Just because a grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing with aborted fetal tissue doesn’t mean much, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Thursday night.
“Hillary Clinton hasn’t been indicted, either, so that tells us a lot about the justice system in this country,” Fiorina said during the presidential undercard debate sponsored by Fox News. “The facts of Planned Parenthood have not changed, folks.”
Fiorina was referring to Planned Parenthood’s participation in collecting and supplying aborted fetal tissue for biomedical companies, a practice exposed by a series of undercover videos last year from anti-abortion investigator David Daleiden.
This week a Houston-area grand jury investigating Planned Parenthood in the matter instead indicted Daleiden and one of his accomplices for using fake identities to obtain the footage. Asked about Daleiden’s indictment, Fiorina said the development changes nothing about the country’s largest abortion provider.
“Planned Parenthood engages in partial-birth abortion, in late-term abortion, they alter those abortion techniques to harvest and sell body parts,” Fiorina said. “The realty is most Americans find this practice horrific. Most Americans find it horrific that Hillary Clinton’s position on this is it’s not a life until it’s born.”
Fiorina also vowed that “in a President Fiorina budget, there will be not one dime for Planned Parenthood.” Congressional Republicans have recently tried to block federal funds for the women’s health and abortion provider, but the measure was vetoed by President Obama.
Fiorina also went after the Fox News moderators for questioning her opponent Rick Santorum’s stance on abortion. At one point during the debate, moderator Martha MacCallum asked Santorum why he didn’t attend last week’s March for Life in Washington.
After Santorum responded by defending his anti-abortion voting record and saying he didn’t want to get stuck in the D.C. snowstorm, Fiorina lit into MacCallum.
“It is outragous that Fox News and you would question the pro-life credentials of Rick Santorum,” Fiorina said. “That is outrageous.”
