A Response To “Planned Parenthood is Not Selling Baby Parts, You F****** Idiots.”

When Skepchick Rebecca Watson wrote her now viral post on the Planned Parenthood scandal, no one had to guess which side she was defending or what she thought of the pro-life crowd. The article is worth considering – not because she's right, but because what is presented as fact is so woefully wrong in so many ways.

As I respond to her arguments, I will be quoting the shortened blog version of the video that she posted on her website. A lot of what I have to say will challenge her claim that nothing illegal is happening. The rest will hopefully point out why it shouldn't be legal in the first place.

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Planned Parenthood is in the news a lot these days thanks to a maliciously edited video making it look like they SELL BABY PARTS.

First, the Center for Medical Progress released the uncut video along with the edited one. All anybody has to do – including all the journalists and bloggers who keep repeating this silly charge - is watch the whole video or read the transcript CMP provides on its website. If CMP were trying to deceive, they would have kept the uncut video a secret.

Second, if you think the edited videos makes it ‘look like’ Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts, just watch the videos and see for yourself. You will hear the following:

• "We don’t want to get called on…selling fetal parts across states.”
• “If you have someone in a really ‘anti’ state doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.” Get caught at what? Obeying the law?
• “I think a per item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”
• “I think for affiliates, at the end of the day, they’re a non-profit, they just don’t want to—they want to break even. And if they can do a little better than break even, and do so in a way that seems reasonable, they’re happy to do that.” Every business would like to do a little better than break even. That's called profit. It's probably worth noting that In 2014, Planned Parenthood's revenue exceeded their expenses by $90 million.
• “The Federal Abortion Ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation.”
• “Here’s the heart. My fingers will smoosh it if I try to pick it up. The heart is right there… A lot of times I‘ll get a full torso, spine, kidneys. You could send the whole thing or pick that apart… It’s a baby.” There's the baby parts. 
• “If someone delivers before we get to see them for a procedure, then they [the babies] are intact…” Which is good for those clients who want intact babies. 

If you think I am trying to trick you or I am ripping quotes out of context, please go watch the videos or read the transcripts.

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It’s weird for those of us with two brain cells to rub together, that this is even a thing. Because first of all, obviously Planned Parenthood doesn’t sell BABY PARTS. J**** f****** C*****, get a hold of yourselves. Baby parts!

In all the videos released so far, “fetal tissue” is described as livers, kidneys, lungs, brains, etc. If you see the third, fourth and fifth videos, you can see with your own eyes the body parts on the trays. You can watch them pick up legs with a tweezers and say, “It’s a boy!” So. Yeah. I have gotten a hold on myself and those are definitely body parts. 

Are they selling them? Well that’s the question, isn’t it? That what an investigation will determine. Sure, the Planned Parenthood officials spend plenty of time insisting they follow the protocols and standards, but it’s during the unguarded moments that we learn the most.

• they are okay with making more than reimbursement
• they want to know what others are charging so they don’t get lowballed
• they want to sell by the organ (read “baby part”) because they can make more money than if they sell everything they harvest from a baby at the same time
• they have to be careful which states they do this in because they don’t want to get caught in hostile states
• the legal oversight about documenting actual expenses is almost non-existent
• You find out the specimen and tissue sales in Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s affiliate "contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here."
• the brochure CMP posted shows StemExpress trumpeting the lucrative nature of the financial partnership they offer. 
• In the fifth video, some people at the Gulf Coast affiliate are puzzled as to why other clinics think what they are doing at Gulf Coast is illegal.

That one brain cell I apparently have is sufficient to put all these things together and conclude there is legitimate justification to open an investigation on whether or not they are doing more than breaking even.

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3% of all Planned Parenthood’s activities are abortions, and more than 90% of those are in the first trimester when it’s about size of a kidney bean, so they do see some pieces of fetal tissue. Which are just going to be thrown away in the garbage, but which the patient can instead choose to donate to important medical research.

If 3% of the time I killed children, would what I did the other 97% of the time matter? Does anybody who is angry at the lion-poaching dentist care what he does with the rest of his time? Nope and nope. It’s a silly defense. It’s not that it’s only 3% of the time that matters- it’s what happens in that 3%. Also, just for the sake of clarifying how important abortion is to the Planned Parenthood enterprise, the 3% accounts for around 25% of abortions in the United States and  51% of Planned Parenthood’s income results from those abortions. Half their income is because of abortion. When 3% of your business makes 51% of your income, that’s called a money maker. 

As to the first trimester: if the unborn baby is human being, it doesn’t matter how big he or she is. The fetus at any stage is what a human being is at that stage of development, as is the case with people who have been born. Born people don’t lose their rights because they are small or gain rights because they get big. Neither should unborn people. #samerights

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HOW DARE THEY! How dare Planned Parenthood allow women to aid in the research and treatment of conditions like H.I.V. and Parkinson’s disease, when instead those women could just be throwing that tissue in the garbage!

First, if organ donors die, their organs go to the medical community because they willing offered their organs in case of a tragedy. Everyone applauds their altruism. But if a doctor kills those organ donors without their permission and then gives their organs to the medical community, that’s an entirely different scenario. No one applauds. Donating the bodies of aborted babies falls into the latter scenario. 

Second, aborted babies are not necessary for lifesaving research. Adult stem cells are yielding phenomenal results, and nobody dies. Just because something good has at some point come from something terrible is not a good reason to argue that something terrible should continue.

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So yeah, there’s the fact that Planned Parenthood obviously isn’t “selling baby parts.” And then there’s the fact that the group releasing this video are some of the same people who worked for the group Live Action, which is best known for…editing together misleading videos attacking Planned Parenthood.

It’s obvious that they are receiving money for baby parts either legally through reimbursement or illegally through profitable payments or other benefits. The unanswered question is whether or not it is happening legally - and it appears that is not always the case. Watch the videos.

And who cares whom the CMP worked for? It’s irrelevant to the footage. Had they only released edited videos, the accusation of deviously deceptive tactics might have some merit. But – once again – they released the full videos. You can watch them and decide what to conclude. 

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So despite the fact that this is an obviously made up and ridiculous accusation, actual politicians are taking it seriously. If you live in the US, your tax dollars are now going toward Congressional Republicans calling for a formal investigation, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee has announced they’ll launch a probe. A probe for baby parts! Good luck, guys!

I am not aware that Planned Parenthood is denying that these ‘ridiculous’ conversations happened. They aren’t contesting the quotes or the activities that were ‘obviously made up’. They are just claiming that they have been deceptively edited to make legal activities look illegal.

But the latest video has just added to the question of whether or not Planned Parenthood is operating within the law. In the most blatant statement yet, Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Melissa Farrell noted that when researchers need a specific part from the aborted baby,“We bake that into our contract, and our protocol, that we follow this, so we deviate from our standard in order to do that… 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.”

The probe isn't about baby parts (which are right there on the videos. Watch the videos. That would be the shortest investigation ever). It's about whether or not Planned Parenthood is breaking the law by altering the timing or method of abortions for the sake of collecting tissue - as Ms. Farrell just stated that they do. So who is correct? That's what an investigation would decide.

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This all reminds me of a course I took in college on heresy. I remember learning about how multiple times throughout human history, various groups of people have been accused of the very specific act of gathering together and hosting orgies, and then taking the resulting babies from any past orgies and burning them into ashes, which are then formed into cakes, which are then eaten. Usually it’s supposed to be the Jews doing this but plenty of other marginalized groups have been accused as well. And it always baffled me to think that people could really, truly believe that their fellow humans were doing something so obviously stupid and made up.

"Believe' in this context suggests something along the lines of 'making something up they want to be true.'  Yet there is that pesky footage of actual conversations and situations. Once again, no one is contesting the content. At most they are challenging the editing or the interpretation of the content.

If they are so falsely maligned, one would think they would encourage people to see the unedited videos for themselves. It should provide the vindication they need. Instead, the PR firm Planned Parenthood hired is distracting and deflecting to the point of apparently faking a hack of Planned Parenthood's website. Considering the lawsuits and the request for media not to cover the story, I don't think they are pleased. I don't blame them. Over the course of these four videos, Planned Parenthood is doing the following by their own admission:

• altering abortion procedures so as to harvest more organs, including apparently doing some form of partial-birth abortion (at least that's sure what the description sounds like in the first video)
• occasionally having babies coming out intact (born) before they can get there to do the abortion and harvest organs
• harvesting their organs, apparently even from those who came out intact (born) - which makes one wonder how that all worked out.
• passing them on to companies like StemExpress that promise financial benefits
• talking about it in a way that reflect their concern of getting caught in certain states
• hoping at minimum to make a little extra and at maximum to maximize their profit by selling by the organ instead of by the specimen

Don’t take my word for it. It’s all there. See it for yourself.

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Well, now it’s 2015 and an organization that is mostly responsible for making sure poor women have access to basic medical care including cancer screenings, checkups, and birth control, are accused of convincing women to abort their babies and then tearing them into parts and selling them on the black market.

First, the fact that they offer basic medical care does not justify killing babies.

Second, the claim about cancer screenings is dishonest. They offer a manual breast exam which women can do on their own. According to their website, they then "connect patients to resources to help them get vital biopsies, ultrasounds, and mammograms." In other words, they don't do those things for the patients. They send them to someone who does. The Federalist notes, "Planned Parenthood does not manage a single licensed mammography facility in the U.S. Not one. Of the 8,735 licensed mammography facilities in America, Planned Parenthood operates exactly zero." They offer access to basic medical care, but not nearly as much as Community Health Centers, which help far more women and don't do abortions. 

Oh, and they do tear the babies into parts - except when the have 'intact fetal cadavers'. 

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And I realize, that if it helps you achieve your goals — whether they be persecuting people of a different faith or cutting funding for poor women’s health care …

Because pro-lifers want to hurt poor women’s health, right? That’s the whole reason they struggle to defend the life of the unborn. It has nothing to do with biological or philosophical arguments that defend the humanity of the unborn. It has no connection to a religious commitment to protecting innocent life. They just hate the poor - specifically women. Of course, the Senate bill to defund Planned Parenthood wouldn't have actually taken money away from women's health. All federal funding would have been sent to federally qualified community health centers. The bill would have diverted funding, not cut it.

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…it becomes surprisingly easy to believe something unbelievable.

Or increasingly hard to ignore something horrible.