Don’t you think she looks tired?
Hello. I’m Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Planned Parenthood provides a full range of healthcare services to millions of women, men, and young people every year, including cancer screenings, birth control, STD testing and treatment, and abortion. And we provide much more than health services. We support millions of people as they build their futures and pursue their goals.
Recently, an organization that opposes safe and legal abortion used secretly recorded, heavily edited videos to make outrageous claims about programs that help women donate fetal tissue for medical research. I want to be really clear. The allegation that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation is not true. Our donation programs, like any other high-quality healthcare providers, follows (sic) all laws and ethical guidelines. Over our 100-year history, we’ve continually engaged leading medical experts to shape our practices, policies, and high standards, and we always will. Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide.
In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion. This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.
As always, if there’s any aspect of our work that can be strengthened, we want to know about it, and we take swift action to address it. Planned Parenthood stands behind our work to help women and families donate tissue for medical research when they wish to. It is always their decision.
And I thank those women and families who have chosen tissue donation at some point in their lives. Your commitment to lifesaving research, developing treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, is important and compassionate, and it should be respected, not attacked.
We know the real agenda of organizations behind videos like this, and they have never been concerned with protecting the health and safety of women. Their mission is to ban abortion completely, and to cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood and other health centers. And we will never let that happen.
This entire statement, which some are calling an “apology,” is based on the presupposition that late-term aborted babies aren’t human. Abortion is “safe” and helps people “build their futures,” unless they’re the ones getting aborted. Hearts and lungs and livers and limbs and brains aren’t really human organs, they’re merely “fetal tissue.”
And somehow, these women are able to donate this “tissue” on behalf of their dead children. Pregnancy is merely a temporary medical condition in which a woman spontaneously grows another full set of body parts, which have no life of their own.
Have you ever removed a wart? Then you have no room to talk.
That’s why it’s okay to crush the life out of these non-human cattle, carve them up, and sell off their most valuable organs based on demand. What, are you against medical research or something?
Cecile Richards can cloak Planned Parenthood’s ghoulish, inhumane practices in as many layers of euphemism as she wants, but it won’t make this away:
And calling that video “heavily edited” won’t make the raw footage go away:
Yes, Deborah Nucatola’s tone was indeed dispassionate. Not to mention chilling and horrifying. But even if she had spoken of her “specimens” with dignity and respect, even if she had feigned human emotion with the subtlety and skill of a Cecile Richards, it wouldn’t change the fact that she has admitted Planned Parenthood kills babies and sells them off for parts.
Not to mention that, if Planned Parenthood “follows all laws and ethical guidelines” as Richards claims, somebody forgot to tell the senior director for medical services. Nucatola is under the impression that laws are “open to interpretation,” and that if she claims she’ll abide by a law, it doesn’t matter whether or not she actually does.
In the meantime, best of luck to Cecile Richards as she tries to get back to business as usual. She may find it a bit more difficult than it was a week ago to sell her usual brand of righteous indignation:
Killing babies and harvesting their organs seems pretty extreme. https://t.co/8kWbBWHHFD
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) July 16, 2015