The last couple weeks featured the release of undercover videos of luncheon meetings starring Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services of Planned Parenthood, and Dr. Mary Gatter, the medical director at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley. Gatter is also President of the Medical Directors' Council, the central committee of all Planned Parenthood affiliate medical directors. In the videos filmed by the Center for Medical Progress, Nucatola and Gatter are shown discussing selling aborted baby body parts with undercover investigators posing as officials with a biotech company that acts as a middleman to sell aborted baby body parts to universities and other places that conduct such research.
When the Nucatola video was first released, the response of Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards apologized for the tone of the meeting, but also claimed Nucatola had her facts wrong and that if what she said was true then Planned Parenthood did violate laws and as well as ethical guidelines. Then the Center for Medical Progress released the Gatter video repeating much of what Nucatola had said. So Planned Parenthood decided to take another tact seeking to sell the spin that the videos were elaborate "hoaxes."
What is the basis for the "hoax" allegation? Does Planned Parenthood claim that CMP used actors to portray Planned Parenthood officials? No. Does Planned Parenthood claim that CMP altered their representatives voices, to make them say things they did not actually say? No. The ENTIRE basis for PP's claim that the videos are hoaxes is that in addition to making the entire several hour long videos available on YouTube, they also created an edited 8 to 9 minute versions. Does the edited version focus on the more objectionable things PP officials were saying? Absolutely. That does not make the videos a hoax no more than it makes every TV news story a hoax because the station edits the footage to focus on what is most interesting to viewers. CMP has made the full length videos available to anyone who wants to view them in order see whether content changes the meaning of what the PP officials were saying.
The content doesn't help Planned Parenthood Yes, in the full length video there are disclaimers by PP that the organization can only legally recover costs, but Nucatola also talks about clinics wanting to do better than break even on the selling of fetal body parts. Nucatola also says the price depends on the demand for the organ. Meanwhile Gatter is openly haggling over the price of those fetal body parts. The behavior of Nucatola and Gatter are completely inconsistent with the notion that PP does not sell fetal body parts and recovers costs only. If just costs are recoverable, then those costs are calculated and quoted. There is no change in price depending on the demand for the tissue or organs. There is no haggling over the price. And there is certainly no clinics trying to do better, as Nucatola suggests, than break even on costs, a direct admission that the law is being violated.
Planned Parenthood's protestations that the disclaimers that the organization can only recover costs is not on the edited version is akin to an FBI sting operation in which an elected official is caught taking a bribe but the video being shown on the evening news doesn't include the official saying he won't take a bribe...before he proceeds to do exactly that.
In both the Nucatola and Gatter videos, the doctors discuss their willingness to change the abortion procedure to produce "intact specimens." Nucatola said that some abortionists will even "change the presentation" of the fetus so it is breech (feet first) which allows the life to be terminated without damaging fetal organs and other tissue that might be in demand. This admission could also constitute a legal violation and certainly ethical violations.
What is most damning about the Planned Parenthood videos is not that it exposes the organization for selling fetal body parts, but it exposes the world to the gruesomeness of what takes place during an abortion. Abortion rights supporters depend mightily on being able to cloak what happens during an abortion in euphemisms that belie what actually takes place. They will assure everyone that the fetus is just a blob of cells, a "product of conception." They insist that a woman should be able to "control her own body."
When Nucatola talks about crushing above or crushing below to preserve fetal body parts it is clear to everyone that those euphemisms are not reality. The abortion issue was never about a woman being able to control her own body, but whether and when to allow the termination of the life of a developing living human being.
43 comments:
Gary, this is excellent reporting. I am no prude but I am no fool... these videos portray the true gruesome nature of what occurs during the abortion procedures where human life is so viciously and callously ripped apart. And ripped apart these babies are.. rotating razor blades scouring the uterus while the infant tries desperately to retreat from what it senses as an evil . Don't believe me, liberals?... go look it up...a process similar to chemotaxis.
If anything were "cruel and unusual" it is surely this wanton murder of infant human life unable to protect itself and killing that life in a way for Planned Parenthood to sell body parts. Just typing the words makes me want to vomit, the idea so repugnant. If we were talking snail darters, dam projects intended to supply life giving water would be stopped immediately but Planned Parenthood and extremist left liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi demand the investigation of the whistle blowers!!! And no matter how the mental sickness of leftist liberals excuses away these Kermit Gosnell-type baby murders, these Planned Parenthood officials who so cavalierly discuss methodologies of preserving baby organs for sale is just "so Dr. Mengele" of the Holocaust.
I do not understand how liberals can spin this and I am reminded of Carly Fiorina's take on all this Planned Parenthood destruction of life. Fiorina notes liberal pro-abortionists like Hillary Rodham Clinton and HRC's untenable position is quite pertinent to your blog article: "Let’s talk about what ‘extreme’ is. It’s not a life until it leaves the hospital? That’s Hillary Clinton’s position. It’s Hillary Clinton’s position that a 13-year-old girl needs her mother’s permission to go to a tanning salon or get a tattoo, but not to get an abortion. It’s Hillary Clinton’s position that women should not be permitted to look at an ultrasound before an abortion, and yet people who are trying to harvest its body parts can use an ultrasound to make sure that those body parts are preserved, so they can be sold. That...is extreme.”
You mean "Paul." Gary Welsh writes the blog Advance Indiana. Thanks for the kind words though.
OMG! Apologies, Paul, My inadvertency in no way lessens my sincere comment about your word crafting and analysis. Obviously, I follow you and Gary. Mea Culpa!! -Anon 2:32
OK, I think I've got this - the horror is that Planned Parenthood derives monetary benefit from aborted fetus'. There would, one supposes, be even more horror if they simply disposed of this as medical waste and incurred a cost with no compensation, which might be the case if there wasn't an existing law allowing for compensation. That, it appears, shifts the argument to whether Planned Parenthood ought to examine the compensation its legally allowed to receive. That, in turn, would be even more worrisome if Planned Parenthood were receiving some huge amount of compensation from such sources. At a glance, this would seem unlikely, since no one seems to dispute (or even mention) the tiny percentage of what Planned Parenthood does actually involves abortions. Even more worrisome is that almost ll of what the organization does do, is provide a range of contraceptive services - an illogical business model given that if they eliminated that function, and exclusively provided abortion services, they could clearly increase their "profits." That thy appear to be doing the opposite, which works to decrease demand for abortions, probably makes them the Snidely Whiplash of criminal conspirators. If one didn't know better, one might suggest that this is just a straw dummy set up to bring down the organization altogether, but that would have the effect of increasing unwanted births, and in turn, increase demand upon the welfare state which opponents of Planned Parenthood seem to detest even more.
Anon 3:06, oh, the only a tiny percentage of PP's work is abortion argument. FACT: PP is the largest provider of abortion services in the country.The notion that if PP is "brought down" (one can only hope) that other organizations wouldn't provide the same contraception and other non-abortion services PP is doing is utter nonsense. Many organizations already provide those services, without getting taxpayer money like PP is.
No, Anon 3:06; you engage in the classic left liberal Alinsky trick of attempting to change the subject when your positions are exposed as lies.
The horror is the gruesome, grotesque, disgusting, and cruel disregard for human life at any stage and the gross, unfeeling, and uncaring ways in which Planned Parenthood officials discuss the harvest of babies' organs and tissues.
A "straw dummy" set up to bring down the organization? ROTFLMAO on that deception- which is another tired Alinsky weird trick: claim the truth is not what it is but rather a witch hunt... whenever the truth is exposed, liberals revert to victim hood status, their paranoia on full display while complaining of being subject to unworthy vast conspiracies with ulterior motives.
3% of their services are abortions. It's still like arguing Apple is conspiring to reap giant profits on HDMI cables.
http://www.lifedynamics.com/Abortion_Information//Baby_Body_Parts/BabyParts2.cfm Note the dates here? Meanwhile, getting Paul and Gary mixed up is a lot like the old Chesterbelloc problem. Sentient beings read both in preference to anything duh Star prints or any of the other "media". So, I guess we know now why Gosnell kept baby parts in his freezers? Media complicity in lying to us over the years is also an issue. Remember "partial birth abortion"....no coverage, no recordings, no nothing from those biased bastards though one suspects that had they been given permission to film Jews being burnt alive they would have covered such extensively.
Panned Parenthood operates on the Ghoul Standard; patently evil & corrupt.
Planned Parenthood's excuses for murder are really getting old.
"You mean "Paul." Gary Welsh writes the blog Advance Indiana. Thanks for the kind words though."
You two kids should really get a central web page so you could have your own news desk and announce yourselves as "P.O. from XYZ.com. Can I get your statement on such-and-such?"
Do "#Black Lives Matter" at abortion mills like Planned Parenthood?
One could make the argument that Planned Parenthood and its willing accomplice, Stem Express, were conducting Nazi-style medical experiments, and therefore guilty of “Crimes Against Humanity.”
During WWII, Nazi doctors conducted human medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners (including children), in its concentration camps. These experiments included human freezing (hypothermia), bone, muscle, and nerve transplantation, high altitude, experiments with poison, immunization, and malaria. The human anatomy atlas still in use today was developed by Nazi physicians.
Today, Planned Parenthood is emphasizing the benefits of the experiments conducted on the body parts of aborted human babies. Yes, there may be scientific gains from these human experiments.
Never the less, the US and its Allies brought the Nazi physicians to trial for their war crimes. The conclusion was that the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Many of the physicians were sentenced to death.
Brilliant Mr. Wright!
Abortion is not only an historical fact, it is a legal procedure.
You may not want to hear it, Paul, but your view of abortion is the minority.
It's been an historical fact since the beginning of humankind, and the Supreme Court has ruled it legal.
Men have absolutely no business interfering with women's bodily functions.
Anon 11:08, I couldn't agree more than men "have absolutely no business interfering with women's bodily functions." The problem is abortion is more than that. Medical science has proven beyond any doubt that abortion involves the life of a second human being that is terminated, in a very violent way, during the procedure. Your statement is merely a typical pro-abortion slogan which ignores science.
Ogden's point (11:49) is well made. Drivers are responsible for passengers; but mothers somehow aren't?
What if I was psychologically raped because he used charm on me and played on my biological responses to get me to do something in a state of physical arousal that in a non-aroused physical state I never would have consented to?
Abortion has been a fact of human existence since the beginning.
A fetus/embryo becomes a human being at birth: religion may say an unborn entity is a person, but neither law nor "medical science" does.
Outlawing abortion does not prevent abortions from happening, it merely increases the medical dangers for the pregnant woman.
"Safe, legal and rare" is the goal: not the elimination of the option.
And, Pete Boggs, your analogy is bogus.
"The practice of abortion, the medical removal of a fetus, has been known since at least ancient times."
"Abortion has been banned or restricted throughout history in countries around the world. Multiple scholars have noticed that in many cases, this has caused women to seek dangerous, illegal abortions...." (emphasis added)
Your erroneous and shortsighted view of the need for abortion as a safe, legal option for an unwanted pregnancy is misogynist not to mention shortsighted.
Educate yourself, starting here -- and then following the footnotes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion
Susan,
Actually I'm very aware of the history of abortion. The problem is medical science developments of the late 20th Century and early 21st Century has conclusively proven that we're talking about another human life when it comes to abortion. Much of that history you're talking about wasn't informed by that information.
Obviously we're talking about when to draw the line to provide legal protection. Obviously it's not at 9 months and trying to take it down to conception, while arguably correct in terms of when life begins, isn't practical. Certainly Roe which mandates abortion on demand through 6 months (modified in the Casey decision to viability). Doe v. Bolton extends that to 9 months if needed for the health of the mother, including mental health.
If the Supreme Court wouldn't have subverted the legislative process, then the line probably would have been drawn at 2-3 months. Two months is approximately the time brain wave activity starts which would make that definition of life (at least in terms of the stage of affording legal protection)similar to how we define the cessation of life. Most people, rightfully so, find second trimester abortion mandated by Roe to be utterly repulsive.
SM: Not trying to get your zygote, but; your illogic is stillborn. Those practices referenced herein are evil & unacceptable; to any civil society. Clinical references can obscure but don't excuse murder. How's the baby or fetus, doing? Is it a premature baby or fetus? The method of O2 exchange doesn't change the equation; via the mother's blood stream vs. infant lungs.
Those who don't want responsibility for passengers should drive alone; an acceptable act of conscience. We all do things we regret; which doesn't justify the compounding of error to assuage guilt or avoid reality.
"It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life, forcing her to give birth to a baby, which she has decided she does not want to do," Alabama ACLU’s legal director Randall Marshall said.
Exactly (this is the Alabama prisoner story). Why should the government have the right to turn a living human into an unwilling vessel for a not-yet-human? Sounds like slavery to me.
Women should be able to control their own bodies.
You bring up precisely why the abortion issue is so problematic. You're talking about one human life growing inside another. The problem with the bodily container argument is that employing it means an unborn child has no right to live even at 9 months, when the child could live outside the womb. Most people rightfully recoil at that. Certainly a woman has a right to bodily integrity, but is it absolute up to 9 months? At some point legal protection should apply to protect the life of the unborn child. The problem is that Roe v. Wade shortcircuited the debate this country needed to have as to when that line would be drawn and instead said it had to be at least 6 months. Most people find second trimester abortions to be revolting, which they, of course, are.
Anon 4:06: Statists seek to inorganically instrumentalize the body of Jane Doe as a vessel; of murder. Women are free to control their own bodies; and not deny the right or life of another, passenger or pedestrian...
Paul: "medical science" has certainly not "proven" that a fetus unborn is a human being. Some denominations in the religious sphere may hold that "life begins at conception", but the law does not.
Yes, it's a difficult dilemma, but not one that outsiders should be able to decide for an individual over her objections (even if she is incarcerated).
As for Pete Boggs' passenger analogy: specious. A fetus inside a mother is not the same as a passenger and driver inside the same car.
SM: You suggest that most women have less control over who's a passenger within their bodies than a car they're driving; that they don't somehow understand their "choices." Specious?!?
FYI: Constructs of law come from religion. Those involved in the murder of pregnant women have also been charged in the deaths of their unborn children. Unborn babies respond to stimuli & move independently of their mothers; because they're alive.
You still don't get it, Pete Boggs. It's your ANALOGY that's specious: "pleasing to the eye but deceptive".
Both drivers and passengers are inside cars; fetuses are inside mothers. See? Not parallel constructions. Or as my father would say, cute: but no cigar.
Pete Boggs thinks everyone should live based on his definition of everything. Pete Boggs would make a great dictator but he's a terrible American.
Anon 10:49 & 2:38: For whatever reason (acknowledgement: those reasons may be none of anyone else's business), you're disinterested in considering that which is provable & beyond the politically narrowed scope of a statist narrative. You're likewise expressing a disinterest in the lives of citizens defrauded into paying for the Panned / Banned Parenthood scheme; with the property of their irreplaceable time & labor that's been stolen from them.
Mother & unborn child are separate, living beings. A fetus has all attributes of life & is therefore alive. Adopting clinical reference to avoid dealing with the unborn child as a life, doesn't justify destroying that life. The body's understood to physically house and / or transport the mind & soul; as evidenced by natural end of life concerns about the body outlasting the mind, etc.
What takes place between a doctor & patient should be confidential (except in case of minors). The problem here (germane to discussion) is Banned Parenthood is guilty of fraud; resulting in the nonconsensual confiscation or theft of property (citizen's income & labor) & involuntary servitude / slavery- a violation of the Fourth Amendment, civil rights; that which is patently characteristic of tyrants / dictators / despots. Tyrants are by nature murderous; a quality which describes PP & their heinous dismemberment of the living; literally & economically.
http://m.snopes.com/fetal-tissue-sales/
read up on the four hoaxes :)
Correction: It's the 13th Amendment that prohibits involuntary servitude / slavery
Phil Silverman, not only have I "read up" on the videos, I have watched the entire videos. How, pray tell, are they "hoaxes?" Did they hire actors to portray PP officials? No. Did they alter their words so they said something they didn't say? No. The only claim that these are hoaxes is based on the Center for Medical Progress producing edited versions of the videos. BUT THEY ALSO MADE AVAILABLE THE ENTIRE VIDEOS FOR ANYONE TO CHECK OUT TO SEE IF THEIR EDITING DISTORTED WHAT THEY SAID! When a TV station does a story, they edit the video? Does that make the TV report then a "hoax."
The Snopes article is merely labeled as "news" not a judgment on truth or falsity. But it includes this ridiculous quote:
“It appears to be legal, no matter how much you charge,” Dr. Caplan said, adding that there appears to be little or no oversight of the processing fees.
Dr. Caplan is obviously not an attorney. The law says you can't profit on harvesting fetal tissue. That obviously is not consistent with Caplan's view that abortionists can charge whatever they want and there is no problem. Even PP's President says it is illegal to charge more than costs. The problem for PP officials is that they just didn't tell them the costs, they were haggling on the price and Nucatola said clinics like to do better than break even.
The bigger issue may turn out to be PP admitted that many of their abortionists reposition the fetus in order to better to harvest tissue. That is flat out illegal.
The videos caught PP violating legal and ethical standards. But, more importantly, the videos expose abortion for what it really is.
Phil Silverman: Read up on the Four Horseman (Bible)...
I'll believe that Republicans are "pro-life" as soon as they start advocating for free pre-natal care, support parental leave, stop supporting for the death penalty, stop lobbying for yet another pre-emptive war, agree to sane gun regulations and work to provide health care for all.
This concentration on the nine months a fetus is within a mother's womb is absurd when one considers that these legislators (and candidates) repeatedly dismiss efforts to improve the quality of human life after birth -- and points out (yet again) that they're only concerned with controlling a woman's body.
Women have (always) had sex, have (always) had abortions, are (usually) at peace with the decision and move on with their lives. It is their legal right, and, moreover, it’s good for everyone that they have this right: The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary.
If you really want to stop abortion, begin promoting (free) contraception.
SM: You required the "absurdity" of nine months to eventually make the above, absurd statement.
Anon 4:05- The discretionary consent of contraceptive conscience is free & therefore voluntary.
Why is fetal tissue necessary for medical research? Check out this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-scientists-speak-out-about-the-need-for-fetal-tissue-in-research_55ca245ce4b0923c12be3261
Post a Comment