Sorry, Carly: Planned Parenthood Edition

Sorry, Carly. You may have won the GOP primary debate last night, by speaking with specifics and often knowing what you were talking about. You may have even elicited a heartfelt cheer from me and women around the nation with that pitch perfect response to Donald Trump’s comments about your face.

But that riff on the Planned Parenthood tapes with images of a kicking fetus on a table awaiting its brain harvest that brought down the Reagan Library house was pure fiction.

Ezra Klein notes that:

“Nothing like that happens in the Planned Parenthood tapes. As Sarah Kliff, who has watched all the tapes, wrote, ‘either Fiorina hasn’t watched the Planned Parenthood videos or she is knowingly misrepresenting the footage.’

“This has become something of a habit for Fiorina, who has a notable facility for delivering answers that thrill conservatives but fall apart under close examination.”

Sarah Kliff’s excellent and thorough discussion of this, including embedded video and an update with Fiorina’s follow-up interview this morning, points out that:

“Fiorina is wrong: Nobody watching the Planned Parenthood tapes would see those things. I know, because I recently watched all 12 hours of footage.

“The videos were produced by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group that argues Planned Parenthood has profited from procuring fetal tissue for researchers. The videos do show Planned Parenthood officials discussing fetal tissue, sometimes in ways that are callous and jarring. But there is no moment where Planned Parenthood discusses procuring fetal tissue for profit, nor is there the scene that Fiorina describes.”

I’ve written about this most recent effort to demonize and defund Planned Parenthood here, pointing out that not only is their work not evil, it is an act of grace:

Jay Michaelson calls this “God’s work.”

The tagline for Planned Parenthood says it plainly: “Care. No matter what.”

Fetal tissue donation is not a new practice, nor is it exclusive to Planned Parenthood. But, as others have pointed out, this latest effort is more about taking rights away from women than it is about exposing any heretofore unknown truths.

It’s also about discrediting one of the country’s leading providers of healthcare for women. The organization’s website states that one in five women in the U.S. has sought some form of healthcare from Planned Parenthood at least once in her life (this one included). Their health centers provide comprehensive medical care to women on the margins, women with economic need, women who need education and information, and women whom society would rather dismiss. Women who need pregnancy tests. Women who benefit from cancer screening. Women who haven’t seen any other doctor for years because they can’t afford it. Women who need to know their options.

Women like Mary, the mother of Jesus.

To see how I make that case, read more here.

Image via wikimedia commons.