The Patriot Post® · CMP Continues to Turn Up the Heat on Planned Parenthood
While Planned Parenthood’s $500 million in annual taxpayer funding survived a Senate vote Monday, there was a silver lining. In 2007, eight Republicans supported funding PP; Monday, just one did — Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. And there are still seven unreleased videos from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) to turn up the political pressure. The fifth one dropped Tuesday.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick, who raised $230,000 for Barack Obama, extended a temporary restraining order against the release of some video material until the end of the month. National Abortion Federation and its members claim they will suffer harassment and possibly violence due to their part in the videos, and a hearing will take place Aug. 27 on a possible permanent injunction.
According to The Hill, “A lawyer representing The Center for Medical Progress said it would abide by Orrick’s order, noting the materials barred from release in the ruling represented ‘a small percentage’ of its overall collection.” The delay also happens to ensure the videos stay in the news even longer.
In related news, federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill threw out an Idaho law prohibiting undercover video of agricultural facilities by animal-rights activists on the grounds that “food and worker safety are matters of public concern.” Is that any less true of the hundreds of thousands of babies aborted each year by an organization hauling in half a billion in taxpayer dollars?
And, so, the fifth video (GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING).
It begins with PP President Cecile Richards insisting, “Planned Parenthood makes zero profit on any fetal tissue donations.”
But Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, explains that harvesting provides a good “revenue stream” for PP, which “contributes so much to our bottom line.” She notes, “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.”
In fact, she admitted, “[W]e deviate from our standard in order to” obtain intact specimens. Furthermore, “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.”
Doesn’t sound like mere expense reimbursement, does it?
According to CMP, “The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2). Federal law also requires that no alteration in the timing or method of abortion be done for the purposes of fetal tissue collection (42 U.S.C. 289g-1).”
It certainly seems clear from the video evidence that Planned Parenthood and other companies are engaged in illegal harvesting. Democrats in Congress will continue to look the other way and insist this is all about “women’s health,” but the truth is plain to see.
Finally, the video turns to the lab, where the undercover reporters ask for “fresh specimens” to determine their quality. A lab worker laughs, and says, “We had a really long day, and they’re all mixed up together in a bag.” She does manage to produce one of a set of 20-week-old twins (pulled from the freezer), and the technicians sort through lungs, intestines and limbs, while talking about how “organs come out really, really well — almost intact.”
If you aren’t appalled, you aren’t paying attention.
Project Lead David Daleiden elaborates on the significance: “This is now the fifth member of Planned Parenthood leadership discussing payments for aborted baby parts without any connection to actual costs of so-called tissue ‘donation.’ Planned Parenthood’s system-wide conspiracy to evade the law and make money off of aborted fetal tissue is now undeniable.” Daleiden continues, “Anyone who watches these videos knows that Planned Parenthood is engaged in barbaric practices and human rights abuses that must end. There is no reason for an organization that uses illegal abortion methods to sell baby parts and commit such atrocities against humanity to still receive over $500 million each year from taxpayers.”
Indeed, the videos reveal the banality of evil in a visceral way that the Left’s euphemisms deliberately attempt to obscure. It’s obvious that the Planned Parenthood workers know they’re dealing with something that’s at a minimum uncomfortable, because each videoed subject is at great pains to choose words carefully. And yet the technicians are calloused souls, who can laugh about body parts in a bag. There are seven more videos to go, and, if the pattern holds, they might be even worse.