By DEXTER DUGGAN
Don’t expect to find too much delicacy at Planned Parenthood, not in the way it crushes and rips millions of babies, and not in the way it blunders around with millions of dollars for overt advocacy.
After PP recently made its first-ever endorsement of a candidate during presidential-primary season, while the party nomination is still up for grabs, the abortion giant and “choice” champion was attacked by its own supporters for choosing Hillary Clinton.
Even though Clinton is a PP-loving Democrat and pro-abortion extremist, some of the organization’s backers thought it had gone way out of line.
The pro-life Live Action News site (liveactionnews.org) posted on January 11 that PP was “flooded with comments from outraged supporters” over its choice.
In the same way, did PP blunder into potentially further exposing itself and generating a new public-relations disaster when it filed suit in federal court in northern California in mid-January against investigative reporter David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress (CMP)?
A news release from San Francisco’s Walk for Life West Coast quoted Daleiden responding: “Game on. I look forward to deposing all the CEOs, medical directors, and their co-conspirators who participated in Planned Parenthood’s illegal baby body-parts racket.”
Daleiden was scheduled to speak at the San Francisco walk’s January 23 downtown rally.
CMP’s video exposure in 2015 of PP’s barbarity and greed in harvesting and marketing aborted babies’ organs — which elicited national revulsion at PP as a profit-grabbing ghoul — might have taught PP to avoid tangling with the California-based pro-life investigators again
However, PP exhibited its characteristic inability to show discretion or basic good sense. Of course, a national butcher shop sworn to perform as many abortions as possible just might be lacking in other rational attributes — as is its favored candidate Clinton, who wants even more abortions committed.
The CMP website (centerformedicalprogress.org) posted a statement January 14 saying:
“Planned Parenthood is under investigation by the United States Congress and multiple law-enforcement agencies, while their business is drying up and the public is turning against their barbaric abortion-for-baby-parts trade. Now they are filing a frivolous lawsuit in retaliation for CMP’s First Amendment investigative journalism that has done nothing more than tell the truth about Planned Parenthood’s lawless operations.
“This last-ditch move of desperation is going to expose all of the sordid dealings of the California Planned Parenthood affiliates to the light of the legal system, and the public will see them for the corrupt abortion and baby body-parts profiteers that they really are,” the statement said.
The California-based Life Legal Defense Foundation (lldf.org) posted a January 15 news release saying it’s representing Daleiden and provided a comment from its executive director, Alexandra Snyder:
“We are not surprised that Planned Parenthood has filed this lawsuit. Daleiden’s videos have raised serious questions regarding Planned Parenthood’s integrity that have resulted in a congressional investigation and calls to withdraw over $500 million in taxpayer funding from the organization.
“Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress have exposed Planned Parenthood’s willingness to engage in unethical and criminal conduct, and now the organization is doing everything in its power to silence the messenger,” Snyder added.
The Life Legal news release also said: “The suit seeks to prevent Daleiden from ever launching another undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood’s activities. In legal terms, this is an unconstitutional ‘prior restraint’ on speech. The Supreme Court has held that prior restraints are ‘the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights’ (Nebraska Press Association vs. Stewart).”
The release added: “Planned Parenthood is also seeking treble damages for alleged ‘racketeering’ as well as punitive damages and attorney fees, all of which could add up to millions of dollars. The abortion giant is represented by an international law firm — one of the largest in the nation — with headquarters in Washington, D.C.”
Walk for Life West Coast co-chair Eva Muntean said in a statement: “Over the past year, all of America, including Americans who consider themselves ‘pro-choice,’ have been shocked by revelations that the abortion industry has trafficked in the body parts of aborted babies. Even more shocking has been the revelation of the inhuman callousness with which abortion industry representatives view the practice, and their own victims.
“We, and we think most Americans, are proud of David for exposing these practices, and we are proud to have him as a speaker at the Walk for Life West Coast,” Muntean added.
As for PP supporters attacking PP for endorsing Clinton, the Live Action News site said:
“The abortion giant’s Facebook page and social media platforms were flooded with comments from outraged supporters, who said they will no longer support Planned Parenthood….Some of Planned Parenthood’s core supporters even vowed to end financial contributions to the group and now agree that the abortion giant should be defunded.”
Live Action reproduced 13 posts of disappointed PP backers, one of whom said, “I’ve stood up for PP when even my liberal friends were starting to say ‘baby-parts profiteers.’ It feels like a punch in the gut.”
Another, expressing deep disappointment, vowed continued loyalty but said the endorsement “makes me strongly question the judgment and motives of your current leadership.”
A third said, “I am furious and have written to PP and NARAL to say not to count on any donations from me.”
Killing The Truth
In the wake of the CMP videos, PP and its defenders asserted that they were misrepresentations or, as bad Catholic Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi said, “doctored.” However, they couldn’t illustrate how the videos supposedly flipped the facts on their heads.
When PP spoke of crushing the babies, did the abortionists actually say kissing the babies?
Obviously not. When a casserole dish was taken from a refrigerator with small, mangled baby-body parts, was that actually a macaroni casserole to warm for lunch? No way. PP could present no evidence of significant misrepresentation, but relied on its media acolytes to swallow its assertions, with or without macaroni.
Because its dominant media supporters had let PP get away with pretty much whatever it pleased, it grew more reckless.
Another illustration of media malfeasance emerges in the new book Defenders of the Unborn (Oxford University Press: 2016), about the early days of the U.S. pro-life movement. Liberals and Democrats figured significantly among pro-life pioneers, but just about all that media megaphones like the propagandistic New York Times ranted about were anti-sex Catholic bishops.
These megaphones wanted to marginalize pro-lifers and abort the force of a broader pro-life coalition. Killing the truth mattered no more to them than killing uncounted babies. Reviewing that book awaits a future issue of The Wanderer.
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