The House passed a pair of bills related to Planned Parenthood funding and "abortion survivors" on Friday.
WASHINGTON -- In the second GOP presidential debate Wednesday night, candidate Carly Fiorina passionately described a graphic scene from an undercover video of Planned Parenthood in which a fetus that survived an abortion waits, its "heart beating" and "legs kicking," for a technician to harvest its brain. On Friday, House Republicans passed a pair of bills inspired by the same videos: One measure would defund Planned Parenthood and another would protect "abortion survivors."
The problem is, the videos are so heavily edited that they bear little resemblance to reality, and the scene Fiorina described doesn't exist.
She was most likely referring to the video in which Holly O'Donnell, a former procurement technician for a biomedical company, talks about having seen a fully formed aborted fetus, with its heart still beating, in a pathology lab. The video doesn't show any footage from the scene, but instead shows a graphic image of someone holding a small fetus in their hands. That image is not an aborted fetus, as the video suggests. Rather, it was taken from the blog of a woman named Alexis Fretz, who miscarried at 19 weeks and posted images of her still-born baby online.
The image of the miscarried baby is not the only misleading moment in the videos, which were produced by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress. Separate conversations are cut and spliced together to appear as if they are one line of discussion. Subtitles in the videos do not match the words being said. Entire chunks of time are missing from the footage -- even from the supposedly full, "unedited" videos that the Center released along with the more heavily edited ones.
A forensic analysis of the videos found they are so egregiously manipulated that they would never be accepted as evidence in a court of law.
Congress requested the real, unaltered videos of Planned Parenthood from the Center for Medical Progress earlier this week, but the Center has not yet released them to anyone. Meanwhile, multiple state investigations and a federal investigation into the accusations against Planned Parenthood have failed to produce any evidence to support the claims in the videos.
But Republicans lawmakers continue to legislate based on the videos. GOP members of Congress screened the videos at a legislative hearing Thursday afternoon to support their effort to defund Planned Parenthood, as Democrats balked in disbelief. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) skewered his GOP colleagues once the videos ended.
"I just think it's so irresponsible to use this type of material -- false material, inaccurate, misleading videos -- to make any case at what is supposed to be a legislative hearing," Pallone said. "Yet Republicans are openly ignoring the mounting evidence that the videos are fake and continuing to legislate based on them."
The criticism fell on deaf ears.
More: Republicans Are Legislating Based On Fake Videos. Should Someone Tell Them?
Fusion GPS Forensic Analysis Report: Analysis of Center for Medical Progress Videos
This is so unfair and dishonorable. The founding fathers must be turning in their graves.
WASHINGTON -- In the second GOP presidential debate Wednesday night, candidate Carly Fiorina passionately described a graphic scene from an undercover video of Planned Parenthood in which a fetus that survived an abortion waits, its "heart beating" and "legs kicking," for a technician to harvest its brain. On Friday, House Republicans passed a pair of bills inspired by the same videos: One measure would defund Planned Parenthood and another would protect "abortion survivors."
The problem is, the videos are so heavily edited that they bear little resemblance to reality, and the scene Fiorina described doesn't exist.
She was most likely referring to the video in which Holly O'Donnell, a former procurement technician for a biomedical company, talks about having seen a fully formed aborted fetus, with its heart still beating, in a pathology lab. The video doesn't show any footage from the scene, but instead shows a graphic image of someone holding a small fetus in their hands. That image is not an aborted fetus, as the video suggests. Rather, it was taken from the blog of a woman named Alexis Fretz, who miscarried at 19 weeks and posted images of her still-born baby online.
The image of the miscarried baby is not the only misleading moment in the videos, which were produced by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress. Separate conversations are cut and spliced together to appear as if they are one line of discussion. Subtitles in the videos do not match the words being said. Entire chunks of time are missing from the footage -- even from the supposedly full, "unedited" videos that the Center released along with the more heavily edited ones.
A forensic analysis of the videos found they are so egregiously manipulated that they would never be accepted as evidence in a court of law.
Congress requested the real, unaltered videos of Planned Parenthood from the Center for Medical Progress earlier this week, but the Center has not yet released them to anyone. Meanwhile, multiple state investigations and a federal investigation into the accusations against Planned Parenthood have failed to produce any evidence to support the claims in the videos.
But Republicans lawmakers continue to legislate based on the videos. GOP members of Congress screened the videos at a legislative hearing Thursday afternoon to support their effort to defund Planned Parenthood, as Democrats balked in disbelief. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) skewered his GOP colleagues once the videos ended.
"I just think it's so irresponsible to use this type of material -- false material, inaccurate, misleading videos -- to make any case at what is supposed to be a legislative hearing," Pallone said. "Yet Republicans are openly ignoring the mounting evidence that the videos are fake and continuing to legislate based on them."
The criticism fell on deaf ears.
More: Republicans Are Legislating Based On Fake Videos. Should Someone Tell Them?
Fusion GPS Forensic Analysis Report: Analysis of Center for Medical Progress Videos
This is so unfair and dishonorable. The founding fathers must be turning in their graves.
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