New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes reported from New Orleans to help Planned Parenthood propagate its latest defense -- that poor women would somehow be deprived of vital medical procedures in Louisiana if the state's two (?) Planned Parenthood clinics were deprived of federal funding, under the histrionic headline "Fears About Push to Cut Planned Parenthood – In Louisiana, Medical Workers Say Many Patients Have No Other Options."
Pro-lifers
By Tom Blumer | August 31, 2015 | 12:32 PM EDT
In the course of evaluating a claim made by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a prolife group, PolitiFact Georgia's crack investigators learned from a spokesperson for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America that the organization "does not provide mammograms at any of its health centers." Since such facilities must be licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, no PPFA facility can legally perform a mammogram.
The claim ADF made in a tweet is that "ZERO @PPFA facilities are licensed to do mammograms." On August 21, despite PPFA's de facto acknowledgment that ADF is correct, PolitiFact Georgia determined that ADF's claim is only "Half True."
By Tom Blumer | August 29, 2015 | 10:21 AM EDT
Three weeks ago, concerning Associated Press coverage of investigations into Planned Parenthood's baby body parts business, I noted that "Bad news for Planned Parenthood gets only local coverage," while "Exculpatory news, even if artificially concocted, gets national exposure."
Add the following to that observation: Obama administration attempts to punish states for attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, clearly nationally significant, only get local coverage. Kansas provides such an example.
By Matthew Balan | August 24, 2015 | 2:28 PM EDT
ABC, CBS, and CNN's Sunday morning news shows all ignored the ongoing controversy over Planned Parenthood's harvesting of aborted babies' organs, as exposed in a series of recent undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress. George Stephanopoulos featured Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley on ABC's This Week, but failed to ask him a question about the scandal. NBC's Meet the Press did include a clip of Chuck Todd asking Republican Senator Joni Ernst about federal funding of the abortion giant. However, Todd didn't bring up the issue with California Governor Jerry Brown.
By Ken Oliver-Méndez | August 23, 2015 | 5:47 PM EDT
Una campaña patrocinada por Planned Parenthood para revocar las leyes anti-aborto vigentes en Perú recibió una cobertura favorable y parcializada en el principal noticiero nacional vespertino de Univisión.
By Tom Blumer | August 22, 2015 | 11:44 PM EDT
Earlier today, I noted that Los Angeles Times reporter Maria L. La Ganga compared the heroic undercover work done by investigators at the Center for Medical Progress to the 2004 efforts of the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. She meant it as a negative, claiming that the Swift Vets' assertions about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's service in Vietnam and his antiwar activities after he returned home are "considered by many one of the ugliest, most unfair attacks in recent political memory." She even claimed — knowingly engaging in falsehood, in my opinion — that "the Swift boat claims were later discredited." Sorry, ma'am. The Swift Vets' truths stand tall to this today.
Though the Times Seattle bureau chief doesn't reference it in her writeup, an Associated Press chart contained therein relays a falsehood Planned Parenthood routinely promotes. This one claims that "Abortion is 3 percent of Planned Parenthood Services":
By Tom Johnson | August 21, 2015 | 4:33 PM EDT
Tales of people awakening in hotel bathtubs to find their kidneys had been removed were an Internet staple in the 1990s. Taub, who's expecting her first child, argues that those bogus stories have something in common with unwanted pregnancies, given that pregnancy is a “category of living organ donation.”
“The idea of forcing someone into an organ transplant is indeed so appalling that it is the subject of several horror films, not to mention urban myths the world over,” commented Taub in a Friday article. “But the idea of forcing someone, by law and against their will, to endure the physical tolls and dangers of pregnancy is somehow considered a mainstream political position.”
By Matthew Balan | August 21, 2015 | 1:27 PM EDT
Radical feminist website RH Reality Check published a hit piece on Thursday against Holly O'Donnell, a whistleblower featured in several of the undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood's harvesting of unborn babies' organs and tissue. Sharona Coutts – a former reporter at ProPublica and the site's vice president for "investigations and research" – revealed O'Donnell's alleged sexual preferences, after finding her profile on the OKCupid dating website, as well as posts on other sites.
By Matthew Balan | August 20, 2015 | 5:20 PM EDT
Jill Filipovic unleashed against Twitchy in a Wednesday item on Cosmopolitan's website. Filipovic decried how she had been "Twitchied," after she defended Planned Parenthood immediately after the Center for Medical Progress released its first undercover video on the abortion giant's harvesting of unborn babies' organs and tissue. She underlined that the conservative site's "role as an organized harassment tool is almost never discussed," and contended that "going after liberals seems to be a part of their mission, but they also tend to single out women and people of color."
By Matthew Balan | August 20, 2015 | 1:01 PM EDT
Chris Hayes scolded Jeb Bush on the Wednesday edition of his MSNBC program for using the term "anchor babies." Hayes played a clip of Bush calling for "greater enforcement, so that you don't have these anchor babies, as they're described, coming into the country." He continued by pointing out that "Hillary Clinton responding with a Tweet: 'They're called babies' – which seems like a better term for those small human beings."
By Curtis Houck | August 20, 2015 | 2:56 AM EDT
In what’s become commonplace, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC partnered with Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision to censor from their evening newscasts on Wednesday arguably the most disturbing video yet in the Planned Parenthood baby parts scandal that included a description of an abortion worker harvesting an aborted baby while their heart was still beating.
By Tom Johnson | August 19, 2015 | 12:11 PM EDT
The three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were, as the term suggests, ratified in the wake of the Civil War. These days, according to Daily Kos writer Jon Perr, conservatives are generally OK with the anti-slavery 13th Amendment but have watered down the 15th, which abolished racial restrictions on voting, and reserve their “greatest and most visceral…scorn” for the 14th, as indicated by the hubbub over matters such as birthright citizenship.
“After all,” Perr declared in a Sunday piece, “many on the right still seek to deny to African Americans, Latino Americans and gay Americans due process and equal protection of the laws promised to ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States.’ Instead, as growing numbers of Republicans insist, those 14th Amendment rights are limited to corporations and fetuses, neither of which are an actual person at all.”