It’s needless to say that Carly Fiorina’s remarks on Planned Parenthood easily stole the show at last night’s GOP debate. While all of the candidates spoke about their various pro-life principles, Fiorina came out strong against Planned Parenthood and hammered them hard, saying that refusing to stand up and demand that the abortion giant be defunded reflects poorly on the character of this nation. She also referenced the undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress:
Unsurprisingly, the idea of this was confusing to pro-abortion extremist Amanda Marcotte, who is evidently too busy making excuses for Planned Parenthood to take the time to think logically or actually consider the truth of what Fiorina was saying. In a blog post titled “What was up with Carly Fiorina’s grisly abortion rant?”, Marcotte does some impressive mental gymnastics trying to defend Planned Parenthood against Fiorina’s onslaught, denying reality and contradicting herself all in one writing.
The who with the what now? “Anyone who has watched this videotape,” Fiorina said, presumably of one of the misleadingly edited videos created by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), “I dare, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, to watch these tapes. Watch 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 is about the character of this nation!”
… It was quite a performance, and it opens the question of what Fiorina was inhaling before she watched those videos. There is nothing in the videos made by CMP, either in the edited or full-length versions, that has anything approaching images of legs kicking or hearts beating.
To be sure, Fiorina wasn’t the only person lying about Planned Parenthood on stage. The claim that Planned Parenthood sells fetal body parts was stated as fact by multiple candidates. It’s simply not true, and repeating it will not make it more true. But describing such a vivid and grisly scene that never happened—that is taking it to another level.
Despite Fiorina’s insinuations to the contrary, many people have, in fact, watched not just CMP’s edited videos, but the entire, unedited videos, and continue to be pro-choice anyway—and not just because they missed the part with the legs kicking (which doesn’t exist!). It’s because the facts remain unchanged. Ninety-five percent of women who get abortions, when asked later about their choice, said it was the right thing to do. Abortion rates are higher in countries where it is illegal, because as long as women need to terminate pregnancies, they will find a way. Fiorina’s plan to cut contraception access would likely lead to higher, not lower abortion rates. Misleading and sensationalized videos aren’t going to change any of the above.
Notice that Marcotte first parrots the pro-abortion line that the CMP videos are “deceptively edited” before (rightly) pointing out later that people are able to watch the full unedited videos. So which is it, Amanda? How can the videos be “deceptively edited” if the full, unedited videos are made available?
As to the matter of Fiorina – along with the rest of the GOP candidates – lying: that also is not true. One of CMP’s videos does, indeed, discuss a baby’s brain being harvested in a truly grotesque way, despite the fact that the baby was still alive — and did not even meet the criteria for brain death. This is something that Novogenix, another tissue procurement company, has admitted happens. CMP has uncovered the fact that, at Planned Parenthood, babies are born alive, with beating hearts, and are harvested for organs anyway.
And yes, Planned Parenthood is selling the body parts of aborted babies for profit. Every one of CMP’s videos have made that appallingly obvious, especially the most recent release, in which top Planned Parenthood executives explicitly say that there is “a fair amount of income” to be made from the grotesque trades.
Fiorina’s rant may have indeed been grisly. But that’s because Planned Parenthood is engaging in grisly business.
Finally, Marcotte tries to claim that the videos haven’t affected many people who identify as pro-abortion, and cites a study that pro-abortion advocates excitedly hawked earlier this summer that said 95% of women don’t regret their abortions. Unfortunately for Marcotte, that study was made up of shoddy science that left a lot of gaping holes in their supposed findings. First, the study only showed that women never felt regret in three years — are we to assume that it’s impossible for those women to feel any regret after three years? Second, the participants in the study were largely pro-abortion, and a large number had undergone previous abortions, and were not representative of the average American woman. The study was filled with overwhelming bias, so it’s no surprise that they received the results that they did.
The overwhelming majority of scientific literature actually does show that women experience negative psychological consequences. The scientific journal “Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences” published a review of all the scientific literature on psychological health of women after abortion dating back to 1995, which totaled 30 studies. And all but one — 29 studies out of 30 — found negative psychological consequences after abortion.
Maybe next time, Marcotte should take the time to actually educate herself before rushing to write a pro-abortion screed in defense of the indefensible. But then again, if she actually did educate herself, she would have a pretty rough time defending Planned Parenthood, and then her entire pro-abortion extremist world would come tumbling down… so perhaps it’s not altogether surprising that she chooses instead to continue on living in ignorance instead.
