Thanks to the press's obsession with cooperating with and promoting those who object to President Donald Trump's opening week actions, Live Action's exposure of Planned Parenthood as hardly more than a collection of grisly abortion chambers has gone relatively unnoticed. This heroic work deserves much wider exposure, and much more press attention.
A week ago, as covered by Tim Graham at NewsBusters, a Live Action video demonstrated that the vast majority of Planned Parenthood's facilities contacted provide no prenatal care services. Monday, in two new videos, Live Action revealed that the organization has plenty of ultrasound machines, but that almost all of them are used solely "to determine a baby’s age and position in the womb" before performing an abortion. Leftist politicians and media members need to abandon their knee-jerk defense of PP as a provider of a variety of "reproductive health services," because that is not what it is.
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The three videos combined are a combined eight minutes long. Far too long for most journalists.
As to the videos released yesterday, the first documents attempts by women callers to see if Planned Parenthood uses the ultrasound machines present at their facilities so expectant mothers can see their developing babies. The answer is almost always "no":
In the second of yesterday's videos, Lila Rose interviewed two former Planned Parenthood officials, who confirmed from their experience that ultrasounds are used almost exclusively to facilitate abortions:
Here are excerpts from today's related press release (bolds are mine):
As defund battle continues, Live Action exposes Planned Parenthood’s ultrasounds used for killing, not care
New videos in undercover investigation reveal ultrasounds at Planned Parenthood aren’t available to women wanting to keep their babies
Washington, D.C. (January 31, 2017) – Today, Live Action released two new investigative videos that show Planned Parenthood has ultrasound technology available for abortions, but not for women who want to continue their pregnancies and check the health of their babies.
“Ultrasounds for Killing, Not Care at Planned Parenthood” and “Planned Parenthood Managers: Ultrasounds for Abortions, Not Health Care” are two new videos in Live Action’s “Abortion Corporation” investigation highlighting Planned Parenthood’s lack of resources for pregnant women other than abortion. Last week’s video, “The Prenatal Care Deception,” has garnered more than 14 million views on Facebook in less than a week.
Live Action is releasing the investigative series as Congress and the president plan to redirect over $400 million in Medicaid funding away from Planned Parenthood to thousands of federally qualified local health clinics and also as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act makes its way to the Senate.
Planned Parenthood uses ultrasounds to determine a baby’s age and position in the womb before it kills her. In the “Ultrasounds for Killing, Not Care” video, investigators posing as pregnant women asked 68 Planned Parenthood facilities for ultrasounds to check the health of their babies, but only three centers would provide them. The remainder either used ultrasounds for abortions or did not perform ultrasounds at all.
... (in the second video) Investigators’ observations were confirmed by Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood manager in Storm Lake, IA. “If Planned Parenthood is really about choice, they would show women the ultrasound. And they don’t,” she told Rose in an interview ...
It has now quite clear that Planned Parenthood is almost all about providing the high-cost "service" of abortions, secondarily providing lost-cost contraceptives, and very little else. Politicians, pundits and reporters who say otherwise, or who try to claim that continuing to approve money for the organization doesn't advance the pro-abortion cause, are either deliberately lying or haven't taken the time to learn the truth.
Earlier this month, as I noted in a NewsBusters post, an intensely angry Washington Post editorial insisted that "Abortions ... make up just 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s provided health services." That claim is so outrageously and obviously wrong that the paper's own fact-checker gave it "Three Pinocchios," the rough equivalent of "Mostly False," in 2015.
Additionally, despite overwhelming evidence assembled by a House panel, the Post editorial declared that the House panel's investigation into Planned Parenthood's unborn baby-parts business showed "no evidence of wrongdoing." That's also rubbish, as Kelsey Harkness at the Daily Signal demonstrated.
I guess what all of this means at the Washington Post is that while it's not a good idea to report lies (even that's debatable, but that's a separate discussion), it's perfectly fine to base an editorial on proven falsehoods. It's absolutely hysterical that the Post and other establishment press outlets with the same non-standards continue to wonder why their well of credibility is now almost bone-dry, and why people aren't responding to their hysteria like they used to.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
