On Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declared Planned Parenthood the innocent victims of the Center for Medical Progress videos showing top officials discussing apparent trafficking in aborted babies’ organs, the Daily Caller reports.
“Planned Parenthood has as its top priority women’s health,” the former Speaker of the House said, complaining that “for some reason, the Republicans have had this in their sights… for a very long time.”
Noting that “Planned Parenthood has said they have done nothing illegal,” she went on to repeat the abortion giant’s defense: “They did not ever charge, which would be illegal, for fetal tissue. That they’ve only used — only have defrayed the cost of mailing that to someone, which is not breaking the law.”
Pelosi then went so far as to suggest that the Center for Medical Progress is the organization that should be investigated: “Lets have an investigation of those people who are trying to ensnare Planned Parenthood in a controversy that doesn’t exist.”
Despite the Democrat leader’s contention that Planned Parenthood only received reimbursement for costs, critics have questioned why they would need to negotiate prices “big enough that it makes it worthwhile for me” rather than simply tallying the actual expenses involved in each transaction.
Other potential crimes federal and state investigators hope to clarify include whether Planned Parenthood has been violating the federal ban on the partial-birth abortion procedure to obtain organs or altering their techniques to prioritize the procurement of intact organs over women’s safety.