Planned Parenthood isn’t the largest abortion provider in the known universe by accident. Nor is it a coincidence that its PAC is loaded with money to elect and protect pro-death candidates.
They–and their president Cecile Richards–are slick, slick, slick. Not honest, honest, honest, but slick, slick, slick.
I offer as the latest example the You Tube message posted today in an effort to stamp out the growing criticism before it becomes a raging inferno.
As you recall, a high ranking Planned Parenthood doctor-executive, thinking she was talking to two people who wanted to buy “fetal tissue”–more specifically, intact organs from babies aborted in many cases late in pregnancies–was brutally candid.
Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director for medical services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and a big shot in PPFA, didn’t always use the usual euphemisms as she talked about how the undercover agents’ “company” could work with PPFA affiliates to facilitate these grisly transactions.
So, how do you defend the indefensible? There are tricks and omissions and misdirections galore. Here are just a few of Richards’ ploys.
#1. Places abortion in the context of other services PPFA provides. It comes last and almost as an afterthought rather than what abortion actually is: a huge revenue stream for PPFA which aborts over 330,000 babies each year. Abortion is Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood is abortion.
#2. Richards says, “Recently, an organization [the Center for Medical Progress] that opposes safe and legal abortion used secretly recorded, heavily edited videos to make outrageous claims about programs that help women donate fetal tissue for medical research.” There is a shorter version of the meeting with Dr. Nucatola but there also a video that shows the entire two hour+ conversation. And there is a transcript as well.
Notice Richards does not directly say the CMP misstated what Dr. Nucatola said. That is very important.
#3. Then there is Richards’ characterization of the “donation program.” “Planned Parenthood stands behind our work to help women and families donate tissue for medical research when they wish to. It is always their decision. I thank those women and families who have chosen tissue donation at some point in their lives. Your commitment to lifesaving research, developing treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, is important and compassionate, and it should be respected – not attacked.”
Even by Planned Parenthood’s always loose grip on the truth, this is an outlandish statement. You would think that women are beating Planned Parenthood’s doors down to “donate tissue.” They are not, as we pointed out yesterday in quoting Dr. Nucotala at length and context [www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2015/07/how-ppfa-manipulates-women-into-donating-their-babys-organs/#.VagZ-6RViko].
In many cases, women are clearly talked into donating their baby’s “tissue,” often after initially refusing. And please remember that in this context “tissue” includes intact livers and lungs and brains.
I wonder how often a woman is asked, “Would it be okay with you if we alter the way we deliver your baby so that her whole head comes out in one piece so it be used for medical experimentation?” Not often, I’d guess.
And what makes it even more morally and ethically problematic is that they prey on the woman’s self-doubts by suggesting that her baby’s “tissue” might be the source of a cure for Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. There is no reason to believe this is true now and only slightly more of a chance it will ever come true at some date far, far in the future.
This is emotional blackmail which Richards looks into the camera and calls “their decision.”
And last
#4. Richards says,
Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide. In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion. This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.
To begin with to call Dr. Nucotala a “staff member” is preposterous. She is not a file clerk. She is recorded on video boasting that she is “the medical director for the national office – for all the affiliates,” and public documents confirm this. You don’t get too much higher up the corporate ladder than that.
And what exactly is Richards apologizing for (“personally,” no less)? That Dr. Nucotala said such things as the following?
[Y]ou’re just kind of cognizant of where you put your graspers, you try to intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, 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. And with the calvarium [the skull], in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex [head first], because when it’s vertex presentation you never have enough dilation at the beginning of the case, unless you have real, huge amounts of dilation to deliver an intact calvarium.
But why? This is how Dr. Nucotala, as she ate her salad and drank her red wine, would talk to someone she believed was just as wholly desensitized as she is.
She was not talking to a pregnant woman with a huge unborn baby inside of her about to be killed. Dr. Nucotala thought she was talking to middle men who would profit from buying intact baby body parts from Planned Parenthood and selling them to researchers to do experiments.
Perhaps it was because Richards rightly worries that every morally sentient human being will have the same reaction as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio):
“I could talk about the video, but I think I’d vomit trying to talk about it. It’s disgusting.”
Or maybe it’s the part where Dr. Nucotala talks about the baby’s skull and how
some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex [head first], because when it’s vertex presentation you never have enough dilation at the beginning of the case, unless you have real, huge amounts of dilation to deliver an intact calvarium [skull].
Please take a minute to review some of the stories we’ve already written about this shocking video. Reportedly more are on the way.
Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, either go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
