A New York Times editorial this week alleged that a series of undercover Planned Parenthood videos had been “deceptively edited,” even as the 165-year-old newspaper refuses to say whether it watched all of the footage to verify this claim.
“Last summer, after deceptively edited videos were used to accuse Planned Parenthood of selling fetal tissue, congressional Republicans voted to block all federal financing for the organization, and threatened to shut down the entire federal government if they didn’t get their way,” the Times editorial board wrote.
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A pro-life activist group, the Center for Medical Progress, produced a series of surreptitiously recorded videos last year exploring Planned Parenthood’s controversial practice of harvesting organs from the remains of aborted children. The tapes prompted investigations in both chambers of Congress, and spurred renewed efforts from lawmakers to see the abortion provider defunded.
The Times stated this week, however, that the investigations were little more than witch hunts, and said the charges against Planned Parenthood were “completely bogus.” The paper also argued that the investigations amounted to little more than an effort by “conservative lawmakers to end women’s access to safe and legal abortion — and increasingly, to reduce their access to contraception.”
But months after the videos surfaced and the scandal broke, the Times still won’t say whether anyone in its newsrooms actually watched all of the undercover footage.
A spokesperson for the newspaper did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on Monday about whether anyone had seen the videos in their entirety.
Planned Parenthood’s go-to defense has been to claim that the CMP videos have been “selectively edited.” A third party research firm, Fusion GPS, said earlier this year that CMP videos had indeed been edited, but that same group also said that it watched only four of the more than 10 videos.
Planned Parenthood commissioned the Fusion GPS study.
Several reporters have also claimed the tapes were edited, but many of them have declined to say whether they have actually watched all of footage. The Times is included on the list of news groups that have reported wrongdoing by CMP, but won’t say whether anyone in its newsroom has watched the available video.
CMP has made all of its 20-plus-hours of raw, unedited footage available online, beginning with the release of its first video last summer. The group has also published its complete audio transcripts.
The first secretly recorded tape, released last July, showed Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, Deborah Nucatola, discussing compensation for harvested fetal organs and doing a “little better than break even.”
The tape also showed Nucatola saying that livers are especially in demand.
The Planned Parenthood executive said during her conversation with two undercover actors that she and her team “huddle at the beginning of the day” to decide which body parts are most in demand. She said that unborn children are then dismembered in such a way as to preserve the in-demand organs, appearing at one point to suggest that affiliates perform partial birth abortions in order to keep the requested body parts intact.
It is illegal under federal law to profit from donating harvested fetal organs. It is also illegal under federal regulations for doctors to perform abortions that alter “the timing, methods, or procedures used to terminate a pregnancy.”
A Houston grand jury declined in January to indict the nation’s largest provider of abortions over the CMP videos, and instead went after Daleiden and his colleague, Sandra Merritt, for the techniques they used to bring the fetal organ scandal to light. Additional state-level investigations into suspected wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood turned up no evidence that the group had engaged in illegal behavior.
For the Times, this equaled “vindication” for Planned Parenthood.
