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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Rejecting Reality: How Planned Parenthood And Its Defenders Hide The Truth

In early July, The Center for Medical Progress began to release videos procured after three years of undercover work. They released short teaser videos, long videos from which the short versions were edited, and transcripts. The videos not only showed the calculating, callous way in which key players in Planned Parenthood viewed their clients and the unborn children, they also provided reasons to believe that certain Planned Parenthood clinics were breaking the law in the process of harvesting fetal tissue. 

That's when Planned Parenthood and their defenders began a methodical campaign of  distortion, denial and deception to help people avoid looking at the reality of abortion and the industries that profit from it. One example requires a certain amount of speculation*; the facts supporting the rest of my points are clear enough on their own.
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(UPDATE 9/26/15: When a reader offered a rigorous challenge to the veracity of many of my claims (you can read our dialogue in the comments section), I realized I needed to restate some of my points with better clarity and precision. I want to be as committed to truth as I wish Planned Parenthood and the press would be; I hope this update accomplishes that purpose.)
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The three broadcast networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, haven’t reported on a single video exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of aborted babies during their news shows in 31 days – or one full month [of August]. The last time a network mentioned a particular video came July 31, when CBS This Morning correspondent Julianna Goldman acknowledged the fourth video of a “Planned Parenthood doctor in Colorado discussing providing fetal tissue for a fee.” NBC last reported on a specific video July 30, while ABC – the worst of all three networks – last noted a video July 16 (keep in mind the first video came out July 14). The networks have not covered the last four videos released by the Center for Medical Progress...
Considering it took "56 days, multiple letters from members of the House of Representatives and a public outcry [for] all three broadcast networks [to] report on Gosnell," this is not entirely unexpected. Planned Parenthood has been giving awards to journalists for years; the orchestrated silence on the scandal is par for the course. 
  • Planned Parenthood claimed a group called 3301 hacked them twice. The first time, a spokesman named E told the Daily Dot, which then broke the story, since Planned Parenthood was apparently not aware of the hack. Planned Parenthood described 3301 as "the world's most sophisticated hackers," though 3301 was foiled in their attempt to deface Planned Parenthood's site and redirect users to their Twitter account (they could do this because the back end of Planned Parenthood's website was "so terribly configured.") On July 27, 3301 said they would decrypt and release emails from Planned Parenthood soon. That has yet to occur.
The second time, E was very clear that 3301 did not do it; in fact, E believed Planned Parenthood did it to themselves. In other words, Planned Parenthood faked a hack to its website to distract people from the story and paint themselves as victims. The press covered Planned Parenthood's version of events ("a new low for anti-abortion extremists"), but when it became clear they had hacked themselves, the silence in the press was deafening. Planned Parenthood demonstrated its willingness to dishonestly cover up the story, and the press reported only one side of the discussion. It should be no surprise that this trend continued.
Frankly, the number of abortions is irrelevant to the larger discussion. But if Planned Parenthood wants to bring it up, let the record show that their claim that abortion is only 3% of their business is misleading at best and deliberately false at worst. 
  • Planned Parenthood and the media quickly reminded us of the medical breakthroughs (specifically vaccines) gained from research performed on dead babies fifty years ago, as if benefiting from babies killed then justifies our killing more babies now. Like the misleading 3% statistic, it's irrelevant to the issues exposed in the video, but Planned Parenthood and the press like to talk about it, so I suppose it's worth addressing. 
First, this unethical utilitarian calculus is morally problematic to say the least. Second, experimentation on aborted babies for medical research was unnecessary then and is unnecessary now. We can cure people without killing others on their behalf. Currently, non-fetal stem cell research is leading to a remarkable amount of medical breakthroughs while fetal stem cell research is fading because it’s going nowhere. The claim that we need fetal tissue to ensure medical breakthroughs is irrelevant to the discussion. It's also false. 
That conclusion is entirely unwarranted. The accusations in the videos will not be confirmed or denied until they are done in the states in question (such as Texas, where the probe is ongoing). So far, the claim that state probes have proven Planned Parenthood's innocence is entirely false.
  • Planned Parenthood hired Fusion GPS,  a company whose partisan history would normally raise questions concerning their objectivity, to study the videos released by the Center For Medical Progress. To no one's surprise, Fusion GPS sided with the company that hired it and concluded that even the long form videos were unreliable as evidence. This was an odd conclusion, since there was no "widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation" and the edits were likely over “irrelevant content.” Nonetheless, the media happily reported the conclusion with no investigation of their own. 
How do I know they did not do their own investigation? Because I checked all the edits Fusion GPS highlighted in the long videos. You should too. There is nothing scandalous there. The accusations are almost childish in their pettiness. If people in the media investigated and didn't see this, they need to turn in their credentials. The "deceptively edited"video mantra is blatantly false, and anyone bothering to double check the claims of Fusion GPS can see this. (Update10/14/15: the Alliance Defending Freedom hired Coalfire, a far more credible company, to examine the videos. Their report is far more detailed than Fusion GPS's, and it soundly affirms the credibility of the videos.}
As far as I can tell, when the press says she made it up, they mean she said the baby was 'kicking' when it was only moving, she didn’t quote Ms. O’Donnell precisely word for word, and she referenced accredited footage that was not original to the Center For Medical Progress yet was in the video. That’s a deceptive way of defining “made up.” The claim that Carly Fiorina referenced imaginary footage and/or dialogue from the videos is  false.

I don’t know how many times I have asked the critics of the videos if they have actually viewed them. I have yet to hear an affirmative answer. They usually send me links to news stories or blog posts which are terribly misleading or completely false. When people grow to love a choice, they will eventually quit caring about any truth that challenges that choice. Much like our senators, they want to look away, and any excuse will do.

Meanwhile babies die, pulled apart and parceled out as commodities while those who dismember and sell them sip their wine, giggle at the gonads ripped off a baby boy, cut faces in half with scissors, celebrate the fact that written guidelines don't haunt them, and hope they don't get caught.

That is the truth.
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*I originally posted the following discussion about Facebook at the beginning of my list, but after some dialogue with others, I realized the speculative nature of this point makes it a poor choice for leading into my argument. I believe there is merit to my concern; time will tell if my suspicions are correct.

One of the first articles about the videos was removed from Facebook because it was “abusive” though there was no profanity or graphic imagery in it (a Facebook algorithm likely stopped the story from surfacing for a while). Eventually, Facebook responded to the protests and the story began to trend. However, the articles critical of the Center For Medical Progress rose suspiciously to the top in spite of having far fewer readers than articles promoting or defending the videos.

Perhaps it’s all coincidence, but Facebook has been known to manipulate its news feed to impact both information and emotions. One of their news curators has admitted that "they choose what's trending."  Wired has noted that Facebook organizes how news articles rank on our screens while manipulating the news feed itself. Forbes is one of many sites that has reported on Facebook's experiment in emotional manipulation.  Facebook and Google have even been used effectively to influence voter turnout and choices. Considering Facebook's track record, I am suspicious. 

10 comments:

  1. Anthony, I think you might be happier if you stopped pretending that you - or the other people freaking out about these videos - think that they actually demonstrate that Planned Parenthood is killing babies and selling their parts. Why am I so confident that you're pretending to believe this? Because you aren't acting the way you would actually act if you actually thought this was actually happening. I mean, imagine that there was an organization of people who took kids from daycare centers, killed them, cut them up, and sold them for parts. Imagine that they did this on a daily basis, across the country. Would you react to learning that fact by writing posts on the internet? Or even by staging protests outside that organization's offices? I doubt it. You would surely first turn to the authorities and then, if the authorities declined to stop this atrocity, you would do anything you physically could to stop it yourself. I'm pretty confident about that, because you are a good person, and I'm pretty sure I and many other people would help you.

    But you aren't doing anything like that, because you know as well as I do that what happens at Planned Parenthood is not the murder of children. Somehow, though, you've gotten the idea that it would be fun, or satisfying, or somehow rewarding to pretend that these bad people are doing these bad things. It's like a role playing game or something. But from my perspective I see an intelligent, thoughtful person abandoning their critical thinking skills, accepting speculation, conjecture, and simple nonsense as hard fact, and generally getting really worked up about an issue that has been almost entirely designed with the intent of getting you worked up. It's not a very pleasant thing to see.

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  2. Steve, please tell me where I have abandoned my critical thinking skills and accepted speculation, nonsense and conjecture as fact. Just give me examples from what I said. I carefully cited my sources so as to show my reasons for claiming what I do. What in my article was not true? You gave no specifics; I'm not sure how to respond. If you have read the links and checked out Fusion GPS's video and analyzed like I did, I would love to hear where I have failed to portray this accurately. If you have not done due diligence, then I'm not interested.

    Second, abortion kills babies. This is an obvious fact.
    1. In both 1952 and 1964, Planned Parenthood's published a pamphlet promoting "Birth Control." In the Q and A section you can read the following: QUESTION: "Is it (i.e., "Birth Control") an abortion?" ANSWER: "Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun." (http://www.issues4life.org/images/pp-1952.jpg)

    2. "There are many sperm cells in the [seminal] fluid. If one of them meets an egg cell inside the mother, new life can begin to grow ... If one of your friends is pregnant, ask her to let your child 'feel the baby move.' ... A baby grows in a special place inside the mother, called the uterus not in her stomach. In nine months it is born." Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America , in How to Talk with Your Child About Sexuality.

    3. Abortion supporter Judith Arcana said at a seminar: "I performed abortions, I have had an abortion and I am in favor of women having abortions when we choose to do so. But we should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend this is not happening." (http://www.lifenews.com/2013/01/22/abortion-activists-admit-i-knew-it-was-a-baby/)

    4. A doctor in The American Medial News said, "I have angry feelings at myself for feeling good about grasping the calvaria [head], for feeling good about doing a technically good procedure that destroys a fetus, kills a baby."

    5. In the Dallas Morning News, abortion clinic administrator Charlotte Taft made the following statement: "We were hiding … some pieces of the truth about abortion that were threatening. [Abortion] is a kind of killing, and most women seeking abortion know that."

    6. Joan Wright, the owner of a clinic in Ottawa, said to a group of protestors claiming that her clinic's counseling was deceptive, "She said. “Good grief! They accuse us of pretending we’re not doing what we’re doing? I’m in the business of death!”

    Those last quotes and a lot more have been complied and sourced here (http://liveactionnews.org/abortionists-agree-abortion-is-killing/) if you care to read them. It's a baby, and it's being killed. This is an obvious fact that even the pro-abortion crowd recognizes.

    You know full well that writing, demonstrating and marching is the only effective route by which to address this issue. Right now, pro-lifers are doing anything they legally can to stop this, through the courts and through civil action (marching, protesting, writing, etc). HT Martin Luther King, Ghandi and Jesus.

    You said you and plenty of other people would help me if kids were being killed in day care. I think you would, because I know you. So…why aren't you working to stop abortion now? Even abortionists say it's a baby, and that they are killing it. Can I expect your support in the struggle to end this?

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    1. WRT your second list of claims:

      1. So? In 1973 The Baptist Press, an organ of the SBC, published an op-ed saying that "Religious liberty, human equality, and justice " were advanced by the Roe v Wade decision. Therefore, following your reasoning, abortion is OK. (http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2010/05/06/baptist-press-initial-reporting-on-roe-v-wade/)

      2. We should base our morality on the way some people explain things to children?

      3. Hey, a quote that isn't silly! However, it also doesn't constitute an argument - an assertion is an assertion, no matter who makes it.

      4, 5, 6, however many you want, these quotes do not constitute an argument. This should be pretty obvious to you. If it's not, consider how persuaded you would be if I were to find a bunch of quotes claiming that a fetus is not a baby. Would that change your mind about anything?

      Here's a fact suggesting that many people do not think that a fetus is a baby, at a visceral level: "Compared with couples who had successful pregnancies, those who had a miscarriage were 22 percent more likely to break up, and those who experienced a stillbirth were 40 percent more likely to do so..." (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/breakup.miscarriage.pregnancy/). Why should that be so, unless we have a predisposition to think that a fetus, while precious to eager parents, is less precious than a born baby?

      I guess it's up to you whether you feel more comfortable as a good german or as a pretender to outrage. Are you seriously saying that if you knew someone inside a building near you was actually killing a five year old child, right now, your response would be to stand outside saying they shouldn't do it?

      Anyway, suppose, for the sake of argument, I accepted your assertion that a fetus is a baby human which should be accorded the full panoply of human rights. In that case I would conclude that abortion was often immoral, but I would still hold that it should be legal, just as I would think a parent who refused to donate a kidney to their child was a bad person, but not a criminal. It also wouldn't change anything with regard to tissue donation; parents have the right to make decisions about the disposition of their dead children's bodies, no matter how old the child was.

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    2. Pro-lifers are not doing everything they legally can to reduce the number of abortions. Providing free birth control to everyone who wants it is a simple, obvious, and proven way to reduce the rate of abortions, yet I can count on the fingers of one head the number of pro-lifers I've heard advocating for universal free birth control. Likewise, comprehensive (as opposed to abstinence only) sex education programs have been shown to reduce teenage pregnancy, but pro-lifers are almost universally against it - the only pro-life site in favor of comprehensive sex ed I could find in a quick search was, interestingly, secularprolife.org. It's almost as if a sectarian impulse to restrict and repress sexuality is overwhelming pro-lifers' claimed desire to reduce the number of abortions by any means.

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  3. 1. Far from burying the story, Facebook deliberately excluded the story from the algorithm that blocks stories reported as abusive. The "trending" bar on Facebook is customized to the user and it would require considerable effort to get a reliable perspective on its behavior in general.

    2. It does not require a conspiracy to explain the media failing to cover something you think it should pay more attention to. This reduces to a plea for news organizations to broadcast CMP's video for them for free.

    3. The "evidence" that PP faked the hack is pathetic. It's entirely expected for an organization which is frequently targeted to have a set of response pages ready to go. It's also difficult for an outsider to know what parts of an organization's infrastructure are damaged or compromised by an attack.

    4. Fackcheck.org calculates that 10% of PP patients get an abortion, not that 10% of services are abortions. It's not unusual for health care providers to itemize services, and certainly not "astonishing accounting gymnastics".

    5. If this were true it would show that there is no market for fetal tissue, and thus it would not even be possible for Planned Parenthood to profit from it.

    6. State probes have shown PP is not breaking the law in states where those probes have been completed. If people are drawing from that the conclusion that PP has been exonerated in other states, yes, that is a mistake.

    7. This one is arguable, but I don't think your position is obviously untenable. There is debate over the degree to which other clinics would be able to take on the burden of accepting Medicaid, and about the degree to which this would inconvenience current PP patients.

    8. Your evidence that Fusion GPS is highly partisan comprises a single mention of them working for Obama campaign. Lots of entities work for lots of campaigns; this conclusion is an absurd leap.

    9. I haven't researched this, but I would suggest that anyone who believes the edited version of the CMP videos are good sources of evidence is acting foolishly.


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  4. I will respond here to your “WRT your second list of claims”, then separately to your 9 responses. Soon we will have a book…

    1. Re: The quotes I offered about the humanity of the unborn. You said, "You know as well as I do that what happens at Planned Parenthood is not the murder of children.” My listed quotes were not an attempt to make a complete argument for the humanity of the unborn.That case can be found here (http://www.caseforlife.com). You asserted (not argued) that abortion does not murder children. I offered multiple assertions from people actually in the abortion industry who think your assertion is wrong. That seems like a fair way to respond. I'm not sure what to make of you quote that people don’t think the fetus is a baby “at a visceral level.” Are you arguing that it’s not a baby because a lot of people don’t feel like it’s a baby? That's not an argument either…

    2. Throughout all of history, people have often chosen to fight against what they consider to be atrocities by ways you seem to entirely discount. Let me add to my earlier list of Martin Luther King, Ghandi and Jesus the names of Schindler, Bonhoeffer, and Wilberforce. This is a form of no-violent action, which takes many forms (https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/index.php/what-is-icnc/methods-of-nonviolent-action). An article from the pro-life action league gives further reasons from the pro-life perspective as to why this is a frustrating but necessary approach to the issue of abortion (http://prolifeaction.org/about/closed81.php).

    3.You offered a scenario where, for the sake of argument, you accept that the unborn are humans deserving of ‘the full panalopy of human rights” offered to the born. Then you said you would think killing them would be immoral but should still be legal. That conclusion confuses me. If the right to life is part of the panalopy of human rights (which you seem to concede considering you would view the abortion as immoral), why on earth should abortion be legal? Another way of thinking of it: if killing a human accorded the panalopy of human rights is immoral but not illegal before birth, why would this not apply after birth as well?

    4. Refusing to donate a kidney may or may not be immoral, but it’s in an entirely different category or ethical action. There are four main categories of ethical action: obligatory (it is right to do it and wrong not to do it), impermissible (it is wrong to do it and right not to do it), permissible (it is neither right nor wrong to do them or not to do them), and supererogatory (it is right to do it but not wrong not to do them. It is going above and beyond the call of duty). Based on your “for the sake of argument” scenario, abortion is impermissible; donating an organ is supererogatory.

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    1. 1. What various people say about abortion can be a clue to what they think about abortion, but what they do is a better clue. If a person behaves towards abortion and abortion providers the same way they behave toward the murder of children and murderers of children then they probably think abortion is the murder of a child; to the extent that they behave differently they probably think those things are different. This is a premise in my argument that you don't think abortion is identical to the murder of children.

      The point of the miscarriage/stillbirth/divorce statistic is to illustrate that it's not surprising that many people do not think that abortion isn't the murder of a child.

      2. Jesus chased the moneylenders from the temple with a flail, and Bonhoeffer (probably) tried to assassinate Hitler. That aside, there are many forms of non-violent direct action which could be used to prevent abortion. There aren't enough jails (even in America) to hold the tens of millions of Americans who say that abortion is murder if they actually decided to peacefully surround and block access to abortion clinics. And, as I pointed out an another comment, pro-lifers could reduce the number of abortions by a third by supporting universal free birth control, but they don't. The obvious conclusion is that they think consequence-free sex is a moral crime of the same order as child murder, which would be a bizarre way to think; an alternative, more plausible conclusion is that they do not actually think abortion is the murder of a child.

      3. There are many things which are immoral which are not illegal. I don't think I'd want to live in a country where all immoral actions were illegal.

      4. Donating an organ to a stranger might be supererogatory, just as feeding a stranger would be. However, feeding your own children is usually considered morally (and legally) obligatory, and I would take donating an organ to your child to be at least somewhat morally obligatory as well, in most circumstances.

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  5. You said: “Far from burying the story, Facebook deliberately excluded the story from the algorithm that blocks stories reported as abusive… would require considerable effort to get a reliable perspective on its behavior in general.”

    Response: I noted it may have simply been the algorithm. If “buried” is too loaded, just say “Facebook’s algorithm’s stopped the story from surfacing initially.” That is not necessarily nefarious, but the article I linked to noted the large discrepancy between reader popularity and the posts that then rose to the top. Check out this article from Wired (http://www.wired.com/2015/07/facebook-updates-news-feed/) about how Facebook plans how news articles rank on our screens. They’ve manipulated date before, like here (http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-user-news-feeds-to-create-emotional-contagion/) or here (http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2014/07/how-facebook-manipulates-the-newsfeed-every-day/). Perhaps this is all coincidence; I will keep looking into it. At this point, I think there is legitimate reason to question if there was influence taking place behind the scenes.

    You wrote: “It does not require a conspiracy to explain the media failing to cover something…This reduces to a plea for news organizations to broadcast CMP's video for them for free.”

    Response: No, not broadcast the videos. Just cover the story. Of course they don’t have to; I’m not suggesting they be forced to do it. But while politicians were duking it out, states were opening probes, and social media was buzzing, the left-leaning media in general refused to cover it - and it is a clearly established fact that Planned Parenthood exerted a lot of pressure. This reduces to news organizations not broadcasting CMP’s videos because the organization in question asked them not to. When else have you seen the media obediently respond like that to a major organization embroiled in scandal?

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  6. You wrote: “The "evidence" that PP faked the hack is pathetic. It's entirely expected … difficult for an outsider to know what parts of an organization's infrastructure are damaged or compromised by an attack.”

    Response: I refer to the link I posted. See also the article at 'talking points memo' (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/conservatives-planned-parenthood-hack-pr-stunt), a left-leaning website (at least the founder was).

    You wrote: "Fackcheck.org calculates that 10% of PP patients get an abortion, not that 10% of services are abortions… certainly not "astonishing accounting gymnastics".

    Response: I read the article again, and you’re right. Factcheck says 3% of their services are abortion. They immediately make a contrast with another way of figuring the data, and then they finish with the “10% of clients” claim, and that stood out in my mind. When the Washington Post wrote about it,they quoted Slate’s editor as saying it was “the most meaningless abortion statistic ever” because of the convoluted way PP figures abortions vs. other services (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/08/12/for-planned-parenthood-abortion-stats-3-percent-and-94-percent-are-both-misleading/).

    You said: "If this were true it would show that there is no market for fetal tissue… not even be possible for Planned Parenthood to profit from it."

    Response: Obviously, there is a market for fetal tissue. The research continues in spite of its failures. My point was that it is unnecessary and largely ineffective.

    You said: "State probes…if people are drawing from that the conclusion that PP has been exonerated in other states, yes, that is a mistake.”

    Response: We agree on 1 out of 9!

    You wrote: "This one is arguable, but I don't think your position is obviously untenable. There is debate…about the degree to which this would inconvenience current PP patients."

    Response: I agree there is debate. My main complaint is the way the discussion culturally is not honest.

    You wrote: "Your evidence that Fusion GPS is highly partisan…this conclusion is an absurd leap."

    Response: Based on other things I read about Fusion GPS’s history, I don’t think it is, but let’s assume you are right. Take out “a highly partisan company” and nothing changes about the broader point. However, one reason I think the partisan connections are important is that typically the press digs this up (think of how companies that do studies that deny global warming are vetted exhaustively to see if they may be biased).

    You wrote: "I haven't researched this, but I would suggest that anyone who believes the edited version of the CMP videos are good sources of evidence is acting foolishly."

    Response: If you mean the short versions, sure. I figured that was a given. If you mean the long versions, I refer you back to my research of what Fusion GPS highlighted (http://empiresandmangers.blogspot.com/2015/08/planned-parenthood-fusion-gps-and.html). I think their conclusion about the videos is silly and deceptive.

    I've got a busy weekend ahead. If you post and I don't respond for a couple days, that's why!

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  7. Steve, your challenges have been very helpful in causing me to take a look at the clarity and precision with which I made my points. Considering how I am stressing the importance of a truth, I feel it's only fair to examine my claims under the same microscope - which you provided. I updated this post and included the following at the beginning:

    "UPDATE 9/26/15: When a reader offered a rigorous challenge to the veracity of many of my claims (you can read our dialogue in the comments section), I realized I needed to restate some of my points with better clarity and precision. I want to be as committed to truth as I wish Planned Parenthood and the press would be; I hope this update accomplishes that purpose."

    You will see this in several ways:

    1. I added some information to the Facebook discussion and moved it to the end as a footnote. I think my point has merit, but it is speculative in ways that my other points are not. I should have noted that more clearly.

    2. I added more information to the point about the Planned Parenthood hack. Frankly, I think we will eventually find out that 3301 is not what they claim to be, but as that is entirely conjecture on my part, I am including that here and not there.

    3. I clarified the 3% / 10% discussion in terms of the percentage of Planned Parenthood's abortion business.

    4. I added some additional info to the Carly Fiorina section (which reflects conversation with another reader on Facebook).

    I don't expect that we will now agree, of course. I hope, however, that we can continue to dialogue/debate. To whatever degree your challenges force me to toward increasing clarity and truth, I value them.

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