Hillary Clinton has gone from describing Planned Parenthood’s organ harvesting scandal as “disturbing” to voicing full-throated support for the nation’s largest abortion provider — and all in the span of 48 hours.
“Proud to stand [with] Planned Parenthood and for access to quality, affordable healthcare for women, men & young people,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a tweet Thursday evening.
Earlier this week, however, Clinton used the word “disturbing” to characterize the content of secretly shot videos showing Planned Parenthood executives discussing reimbursement for organs harvested from the bodies of aborted children.
“I have seen pictures from them and obviously find them disturbing,” Clinton said Tuesday morning in an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader.
She added, “Planned Parenthood is answering questions and will continue to answer questions. I think there are two points to make.”
Clinton was also careful in her interview Tuesday to praise the longtime Democratic donor for the health services it offers women.
“Planned Parenthood for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services,” Clinton said. “And this raises not questions about Planned Parenthood so much as it raises questions about the whole process, that is, not just involving Planned Parenthood, but many institutions in our country.”
“And if there’s going to be any kind of congressional inquiry, it should look at everything and not just one [organization],” she added.
The undercover Planned Parenthood videos — four have been released so far — were recorded as part of a three-year-long investigation by the Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life activist group.
One video shows a top Planned Parenthood executive discussing “doing a littler better than” breaking even for reimbursement for donated organs (the sale of aborted fetal tissue for profit is illegal under federal law). Another video shows an executive with the group haggling over compensation for in-demand organs, including hearts, kidneys and livers, joking at one point, “It has been years since I talked about compensation [for fetal organs] … so let me just figure out what others are getting.”
“If this is in the ballpark, it’s fine. If it’s still low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini,” she said.
Other videos show Planned Parenthood associates seemingly discussing performing partial birth abortions, which are also illegal under federal law, so as to extract specific organs undamaged.
Planned Parenthood and its defenders insist that the undercover footage has been cleverly edited so as to paint the group in a negative light. However, since the release of its first video, the Center for Medical Progress has made all of its unedited footage readily available. The group has also provided complete video transcripts.
Though the former secretary of state said she found the content of the videos “disturbing,” her repeated support for the group Thursday evening may signal she’s not as troubled by undercover footage as originally stated.
A spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
