For the last several months, Conservative talking heads have
feigned outrage at some manipulated and doctored videos regarding Planned
Parenthood. I’m not going to debate
abortion, the hypocritical Republican stance on abortion, the constitutionally protected
action of abortion, or women’s health in general. I’m not concerned with that right now. What I am concerned about is the amount of
disregard for journalistic integrity, the fervor with which Planned Parenthood
opposition is trying to get it shut down, and the basic premise of certain laws
that we have in the United States. And
then I’m going to do some comparisons, because there are some incredibly
disturbing numbers.
First of all, let me state, if you’ve seen any of the
videos, they can be graphic. I get
that. It’s just too bad that the graphic
parts aren’t actually from Planned Parenthood.
This exchange took place just a few days ago with Chris Cuomo from CNN
and David Daleiden, the scumbag that created these false videos:
“Carly Fiorina was
referencing a sequence in our video that shows footage of a born-alive infant
from a late-term abortion actually moving in the specimen pan,” he explained.
“But if you’re talking about
organ harvesting and abortions and how terrible they are why would you use a
stillborn fetus, which is not a function of an abortion?” Cuomo asked.
“It’s the same baby, whether
it’s born dead or alive, whether the organs are harvested or not,” Daleiden
replied.
“It’s also completely
irrelevant to the point you’re trying to make, which is, ‘Look at what they do
to these babies,'” the CNN host pressed. “It was born stillborn. It was not
aborted. Doesn’t that matter to you if you’re talking about abortion?”
“It’s the same kind of
fetus,” Daleiden continued to insist.
“My point is context,” Cuomo
shot back. “You’re saying, ‘what they do in abortions,’ that wasn’t an
abortion. That’s my point.”
So, to be clear, in the videos, there’s a graphic
representation of a baby that Carly Fiorina described in the last Republican
debates that are in these videos from The Center for Medical Progress, a
regressive anti-women’s health organization, dedicated to violating
Constitutional Protections. The context
in the video is that this is a late term aborted baby, and this is what is
happening at Planned Parenthood.
However, it did NOT happen at Planned Parenthood, because that is
illegal. The baby was NOT an aborted
baby, it was a stillbirth. There are
other major problems with the videos, including the fact that no one ever tried
to make a profit from donating the fetal tissue to medical science, because it’s
illegal. The rest of the video is loaded
with really poor “Gotcha journalism,” and it doesn’t suit anyone to actually
watch it.
Some basic facts are that it is illegal for federal money to
go towards abortion, it is legal to recoup some costs in the form of fees for
the donation of anatomical tissue, as the Red Cross does for blood, and many
facilities do for the processing of cadavers, etc., and the short videos are heavily
doctored.
But even this isn’t the point I was trying to make. The point I’m making is how disgusting the
response has been. There’s been
hearings, the government is about to shut down, and lines are being drawn in
the sand. Over untrue videos loaded with
emotional garbage.
And yet, we just had out 142nd mass shooting
since Sandy Hook, but if I want to discuss Gun Control, then I’m exploiting a
tragedy in order to gain political points.
The hypocrisy stinks.
It’s disgusting how many politicians ignore the issue at hand:
without some sweeping gun control changes in America, we are going to continue
to be the worst country in the world for gun violence. You can keep your canards to yourself about if
law abiding citizens follow gun control, only criminals will have guns, that
C&C states are historically safer, or that gun control leads to more
crime. None of those things are true in
context, and the data has to be manipulated for that to look true.
What is true is that around the world, gun control has been
enacted with sweeping success. What is
true is that more and more people are murdered with guns in America, and the
NRA keeps lobbying away. What is true is
that there is mental illness all around the world, and we’re the only nation
that sees mass shootings like this.
Enough is enough, and it’s time for our politicians to start
representing the American public. Overwhelmingly,
Americans support sweeping gun changes.
We can no longer continue to cater to a group of lobbyist thugs like the
NRA at the expense of our safety.
