The pro-life activist behind the undercover Planned Parenthood tapes supposedly admitted this week he intentionally misled people by inserting a photo of a miscarried child, instead of an aborted child, into one of his videos, according to certain over-excited media figures.
The problem is: David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress made no such admission.
This inaccurate narrative came shortly after Daleiden sat down for a contentious interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, who insisted throughout their discussion that his guest had intentionally misled people. Others in the press blindly echoed the anchor’s assertion.
“David Daleiden of Center for Medical Progress saying on @CNN that video of fetus on table was in fact of a miscarriage, not an abortion,” ABC News Ali Weinberg claimed on Twitter Wednesday morning.
Raw Story added in a headline, “CNN forces anti-Planned Parenthood group to admit Fiorina was wrong.”
But these and other statements misrepresent what Daleiden actually said in the interview.
At the heart of this new storyline are questions over comments 2016 Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina made during the second televised GOP debate. Asked by CNN moderator Jake Tapper to weigh in on the videos, Fiorina dared Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and President Obama to watch the tapes, and see a “fully formed fetus on the table.”
Fiorina’s campaign spokeswoman said later that candidate’s debate remarks were a reference to the seventh of 10 undercover videos released this year by Daleiden’s group.
Despite claims that no such video exists, it does exist, and it shows a fully intact child, kicking and moving around in the last moments of its life as it lies discarded in a specimen tray.
In his CNN interview, Daleiden said the portion of the video referenced by Fiorina was, in fact, that of an aborted child, and that she was therefore correct in her characterization of the group’s work.
He also explained several times that the seventh video includes a still image of a miscarriage because it’s an, “illustration of what a baby looks like at the end of the second trimester.” He said he wanted to show what the average child looks like prior to having its organs taken by Planned Parenthood affiliates.
Daleiden noted repeatedly that the still photo of the miscarriage and the footage of the “fully formed fetus” are two very different things, and that Fiorina was referring to the latter.
Cuomo appeared unable to grasp this explanation, and several times argued that using even still shots of the former significantly undermined the video’s credibility. The CNN anchor also suggested that the inclusion of the miscarriage photo casts doubt over everything said during the second GOP debate by Fiorina, even though her remarks were accurate.
His apparent confusion soon spread from CNN’s studios to the Internet, where several left-wing blogs reported incorrectly that Daleiden had admitted to a deception.
The far-left Daily Kos declared in a headline, “Center for Medical Progress Leader Confirms Carly’s a Liar.”
Fox News contributor and radio host Alan Colmes wrote on his blog that the, “anti-Planned Parenthood group admits [the] video was not of abortion.”
“David Daleiden of the improperly named Center for Medical Progress, has admitted that the video Carly Fiorina referred to that his group put out was not one of an abortion,” he claimed falsely. After being criticized for conflating the still images of a miscarriage with the video of an aborted fetus, Cuomo seemed to argue over Twitter that he was correct, and that religious convictions shouldn’t cloud other people’s judgments.
Shortly after the interview concluded Wednesday morning, the CNN anchor took to social media to defend his handling of his conversation with the CMP founder, refusing to admit he repeatedly confused the still image of a miscarriage with footage of a late-term abortion.
He also launched into a curious tirade about law being the religion of the United States.
“[M]y faith is not the rule for all and the law matters most,” he said, seemingly suggesting that all anti-abortion opponents are motivated by religious convictions. “[M]y focus is law and fact. [Y]ours is faith and morality. The law is the national religion not your faith.”
