Carly is either a calculated liar or confused.
I asked Fiorina's campaign for video to back her Planned Parenthood claim. Here’s what they sent.
Updated by Sarah Kliff on September 18, 2015, 1:30 p.m. ET @sarahkliff sarah@vox.com
vox.com
Allen West's site has an article that purports to back Fiorina's allegation, showing a video that her campaign says shows what she was talking about. It is here:
Liberal “Fact Checkers” said Fiorina lied about Planned Parenthood, but LOOK what we found
allenbwest.com
Kliff (among others) looked at the video and notes what is wrong with it:
I sent Fiorina's spokeswoman a second email outlining my questions, and asking her again to point me to the video that Fiorina meant to reference in her remarks. She replied with a link to the Federalist's Mollie Hemingway's recent piece, " Watch the video that Planned Parenthood and its media allies deny exists."
Most of Hemingway's piece focuses on Episode 3 of Human Capital, a mini-documentary series from the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, which conducted the Planned Parenthood sting. The Human Capital series includes footage of fetuses from a separate source (The Center for Bioethical Reform) and an interview with a former employee of StemExpress, a company that procures human tissue for researchers.
"It does, in fact, show a fully formed fetus, heart beating and legs kicking," Hemingway writes. "And it shows this while Holly O’Donnell, a former organ harvester who worked for StemExpress at a Planned Parenthood affiliate, graphically discuss the harvesting of a brain from a baby whose heart was beating."
Hemingway is right; these things are in the Human Capital video. But they still are not the scene that Fiorina describes. There's no footage of the moment O'Donnell describes, nor is there proof offered that it occurred — there's no moment to "watch," as Fiorina urged debate viewers.
Moreover, the footage of the fetus in that video isn't from the Planned Parenthood videos. One image is of a stillborn baby, initially included in the video without the mother's permission. Other footage appears to come from a collection of stock footage of fetuses. "The stock footage was added to the video to dramatize its content," fact-checking website Politifact concluded. "We don’t know the circumstances behind this video: where it came from, under what conditions it was obtained, or even if this fetus was actually aborted (as opposed to a premature birth or miscarriage)."
The video (and much more) is in Kliff's piece. Once again, the outrage of the RW is based on a lie shamelessly told to exploit the exploit the emotions of many people. |
