YouTube removed a video showing top Planned Parenthood officials making gruesome comments about abortion on the order of a federal judge in California.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick, who granted the preliminary injunction in favor of the National Abortion Federation to halt the release of the videos, ordered any links to the video to be removed after it was published by the Center for Medical Progress on Thursday.
Judge Orrick also ordered CMP lead investigator David Daleiden and his attorneys to appear in court June 14, The Associated Press reported, for a hearing where he will consider holding them in contempt for releasing the footage.
Mr. Daleiden has been charged with 15 felonies in California stemming from his undercover investigation into the abortion giant. His attorneys have called it a “witch hunt” that flies in the face of the First Amendment.
YouTube has not responded to a request for comment.
The three-minute video showed top Planned Parenthood executives joking about severed fetus heads, admitting to altering abortion procedures to preserve fetal organs and conceding that clinics have a financial incentive to sell the human remains from abortions.
Lisa Harris, medical director at Planned Parenthood of Michigan, laments that abortionists cannot easily confide in others about their workplace difficulties, such as removing the severed heads of fetuses from women undergoing abortions.
“Our stories don’t really have a place in a lot of pro-choice discourse and rhetoric, right? The heads that get stuck that we can’t get out,” Ms. Harris says in the video, drawing laughs from an audience.
She also says pro-choice advocates should concede that the practice is murder.
“Let’s just give them all the violence,” she says. “It’s a person. It’s killing. Let’s just give them all that.”
The video features footage recorded at an annual National Abortion Federation meeting by the undercover pro-life journalists. The Center for Medical Progress says it’s just a preview of never-before-seen content that has been caught up in a legal fight for nearly two years.
In the video, Ann Schutt-Aine, director of abortion services at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, admits to using forceps to hold a fetus in place and circumvent a partial-birth abortion.
“If I’m doing a procedure, and I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to come to the umbilicus, I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix, and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not [partial-birth abortion],” she says.
President Trump was ridiculed during the campaign for suggesting abortions happen in the U.S. up to the moment of birth.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said the video proves him right.
“The video completely vindicates President Donald Trump, who was ridiculed by many in the national media after he described the violent truth of late term and partial birth abortions during the third presidential debate last year,” Ms. Dannenfelser said in a statement.
She said the media are doing the nation a “profound disservice” by refusing to report on the newest video.
“A civilized nation dares not look away from such inhumanity. This trading in human flesh and body parts is indefensible and must stop.”
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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