The video was created by the Center for Medical Progress - and distributed by LiveAction. The Director of Medical Services is at a lunch meeting with people who seemingly organise medical research, who were seeking foetal tissue. But of course in fact, she is actually having lunch with conservative operatives running one of the many stings LiveAction is good at promoting. Don’t get me wrong, L.A. isn’t doing anything wrong - but the video is wonderful propaganda and we really shouldn’t take it quite at face value.
It claim to reveal that PP is violating both the D&X ban and the law forbidding the sale of foetal tissue. But there is no evidence from the video of either claim, if you watch it. She points out that the “partial birth” abortion ban is very confusing, which makes sense as it was written by ideologues and not by people who understand medical science, making it open to interpretation. She does not say she violates it (because, presumably, she doesn’t).
Nor does she agree to sell the issue. The price she talks about seemingly refer to transport costs rather than anything to do with an actual sale.
But of course that’s all just fluff, because the real meat of the video is her talking candidly about the process of getting the tissue. LA is clearly a master at focussing on gross medical details for max impact.
I’m not very squeamish but it wasn’t easy to listen to her talking about extracting organs. But people who actually work in the medical field, do, in fact, become inured to gore in the way that most of us never do, because we’re not regularly exposed to it. (If you don’t believe me, some of the dinner table conversations started by my mother, who’s a GP, could curdle milk). And we should not forget that the director was working under the assumption that she was speaking to peers, in a profession where they would be similarly accustomed to talking about it.
There’s no doubt abortion is disgusting (as well as, I need hardly point out, immoral from a Catholic point of view). Abortion also gets more gross the later in pregnancy it gets. But so is heart surgery - or childbirth. We don’t deny people who need help in those cases because the help can be pretty disgusting. Nor - legally - should be deny people that help when it comes to needing abortion. (I’m not repeat NOT saying abortion is ever, or in 95% of cases, remotely ok, so please don’t attack me for it - but like it or not it’s legal so we should deal with it on that basis). We also shouldn’t deny women who want to donate fetal or embryonic remains to science any more than we would deny someone who wants to be an organ donor, even though the latter is also pretty gross.
Live Action is a propaganda group which specialises, as far as I can tell, in publishing titilatingly gross videos which aim to push an agenda far wider than banning legal abortion (which I have some sympathy for of course, as an aim of itself). (
if you are wondering what i meanPolitico). Their attack on Planned Parenthood (which does a lot more than simply provide hassle-free abortions), isn’t about abortion, but part of its longstanding campaign to demonise an organisation that makes sex safer and easier - in addition to making it possible for women to plan when they have children. Think and delve a little further before demonising them, or taking the video at face value…
