On Tuesday, the pro-life Center for Medical Progress released an undercover video with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the Planned Parenthood senior director of medical research. In the video, Nucatola calmly explains while chomping on a salad how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted babies:
We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact…I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.
She continued by explaining the cost structure, and the need to cover up the fact that selling of organs clears a profit:
Every provider has patients who want to donate their tissue, and they want to accommodate them. They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as: This clinic is selling tissue. This clinic is making money off this. In the Planned Parenthood world, they’re very, very sensitive to that. Some affiliates might do it for free. They want to come to a number that looks like a reasonable number for the effort that is allotted on their part…
Planned Parenthood, the abortion mill responsible for some 320,000 terminations of pregnancies every year, received $27.8 million taxpayer dollars this year; as the Free Beacon points out, Planned Parenthood has cashed nearly $190 million worth of government checks since 2012.
In the aftermath of “local news story” Kermit Gosnell, you’d imagine that the nation’s biggest abortion provider selling body parts at a profit might get some attention. You’d be wrong. CNN and MSNBC ignored the story entirely on Tuesday.
Other media outlets waited for Planned Parenthood to spin the story, then reported the Planned Parenthood spin (“In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs…Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different”).
The Washington Post went with the Orwellian headline, “Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood official discussing fetal organs used for research.” Aside from missing the entire point of the story – the specific attempts to crush a baby’s skull to preserve its liver for research, the money exchanging hands – the headline is clearly spot on. The opening line is even riper with delightful nuance:
An antiabortion group on Tuesday released an undercover video of an official at Planned Parenthood discussing in graphic detail how to abort a fetus to preserve its organs for medical research — as well as the costs associated with sharing that tissue with scientists.
Then there’s Cosmopolitan, a publication organized on the principle that there are 1,876,431 mindblowing ways to please your man (and, by the way, abortion is freedom!). Their headline: “That Planned Parenthood Video Isn’t The Scandal Abortion Opponents Are Making It Out to Be.”
Columnist Robin Marty explains, “It’s mostly a matter of clever wording, unsubstantiated allegations, and a reliance on the fact that most people find medical practices kind of gross.” Well, those things, and the fact that Planned Parenthood’s top doctor admitted on tape to killing babies in a manner specifically designed to preserve organs for sale.
Reuters went with this charming headline: “Planned Parenthood slams secret video as false portrayal of fetus tissue program.” Their opener:
Planned Parenthood said on Tuesday a secretly recorded video that surfaced on the Internet falsely portrayed the reproductive health group’s participation in the sale of tissue and body parts from aborted fetuses. The non-profit organization said the video had been heavily edited and recorded by a group that was established to damage its reputation.
If Planned Parenthood says so, it must be so! The Associated Press played the same angle: “Anti-abortion group release video showing Planned Parenthood official discussing disposition of fetal remains.” That sounds like a rather dull story, until you realize it’s the same story as the one about a Planned Parenthood official talking about beheading babies in the womb to preserve their livers for sale. This is no surprise from the Associated Press, which also wrote about pro-lifers yesterday:
Calling their opponents Satan worshippers and savages, anti-abortion lawmakers on Wednesday insisted that Republican contenders keep an intense focus on social issues in the upcoming midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race.
The article’s reference to calling opponents Satan worshippers came from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who specifically cited supporters of Wendy Davis chanting “Hail, Satan” – which is what they did.
It isn’t just the media themselves blocking coverage of the issue – Facebook initially blocked people from posting a story about Planned Parenthood by Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, on the grounds that such content “includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.”
The American people largely believe that Planned Parenthood is benign, in the same way they believe that Barack Obama is a well-meaning president who has crafted universal health care and foreign peace. That’s due to the left’s media fluffers, constantly ensuring that the chosen organizations of the left are fully capable of deploying their charms to screw Americans with their own taxpayer dollars.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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