Despite findings by a Texas grand jury Carly Fiorina has no intention to stop lying about Planned Parenthood.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:

Carly Fiorina hears only what she wants to hear, apparently. 

In Thursday's GOP undercard debate, the presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard executive clung to the notion that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue for profit, an allegation that a Texan grand jury declared baseless on Tuesday. Fiorina, however, is having none of that. 

"Here are the facts," she said in the debate. "Planned Parenthood engages in partial birth abortion, in late-term abortion. They alter those abortion techniques to harvest and sell body parts." 

To be clear: There is no evidence that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue for profit.

I think it's pretty clear who Planned Parenthood needs to sue next. 

Interesting how Fiorina seems to think that since Hillary Clinton has not been indicted that it somehow proves our justice system is broken.

You know it could just be that Hillary is innocent as well.

You know, just like Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood decides to stop taking reimbursements for tissue donation.

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal: 

Planned Parenthood Federation of America said it is immediately stopping taking reimbursements for procuring fetal tissue for medical research, an attempt to tamp down controversy that has led to Republican investigations in Congress and efforts to end federal funding. 

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said in a letter Tuesday to the National Institutes of Health that the organization’s affiliates will no longer accept any reimbursements for costs associated with procuring tissue from abortions. Fetal tissue has been provided by affiliates in California and Washington state, and the Washington clinics haven’t been taking any money for it, she said. The Oregon affiliate has been providing placental tissue for reimbursement. Planned Parenthood didn’t disclose the amount it will forgo with its new policy.

“The real goal of these extremists has nothing to do with our fetal tissue donation compliance process but is instead to ban abortion in the U.S. and block women from getting any health care from Planned Parenthood,” Ms. Richards wrote. “Today, we’re taking their smokescreen away.”

Gee how will the Republicans justify shutting down the government in order to defund Planned Parenthood now?

And let's face it this was such a small part of what Planned Parenthood did, and only in so few states, that stopping it will have virtually no impact on them whatsoever.

I think the word here is "Checkmate."

Group releases video called "Carly Fiorina was right." Video proves no such thing.

Courtesy of Slate: 

The video, titled "Carly Fiorina was right" (warning: extremely graphic), was provided by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. They are the group that provided an image of a fetus, moving slightly, that is used by the Center for Medical Progress in one of their videos. This new video shows the context: The fetus is pulled from a woman and placed in a bowl. At no point does anyone say, "We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain." There is no sound. There is no indication that we are inside a Planned Parenthood–affiliated clinic. 

The only new information this video adds is the revelation that the fetus came out of a woman's body. If that surprises you, then you have no right to weigh in on debates over women's health care.

Okay so I am going to provide a link to this video right here for those who want to see it for themselves.

For those who do not let me just say that what it shows is a view between the legs of what appears to be an African American woman having a small, almost fully formed fetus removed. Yes it is graphic. And yes it will probably disturb some people.

However it really does nothing to support Fiorina's claims about seeing a video which shows "a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain."

This video does not show that.

So what does it show?

For the answer to that we turn to Dr. Jen Gunter:

It is easy to see how someone who has no obstetrical training might think this could be something other than a previable premature delivery. Cunningham’s statements clearly show he is no medical expert and isn’t in the position to explain it. However, I am. 

Here are all the issues with the video from start to finish: 

1. It is illegally and clandestinely shot. I feel very badly for the poor woman in question and wonder why Fiorina and our elected officials are not as outraged as I am about her violation and exploitation. I had second thoughts about watching it myself given the lack of consent from the woman, however, I felt if I could end the conversation about it faster by weighing in. Time magazine or Slate have links. 
2. The prep of the patient. The physician (I’m assuming) pours surgical prep/cleaner on the woman’s perineum. We don’t do that anymore for spontaneous deliveries or for abortions that involve induction of labor. This tells me this video is at least 15 years old or from another country. 
3. The delivery. It is a spontaneous delivery as the operator waits for the fetus to be expelled. This is what we do with a previable premature delivery. If this were shot mid way through a 2nd trimester abortion (meaning the Laminaria in the cervix, which are osmotic sticks that help the cervix dilate, had just been removed) it is highly unlikely the operator would have waited for a spontaneous expulsion. 
4. The cord is clamped on the fetal side. If this were an abortion it would just be cut. Really. No one ever does this with an abortion as it serves no purpose. 
5. Waiting for the placenta. The clamp is left on the placental end and at the end of the video the placenta still hasn’t delivered. If this were an abortion the placenta would be removed with suction immediately, no one would wait 11 minutes. Ever. Every abortion clinic has a suction machine. 
6. There is no proof this video is in a Planned Parenthood clinic never mind in the United States. This could easily be an operating room. 

Instead of wasting tax payer dollars over highly edited videos our government should be investigating who illegally taped this woman’s delivery. If Cunningham says he didn’t take the video then of course he also can’t be sure what was going on. He can’t have it both ways.

So according to Dr. Jen this video likely does not even show an abortion, much less one that ends with a fetus having its brain harvested.

Simply put Carly Fiorina is a liar. And no evidence, and certainly no video, has shown that statement to be false. 

Missouri becomes latest state to admit that after spending tax payer money to investigate Planned Parenthood, they could find nothing wrong.

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

Planned Parenthood did not mishandle fetal tissue and was not engaged in wrongdoing in Missouri, the state’s Attorney General Chris Koster concluded Monday. 

An investigation into the women’s health organization was prompted after the Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group, released videos allegedly showing top Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal body parts. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said the videos were “heavily edited,” but apologized for the “tone” expressed by some of her employees in the videos. 

“Koster’s investigation examined in detail the tissue-handling practices of Planned Parenthood’s Missouri surgical facility and concluded there was no evidence that the facility engaged in unlawful activity,” according to a press release. 

In addition to interviewing multiple Planned Parenthood employees in the St. Louis area, investigators also combed through thousands of pages of documents related to the “process for the disposal of fetal tissue,” the attorney general’s office said. They concluded that, after an abortion procedure, fetal tissue was carefully transported to a pathology lab, and was subsequently destroyed in an incinerator by a “waste-disposal company.” 

“The evidence reviewed by my investigators supports Planned Parenthood’s representation that fetal tissue is handled in accordance with Missouri law,” Koster, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We have discovered no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis facility is selling fetal tissue.”

So now Missouri joins Pennsylvania, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, and South Dakota in wasting tax payer money on a witch hunt that found no witches.

Which isn't actually surprising, especially since the only two states where Planned Parenthood has fetal tissue donation programs is in California and Washington.

I swear these people are so dumb that they give dumb people a bad name.

Doctor points out that though he is attacking Planned Parenthood today Ben Carson also used fetal parts in his own research. Not the same thing says Carson.

Oh you weren't supposed to find that.

Courtesy of Dr. Jen Gunter's blog:  

Dr. Ben Carson, GOP nominee hopeful, told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that “There’s nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue” and that the benefits of fetal tissue have been “over promised” and the results have “very much under-delivered.” 

Carson also said, “At 17 weeks, you’ve got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart’s beating. It can respond to environmental stimulus. How can you believe that that’s just a[n] irrelevant mass of cells? That’s what they want you to believe, when in fact it is a human being.” 

While opining on the uselessness of fetal tissue research to Megyn Kelly Dr. Carson neglected to mention his own paper Colloid Cysts of the Third Ventricle: Immunohistochemical evidence for nonneuropithelial differentiation published in Hum Pathol 23:811-816 in 1992. The materials and methods describe using “human choroid plexus ependyma and nasal mucosa from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation.” 

Yes, Dr. Ben Carson has done research on fetal tissue and published his findings. His name is on the paper so that means he had a substantive role in the research and supports the methods and findings.

Dr. Gunter also posted scans of Carson's paper to make her point.

 Can you say "awkward?"

So here you have a neurosurgeon, who knows from personal experience the benefits of fetal tissue research, joining the mouth breathers in the Republican part in their attack on Planned Parenthood.

However when confronted with this revelation, Carson claimed that his research did not mean he was wrong about Planned Parenthood: 

On the campaign trail in Manchester, New Hampshire, Carson told CNN his research simply used the tissue from aborted fetuses that was made available to him. 

"We have banked material in the pathology lab from people from every age -- from day 1 of concept to 120 years told. Those specimens are available for people who want to do comparisons," Carson said. "To not use the tissue that is in a tissue bank, regardless of where it comes from, would be foolish. Why would anybody not do that?" 

Of his own research -- which was to determine the patients who would be likely to develop certain health issues later in life -- Carson said, "That's a very different thing from killing babies, manipulating them, taking their tissue, selling them...To try to equate those things is absolutely ridiculous." 

So I guess we will assume that the fetal tissue that Carson used came from fetuses that voluntarily gave their life to science.  Right?

Or does he simply not care how the "banked material" was gathered because it was not something he could have used back then to fire up the conservative base and help him win the GOP nomination?

You know just when I think I have seen the worst case of hypocrisy that I can possibly imagine, I am proved wrong once again.

Media Matters provides the smackdown to the newest video from the anti-abortion group currently attacking Planned Parenthood.

Courtesy of CNN: 

The anti-abortion group that has accused Planned Parenthood of illegally selling organs and tissue from aborted fetuses released a new video Tuesday, a day after the Senate blocked a bill that would have defunded the organization. 

The latest undercover video, which is clearly edited, features operatives for The Center for Medical Progress posing as employees of a fetal tissue procurement company attempting to buy intact fetal organs from a Planned Parenthood branch in Houston. In the clip, Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, discusses the relationship between altering abortion procedures to get the most intact organs possible and costs. 

"If we alter our process and we're able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, it's all a matter of line items," she said in the video. 

Farrell, who said in the video that she is responsible for diversifying Planned Parenthood's revenue streams, also said the group works with multiple academics and researchers studying fetuses looking for intact organs -- and sometimes complete cadavers.

As you can imagine such frank talk about harvesting organs from aborted fetuses has further enraged the anti-choice crowd and driven them into a frenzy of letter writing and e-mailing to their local politicians who now feel they have little choice but to at least appear to be making an effort to defund Planned Parenthood.

However the video also makes it appear that the doctors performing the abortions will alter the procedure in order to get a better "sample" for sale later which might place the mother at risk during the procedure.

Here is the press release by the group The Center for Medical Progress who are behind these videos:

The fifth undercover video in the controversy over Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted baby parts shows the Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, advertising the Texas Planned Parenthood branch's track record of fetal tissue sales, including its ability to deliver fully intact fetuses. 

In the video, actors posing as representatives from a human biologics company meet with Farrell at the abortion-clinic headquarters of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston to discuss a potential partnership to harvest fetal organs. 

"Where we probably have an edge over other organizations, our organization has been doing research for many many years," explains Farrell. When researchers need a specific part from the aborted fetus, Farrell says, "We bake that into our contract, and our protocol, that we follow this, so we deviate from our standard in order to do that." 

Asked specifically if this means Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast can change abortion procedures to supply intact fetal specimens, Farrell affirms, "Some of our doctors in the past have projects and they're collecting the specimens, so they do it in a way that they get the best specimens, so I know it can happen." 

The investigators ask Farrell how she will frame a contract in which they pay a higher price for higher quality fetal body parts, and she replies, "We can work it out in the context of--obviously, the procedure itself is more complicated," suggesting that "without having you cover the procedural cost" and paying for the abortion, the higher specimen price could be framed as "additional time, cost, administrative burden." 

Farrell finally summarizes her affiliate's approach to fetal tissue payments: "If we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this. It's all just a matter of line items."

However Media Matters has compared the released fifteen minutes of footage and compared it to the full transcript and found some very deceptive edits.

Here are a few of them:

The Center for Medical Progress' full-transcript of their undercover video reveals that the anti-choice organization cut-out portions of Farrell's comments in order to make it appear that the official was suggesting changes to protocol that could endanger a patient. The short video skipped over Farrell explaining that everything done "is there for the safety of the patient" and under "our standard process." 

Not included in the 15-minute version of the video is Farrell's further explanation that the clinic would not alter or delay a procedure for the sake of fetal tissue donation, per Planned Parenthood and tissue donation guidelines. 

The unedited transcript reveals Farrell explaining that any changes to the procedure would need to be cleared by doctors and pose no threat to the patient. 

The full, unedited transcript reveals Farrell's explanation that any reimbursement for the costs incurred by the clinic cover only administrative costs, and would not be calculated on a per-specimen basis.

The problem of course is this now has become a conflict between logic and faith. The folks on the anti-choice side are driven by their faith that God places a child in the mother's womb, and that man has no right to interfere with its birth.

On the pro-choice side is the understanding that reproduction is not the product of divine intervention but rather every day biological interactions between human beings, and that allowing one of those humans to walk away unburdened by the interaction, while forcing the other to take full responsibility for the embryo created by the mingling of sperm and egg, is patently unfair and should not be forced on women simply due to a different reproductive system.

If these people REALLY wanted to reduce the number of abortions in this country, instead of simply controlling women, they would turn their attention to increased education and the increased availability of preventive measures and stop attacking programs that provide very important services for the health of American women.

California court orders anti-choice group to stop releasing videos.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast: 

The Los Angeles Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday banning an anti-abortion group from releasing any additional footage of officials from a California company that provides fetal tissue to researchers. The group, the Center for Medical Progress, is the same organization that previously released sting videos of a Planned Parenthood leader discussing the sale of aborted fetuses for medical research. The order bars the anti-abortion group from releasing video of three leaders at StemExpress shot at a restaurant in May until a court hearing Aug. 19. The recent release of sting videos has reignited the abortion debate, prompting Republican lawmakers to take up a measure to defund Planned Parenthood. 

Of course this decision has angered the anti-choice crowd who are claiming that the courts are simply protecting Planned Parenthood and of course hate babies.

Of course this only protects this company, StemExpress, from being attacked, the group undoubtedly still has video concerning other companies who have not been able to get a court order to delay their release. So obviously this whole thing is far from over.

Here just take a look at how Rush Limbaugh is spinning this: 

Folks, I don't think it's hard to explain this. Remember, now, who are we talking about? Who gets polled? Low-information voters. A cross-section of the American people. What do you think most people think Planned Parenthood is? Do you think most people realize that it's a series of abortion clinics?" I would submit to you that most people look at Planned Parenthood and they see Planned Parenthood. 

 I would venture to say that a lot of people look at it and think that it is a place you go where you want to talk to experts about how to plan your family, and they will advise you how many kids to have, what it's going to cost you. That's what I think most people think Planned Parenthood is. It says "Planned Parenthood" over the door, doesn't it? It doesn't say, "We do abortions here and harvest the organs for sale!" It says "Planned Parenthood." 

"A series of abortion clinics." That is how this is being explained to those on the Right.

Like I said, this is far from over.

Planned Parenthood asks for a study of fetal tissue research by the federal government. You know, because they have so much to hide.

Courtesy of Townhall:

Under fire for its role in providing fetal tissue for research, Planned Parenthood asked the government's top health scientists Wednesday to convene a panel of independent experts to study the issues surrounding the little-known branch of medicine. 

Planned Parenthood's request to the National Institutes of Health came as Senate Republicans pressed their fight to bar the organization from receiving federal aid. Likely opposition from at least one GOP senator highlighted the long odds the GOP will face in a Senate showdown vote expected early next week. 

Planned Parenthood, which gets more than $500 million of its $1.3 billion annual budget from federal and state programs, has been under fire since the release of videos showing some of its officials discussing how they obtain organs from aborted fetuses for research. The videos were furtively recorded by an anti-abortion group. 

"The inflammatory and misleading videos have pushed this issue into the national spotlight," said the letter from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. "And a thoughtful, careful review by leading medical and ethical experts could do a lot to help the public and policymakers think through this issue and reach informed conclusions."

You know it would seem that if you were actually doing something illegal of immoral that you REALLY would not want the Feds looking into it. 

So the fact that Planned Parenthood is requesting this should send a message to those making these outlandish accusations. But it won't of course because ideology is stronger than facts.

By the way if you want to visit the Planned Parenthood website today, don't bother because it has been hacked.

Third video attacking Planned Parenthood surfaces, this one is bad folks. (Do I even need to say NSFW?)

Courtesy of Mediaite: 

A third Planned Parenthood sting video produced by the Center of Medical Progress has been released, purporting to show vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains Savita Ginde discussing compensation for fetal organs while a technician shows the buyer aborted remains. 

The bulk of the video features an interview with Holly O’Donnell, a former employee of StemExpress, which is one of Planned Parenthood’s partners in fetal donation. O’Donnell claimed to have applied for a job thinking she would just be drawing blood, but fainted on her first day when they brought in an aborted fetus for her to dissect. 

“For whatever we could procure, they would get a certain percentage,” O’Donnell said. “The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens. No one else really cared, but the main nurse did because she knew that Planned Parenthood was getting compensated.” 

But the more disturbing part of the video is towards the end, when an undercover activist posing as a buyer visits one of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic laboratories, where he watches a technician dig through a pie dish full of fetal remains to find organs.

If you watch the video you can see that the fake buyer is the one bringing up payment, and that at times the technicians simply look confused by talk of compensation.

However the problem is that this video shows actual tissue samples from aborted fetuses, and that is the kind of thing that really agitates the anti-choice folks. That is why they bring those horrible pictures of mangled fetuses to their protests.

Palin is still doing her part to pile on, as are many other conservatives.

And even though Salon called Palin out over her recent comparison of the Confederate battle flag with the Planned Parenthood logo, conservatives have been eating that up with a spoon.

In fact I have tracked at least a dozen or more conservative websites who just picked that up and ran with it.

I hate to say this folks but I am beginning to think that Planned Parenthood could very well go the way of ACORN. I know that seems too horrible to contemplate right now, but I would not underestimate the power of conservative outrage and how easily that can be manipulated.

Believing there is blood in the water due to second video, Sarah Palin goes in for the kill on Planned Parenthood.

"Gotcha now Planned Parenthood."

Courtesy of Failin' Palin's Facebook page:Another video of a Planned Parenthood official bartering to sell the bodies of butchered babies for money. And we the taxpayers are STILL forced to fund this organization?

Of course the source of Palin's faux outrage is a second video released by the group "The Center for Medical Progress" that purports to show the same money for fetal parts operation that the first video failed to show.

As usual this Facebook post is really a way to drive traffic to Brancy's blog where Nancy French has her outrage dialed up to 11: 

Pro-abortionist groups told us we were twisting the words of the doctor from the first video. S he didn’t really mean to imply she was selling baby parts. Her tone was wrong, but what she was doing was right. All lies! They are selling baby parts! And this second video is proof of just how widespread the selling of butchered baby parts by Planned Parenthood really is. 

This evil has to stop! We have to call on our leaders in Washington to stop Planned Parenthood once and for all!

"This evil has to stop?" Okay no more Red Bull for you.

Of course news outlets were quick to point out that this video, even more than that first one, proves that the people behind it are outright lying about what it shows.

This from the Daily Beast:

The video has been edited to highlight specific comments of Gatter’s that make the conversation seem like a negotiation over profits—comments like, “Why don’t you tell me what you’re used to paying?” 

This time around, however, the CMP has also included statements by Gatter that debunk the idea that Planned Parenthood affiliates profit from the practice. 

“We’re not in it for the money,” Gatter makes it clear to the CMP actors at one point. 

“We don’t want to be in the position of being accused of selling tissue and stuff like that,” she says. “On the other hand, there are costs associated with the use of our space, and all that kind of stuff.” 

The CMP actors twice offer $100 per specimen but we never see Gatter commit to accepting that amount, only to “find[ing] out what other affiliates in California are getting.” She emphasizes to who she thought were biotech buyers that their “volume is so low,” referring to the fact that second-trimester abortions are relatively rare. 

In other words instead of helping to fan the outrage caused by the first video, intelligent viewers will see that it undermines the case made by those distributing it.
 
And here is more courtesy of Slate:  

While this new video is kicking off another round of disingenuous posturing from Republican officials and demands to "investigate" the non-crime of donating fetal tissue, the real story here is not unethical behavior on the part of Planned Parenthood, but on the part of anti-choice activists. As Eli Clifton and I reported for The Nation last week, the Center for Medical Progress shares leadership with the radical anti-choice organization, Operation Rescue, that devoted itself to harassing George Tiller until he was murdered by one of their regular activists in 2009. (Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor Cheryl Sullenger also did time for an attempted clinic bombing in the 1980s.) These folks promise they have more videos coming, of course. That's what Live Action always promised and it's no surprise that their apparent spin-off would do the same. What would be a surprise is if any of these videos actually showed any wrongdoing.

And then there is this from Think Progress:

Live Action, a group founded by leading abortion opponent Lila Rose when she was just 15 years old, has become infamous for conducting undercover “stings” designed to discredit Planned Parenthood. Live Action typically releases videos that have been heavily edited to cast abortion providers in an unflattering light; however, upon further scrutiny, their claims that Planned Parenthood is breaking the law don’t hold up. 

For instance, Rose has previously claimed that she has evidence that Planned Parenthood employees cover up sex trafficking, lie about providing mammograms, and profit off of abortions — allegations that cannot be backed up with evidence. 

The recent videos are no exception. Though abortion opponents say they provide proof that Planned Parenthood is breaking federal laws by selling organs, fetal tissue donation has in fact been legal for decades. They’re also edited to appear more nefarious; in the full transcript of the first video, for instance, Nucatola says several times that the organization is not “selling” tissue, but rather being compensated for the cost of transporting the donations. “Nobody should be ‘selling’ tissue. That’s just not the goal here,” she says at one point.

I think it is beyond clear to critical thinkers that this whole thing is carefully edited bullshit. The problem is that those who are rabidly anti-choice and hate Planned Parenthood with every fiber of their being, are to critical thinking what Bristol Palin is to birth control.

In other words no connection whatsoever.

These videos are edited to cause low information viewers, already predisposed to be anti-choice, to fly into a rage at the thought that Planned Parenthood is selling aborted baby parts for a profit. It is exactly the kind of misinformation that resulted in the bombing of health clinics and the murder of Dr. Tiller.

And there is every possibility that we will see a similar reaction this time around.

You know I really used to think I could never think less of Sarah Palin than I did after the Gabby Giffords incident. Guess who was wrong about that?