Planned Parenthood celebrated Tuesday night as the nation’s largest abortion provider recognized 16 journalists by bestowing upon them the coveted “Maggie Awards for Media Excellence,” named after the organization’s founder and eugenicist Margaret Sanger.
The awards event comes in the midst of a month of gruesome undercover investigative videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s top medical directors discussing the altering of abortions in order to keep intact certain baby body parts and organs that can be sold on the open market to biomedical companies. The most recent videos feature a whistleblower, a former StemExpress technician, who has described cutting through the face of a recently aborted baby — with a heart still capable of beating — in order to harvest its brain.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said she was “inspired” by the journalists’ talent:
NewsBusters reports that among those journalists recognized at the gala event were The Nation, via Katha Politt, which won the Excellence in Media award; Buzzfeed, via Casey Gueren; Cosmopolitan, via Jill Filipovic; Ebony, via Jamilah Lemieux; Esquire, via John H. Richardson; MSNBC, via Irin Carmon; Salon, via Valerie Tarico; and Teen Vogue, via Phillip Picardi.
One attendee at the event tweeted out a picture of the program:
According to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Maggie Awards “recognize exceptional contributions by the media and arts and entertainment industries that enhance the public’s understanding of reproductive rights and health care issues, including contraception, sex education, teen pregnancy, abortion, and international family planning.”
The “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC have provided only minimal coverage of the first, second, and fourth videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress. According to Media Research Center, these networks have “partnered with Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision to censor from their evening newscasts” the seventh and most recent video describing the harvesting of the brain of an aborted baby boy while his heart was still able to beat.