What was Fiorina’s big lie?
Published 7:32 pm Saturday, September 26, 2015
I really didn’t want to watch all videos.
I watched the first two releases of the Planned Parenthood undercover videos, parts of a couple of others and mostly read about the employees negotiating for more money for fetus organs.
It was certainly enough to warrant an investigation.
Then came the onslaught.
Mainstream media reporters began quoting “fact-checkers” who claimed Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina lied about a fetus with beating heart and kicking legs in an abortion clinic video.
President Obama’s administration circled the wagons, defending the abortion provider and suggesting the whole series of undercover videos showing federally funded Planned Parenthood employees and their Stem Express partners commodifying human fetuses is somehow a big Republican conspiracy.
Reporters obviously quoted so-called “fact-checkers” because they hadn’t watched the videos, either.
This is a lot of reactionary panicking over what should be a simple acceptance of potential criminality worthy of an investigation.
So, what was Carly Fiorina’s “big lie?”
During the CNN GOP debate conducted by schoolyard fight instigator Jake “Suzie, tell Bobby what you think of him calling you fat” Tapper, Carly Fiorina broke ranks from the contrived game show format and passionately declared, “I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’”
On the Center for Medical Progress episode No. 3 at approximately 5:53 into the video, a woman identified as Holly O’Donnell, a former procurement technician for StemExpress, describes in great detail about painfully dissecting a fully-formed aborted fetus, with its heart still beating, in a pathology lab at a California Planned Parenthood clinic while she was on a job.
She described the fully formed fetus.
“I’m sitting here looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think,” O’Donnell said.
She quoted her supervisor: “’Okay, well, this is a really good fetus, and it looks like we’re going to procure a lot from it. We’re going to procure a brain.’”
The documentary producers show a video of a fetus whose heart is beating and legs kicking its death throes in a metal tray. According to the producers, this particular fetus was indeed videotaped in an abortion clinic and, as is accepted practice in producing documentaries, was used to visualize the narrator’s experience.
What part did Fiorina get wrong?
She got the part about the heart beating correct.
She got the part about the legs kicking correct.
She didn’t quite get the precise narration correct.
Much of the narration itself is actually more horrible than Fiorina’s memory under pressure. Even worse is the attempted cover-up.
You only work to cover up a crime when you’re certain one has been committed and you or your belief system could be implicated.
Why would anyone at left-wing Vox, MSNBC, Politifact, CNN, etal prefer to call Carly Fiorina a liar than recognize the fact that something truly horrible is occurring at some abortion clinics?
It seems reasonable to investigate.
It seems less reasonable for hardcore supporters to lash out at evidence as “highly edited” (as opposed to “moderately edited,” like TV newscasts?) and “lies.”
Are they afraid that a terrible truth could destroy all they believe?
After all of this, the Obama administration is more interested in investigating the video producers than the alleged criminal perpetrators.
It’s what Americans should expect from the administration that has prosecuted more whistle-blowers than any other administration in the history of these United States.
Rick Jensen is a talk show host on Delaware’s WDEL, streaming live on WDEL.com. Email him at rick@wdel.com.