By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--July 16, 2015
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Do a quick Google search and you'll find it just about everywhere on liberal opinion sites and on dinosaur media sites that aren't still ignoring the story. It's one or another variation on the following: "No, Planned Parenthood Isn't Selling 'Aborted Baby Parts'." And how can Planned Parenthood and its media protectors make such a claim when there's a video out that shows one of the organization's top medical officials engaged in a three-hour discussion of how Planned Parenthood sells aborted body parts?
Nuances, you see! You keep talking about profits! Oh no. Goodness no! No one's making any profits here! These are donations for humanitarian purposes, and they're just getting their expenses reimbursed! That's all! Move along! Nothing to see here!Financial Profitable - Easy-to-Implement Plug-In Solution - Medical Director Oversight - IBR Certified ConsentsDid you get the part about it being financially profitable? It's the first one. This is a brochure that Stem Express gives to individual Planned Parenthood clinics to tout the benefits of selling fetal tissue, and the first one they note is the profitability of doing so.
"Our partnership with StemExpress is beneficial in a number of ways. First, it allows us to contribute to life-saving research that is advancing diagnostic and medical care. Second, StemExpress has a Plug-In Solution that allows us to add additional clinics quickly. Lastly, I feel confident that our patient's anonymity is secure through its strict protocols and practices."How could StemExpress and its "Plug-In Solution" be helping Planned Parenthood to "add additional clinics quickly" unless it was offering a financial benefit? (The only other possible interpretation of that statement, I guess, would be that she's talking about adding clinics to the partnership with StemExpress rather than simply building new clinics, but if that's the case it's a very awkwardly worded statement.) That's irrelevant, though, because the profit motive is pushed again on one of the inside pages:
Easy to Implement Program + Financial Profits StemExpress promotes global biomedical research while also providing a financial benefit to your clinic. By partnering with StemExpress, not only are you offering a way for your clients to participate in this unique opportunity to facilitate life-saving research, but you will also be contributing to the fiscal growth of your clinic.Could it be any clearer than that? Planned Parenthood is lying about this, and its media defenders are parroting the lie. By the way, the New York Times has finally done a story on this, and as you might expect, it's almost entirely focused on the politics and the dastardly tactics of Republicans who, the Times claims, will exploit the video for their own nefarious purposes. Check out the way they describe Dr. Deborah Nucatola in the lead paragraph:
House Republican leaders on Wednesday announced a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood, a day after anti-abortion activists released a video of an unsuspecting official from the organization explaining how it provides fetal tissue to researchers. Echoing the activists' allegation, Speaker John A. Boehner and other top Republicans suggested that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal parts, which is illegal if done for profit. But Planned Parenthood said that while it charges for expenses such as processing and transporting, it makes no money from the fetal tissue donated by women who get abortions. The official shown in the video repeatedly says something similar to two activists posing as biotechnology representatives. The California-based group responsible for the video, the Center for Medical Progress, appears to have been started relatively recently. Its creator, David Daleiden, once worked with another anti-abortion group, Live Action, and he and Live Action's leader, Lila Rose, who also promoted the video, are familiar to Planned Parenthood affiliates from previous undercover videos. Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Rose did not return calls and emails on Wednesday. The release of the video and subsequent House investigation opens a new round in the partisan wars over Planned Parenthood that have raged since the Republicans took control of the House four and a half years ago. This time, Republicans running for president eagerly joined in, promising to stoke the furor, as anti-abortion conservatives took to social media to demand action. Past battles provoked backlashes against congressional Republicans and against Mitt Romney, the party's presidential nominee in 2012. But even before the video began circulating online, Republicans had moved to cut all money for Planned Parenthood and the Title X family-planning program from a spending bill awaiting a House vote.That poor, unsuspecting official! The New York Times is nothing if not predictable. Buried way at the bottom of the story is some brief discussion of what Planned Parenthood has actually been caught doing, including a quote from a medical ethicist who does think it's worth investigating. But of course he adds a comment that he doesn't want the investigation done by "15 Republican presidential candidates," as if that would happen. I wonder how long the media will stay with the "it's not for profit" line now that this has been clearly shown to be false. My guess is that they'll still ride it as long as they can get away with it, at which point they'll either drop the story (which would be their preference) or turn it into a narrative about the politics and the "backlash" Republicans will suffer for their "overreach" on the issue. In the meantime, just in case you've forgotten, Planned Parenthood is butchering babies and selling their body parts for profit, and they're happy to tell you all about it while sipping wine and munching on salad. Or they were.
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