Opponents of choice continued their schadenfreude parade after the release of heavily edited tapes by an undercover anti-choice activist earlier this month prompted a nationwide call to defund Planned Parenthood. The tapes showed a Planned Parenthood official discussing the cost to donate fetal tissue for medical research purposes after abortions–a standard practice among medical care providers that helps researchers develop vaccines and gain better understanding of human and cell biology.
The radical activists who released the tape say it proves Planned Parenthood “sells baby body parts” for profit and without consent. In reality, not only does fetal tissue go for vital research, Planned Parenthood and other medical providers do not “sell” the tissue; they are reimbursed for the costs associated with providing it to researchs; and they do not donate tissue without a patient’s consent.
That hasn’t stopped anti-choice radicals from celebrating the bad press for Planned Parenthood and exploiting it for their own purposes.
Professional liar Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the non-story, telling listeners that “typical low-information women” (typical!) would probably try to sue Planned Parenthood to collect their “share” of the “profit” from fetal donations. Limbaugh likely knows but does not care that fetal tissue is being donated for scientific research, not “sold off to the highest bidder,” but outrage fuels profits and profits keep gutter dwellers like Rush on the radio, so this won’t be the last of his lies about abortion providers.
Ross Douthat, the right-wing ideologue whom the New York Times continues to promote as the thinking man’s conservative, offered an unhinged column this weekend comparing abortion to slavery, My Lai, and Nagasaki, and quoting a 40-year-old short story as evidence that “we just don’t want to look” at what abortion entails, because if we did, we’d immediately ban it. Having established this falsehood (women who choose abortion are well aware of what it entails, as are pro-choice advocates and the doctors who perform the procedures), Douthat declares, “This reluctance is a human universal.” It remains completely opaque to me why the paper of record decided to put this angry man’s Livejournal on their editorial page.
Using unattributed 15-year-old “quotes” from an anonymous “PP physician,” inaccurate information about stem cell research, and threats about the imminent release of “a video depicting the removal of organs from an aborted baby,” the Patriot Post argues that sex should have consequences–specifically, the consequence of unwanted, unplanned pregnancy–and suggests that pro-choice advocates are really just trying to promote abortion and also reduce the black population. And they claim we’re the ones who lie.
In a similar vein, the Daily Signal reports that, calling abortion rights “the new Jim Crow,” the Daily Signal reports, an anti-choice group in Virginia went so far as to claim that if Congress doesn’t eliminate Planned Parenthood’s funding, “then shame on us. Shame on America, shame on every black person in this nation, every white person, every Latino person, that we would openly allow an organization that targets people based on their color of their skin to continue operating and harvesting the body parts of the unborn.”
New drinking game: Every time they invoke the name of Margaret Sanger, take a shot?