The Federalist:
When Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina referenced video footage of a baby that survived an abortion who was filmed “on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking” during the second GOP debate on Wednesday, the media called her a liar.
Amanda Marcotte of Slate said that the video didn’t exist:
It was quite a performance, and it opens the question of what Fiorina was inhaling before she watched those videos. There is nothing in the videos made by CMP, either in the edited or full-length versions, that has anything approaching images of legs kicking or hearts beating.
Sarah Kliff of Vox called it “pure fiction:”
But the things Fiorina describes — the legs kicking, the intact “fully formed fetus,” the heart beating, the remarks about having to “harvest its brain” — are pure fiction.
Refinery 29 has also claimed that the videos don’t exist in a piece entitled: “Fiorina’s Planned Parenthood Comment Was Graphic, Upsetting — And Totally Made-Up.”
Fusion also joined the media’s bandwagon of denial and nearly copied Planned Parenthood’s talking points in their report:
To be clear, Fiorina, like the other Republicans attacking Planned Parenthood, doesn’t have her facts straight. None of the videos have anyone talking about “harvesting” brains. The supposedly macabre video she’s talking about was highly, selectively edited by right-wing activists.
In the video in question, a technician is talking about harvesting the brain of an alive, fully formed fetus. While she tells her story, there is footage of another baby of roughly the same gestational age as the one whose brain she harvested. This baby is seen still kicking and its heart still beating.
While it is obviously not the same baby as the one she harvested the brain of, the footage helps viewers to understand what a 19-week old baby looks like when hearing the testimony of an ex-employee who harvested brains from babies of the same age. Illustrating stories with appropriate images is a common journalistic technique, one used by all media outlets.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/FzMAycMMXp8[/youtube]
Others assert that the baby was stillborn, a falsehood that goes back to The Hill, which made this claim in a story in August:
The anti-abortion-rights group targeting Planned Parenthood is acknowledging that its most recent video used an image of a stillborn baby that was made to look like an aborted fetus. The Center for Medical Progress posted a new link on its video late Thursday, adding that one of the images was actually a baby named Walter Fretz, born prematurely at 19 weeks.
This is inaccurate on multiple counts. The video shows two different babies, neither of whom are stillborn. One was an image of Fretz, who was not a stillborn baby, but was born born prematurely at 19 weeks and died in his parents arms. This image of Fretz appeared during the 8:59 minute mark of the video, where he appears to be wrapped in a blanket and have a clip on his umbilical chord to keep it from getting infected.
Earlier in the video, around the 5:56 mark, there is footage of another baby boy around the same gestational age as Fretz who is not stillborn either, but a baby who survived an abortion and was left in a metal bowl to die. In the footage, he kicks his legs and twitches his arms during the final moments of his life, and a pair of forceps lays beside him. The footage was provided by The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a pro-life organization headquartered in Lake Forrest, California.
The Hill’s claim is inaccurate, as neither of these babies were stillborn. Both were born alive and died outside of the womb. One was a survivor of an abortion who was left to die of exposure in a metal bowl at the abortion clinic, while the other was born to a mother who wanted him, and died in her arms.
@George Wells: If Obama says something that is verifiably true, then I don’t refute it. Just because it is a remarkably rare event doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.
@Bill, #46:
The Bush administration, which created the power vacuum in the first place, despite intelligence community warnings of the possible consequences, was also the administration that locked in a deadline for our final departure with an agreement that could not be unilaterally altered by the Obama administration.
In addition, it was the Bush administration that installed Nouri al-Maliki, who was not at all inclined to see U.S. troops remain past their scheduled departure date. The fact is that the Iranian government wasn’t happy that we were staying even as long as we did.
That’s the situation that was handed off to the Obama administration. All of the specifics were hastily finalized before he took office. The U.S. Congress was also bypassed. The entire mess was the Bush administration’s doing.
If you construct an unsound building and sell it to someone else, it’s not automatically the new owner’s fault when it collapses shortly thereafter.
@Greg:
Stop right there… proceed no further. The Bush administration created NO power vacuum… WE were there and WE maintained peace. We should have remained there until there was a government that could itself maintain the peace. OBAMA created the power vacuum.
Perhaps, then, we should have made Iraq the 51st state, because Iraq’s antagonistic factions were unlikely to ever achieve unity and stability without some greater force imposing order on the whole. That’s what Saddam Hussein was doing. We took over his job without giving much thought to who it could be handed off to later. We liberated Iraq from its central control, thinking we could patch together some sort of democratically directed replacement. Unfortunately that sort of self government works only when everyone wants it to work. Everyone has to be willing to make concessions for the sake of the greater good.
@Greg: No, we should have simply finishing the job instead of showing the world that we are not a reliable ally and every four years it is possible for an idiot that will squander a great victory for headlines to be in office.