Planned Parenthood has never truly been on defense. Its highly funded political machine is more familiar with attack mode.
David Daleiden’s videos showing Planned Parenthood personnel negotiating the sale of baby parts — a phrase that has now entered the lexicon — and blithely fishing around in baby guts to pluck out eyes, hearts, livers and lungs has put the abortion giant in a defensive crouch.
Cecil Richards, the obviously beleaguered Planned Parenthood CEO, tried to change all that with a letter she sent yesterday to Congressional leadership.
The letter is at once a general denial of its baby-parts business and at the same time a defense of it, along with a full-on attack on “anti-abortion extremist” Daleiden and his videos.
Richards claims that only 1 percent of her affiliates are involved in “fetal tissue research” which is an odd claim since none of her affiliates are actually involved in “research,” properly understood. According to Daleiden’s videos, her affiliates are involved only in selling body parts to middlemen who then repackage and resell the parts to researchers.
Richards says “99% of our health centers have no involvement in this work” though she says there’s nothing wrong with it.
She claims, “Today, only one affiliate (in California) is involved with fetal tissue research working through a [tissue procurement organization]” but then names a second affiliate providing baby parts directly to a research facility. On July 14 when the first video was released, “four affiliates in California were involved with fetal tissue research” but now all four are out of that business.
Richards denies her affiliates make illegal profits from the sale of baby parts. She says they charge “a modest $60 per tissue specimen…” in some cases and “$45 to $55” and that these charges fall within the law.
Richards then denies Planned Parenthood abortionists manipulated unborn babies so that the abortion would not harm the sale price of the baby’s valuable organs, even though her doctors are on tape explaining how they do exactly that.
She then goes after David Daleiden and his videos. The words she uses — outrageous, infiltrate, fraudulently, unethically, illegally — demonstrate just how Daleiden and his group have gotten under Richards’ skin and how worried she is that her group is now threatened.
She claims that Daleiden “may have violated many laws, including federal tax laws,” and also violated laws against “forgery, fraud, and perjury,” also laws against “impersonation…and credit card fraud.”
She charges once more that the videos were “deceptively edited to smear Planned Parenthood. They omit exculpatory passages and splice excerpts together to create false impression.”
Richards tells Congressional leadership that the group Fusion GPS did a forensic analysis of the videos and found “47 splices where content is edited out but the conversation seems seamless.” She claims that “critical context is omitted, including Planned Parenthood staff members repeatedly saying that there is no ‘profit’ from tissue donation…” though it’s clear these claims were not edited out since she is reporting on them now. Moreover, Daleiden left in such denials in the first video with Deborah Nucatola and also with Savita Ginde.
Other media outlets have exposed Fusion GPS as an opposition research firm that has carried out attacks on Republican candidates.
David Daleiden says the letter is admission that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts and makes a profit since the harvesting and transport of baby parts is generally left to procurement companies who are onsite.
He says, “Planned Parenthood’s abortion providers are far more honest about the brutal reality of their work than the paid political consultants at the national office.”
He also says the letter is silent on the question of delivering who dead babies to medical middle men leaving open the question of violating federal law against partial birth abortion, whereby a baby is manipulated in the womb and delivered feet first so that the baby does not have to be cut into pieces. Deborah Nucatola explained in the first video how she and her colleagues get around this law.
It is certain that Daleiden and his colleagues will spend the next several years in protracted litigation at the hands of Planned Parenthood paid for by American taxpayers who pony up $500 million a year to the abortion giant.
On the other side of the ledger, Planned Parenthood is truly frightened for the first time after years of pro-life attacks. Several states have started investigations. Several have defunded Planned Parenthood. And taking away that $500 million of taxpayer money is a live issue in the U.S. Congress.
Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse