comfort from thinking that this can go to help someone else, the drug companies do research with this. We get — that’s how we get cures. And these were edited in a way to make it seem as though Planned Parenthood is selling this, and that is illegal. So, that’s not happening. But it’s a continuation of the abortion debate that we have in this country, and Planned Parenthood delivers very many health services to women around the country. And I think it’s a tragedy that they are now, once again, going to be the center of attempts, mostly by the right, to try to defund them entirely.”

After Pat Buchanan objected that the way Planned Parenthood’s employees talked sounded like something that belonged in Nazi Germany, Clift responded, “This is how medical professionals talk,” and that while the tone in which Planned Parenthood’s employees talked is “callous,” “if you heard any kind of surgery described graphically, you’d be pretty repelled as well.”

She added, “I don’t believe anybody has been proved to profit from this, and I would welcome the hearings on Capitol Hill. Let them have the hearings. They’re going to find that Planned Parenthood did nothing illegal.” And “If the Republicans turn this into a top-line issue going into the 2016 election, it will be a loser for them, because a majority of Americans support a woman’s right to have an abortion in the early stages of her pregnancy.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett