Planned Parenthood Supporters Need to Stop Blinking at ‘Shocking’ Videos
For three weeks now, a conservative anti-abortion rights group has led a deceptive video campaign against Planned Parenthood that now has the potential to result in a government shutdown over federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The Center for Medical Progress has rolled out a series of videos purporting to show officials at Planned Parenthood discussing the “sale” of “body parts” (fetal tissue), a claim that doesn’t hold up when their deceptively edited supercuts are compared with the full, unedited footage. What the videos actually show is medical personnel discussing the recovery of reasonable costs associate with tissue donation, which is legal.
This hasn’t stopped Republicans from using the videos to wage a campaign to defund Planned Parenthood, but it also hasn’t managed to put a dent in Planned Parenthood’s popularity with the general public. Even in a biased push-poll that promoted the “Planned Parenthood sells body parts” narrative, the organization retained majority support from respondents, and in an even more recent poll, Planned Parenthood was viewed favorably by a three-to-two margin. That’s better than every presidential candidate, the Supreme Court, and the NRA. Some of Planned Parenthood’s greatest defenders, however, are working hard to change that.
Soon after the release of the first video, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards released a video message defending her organization, but also included an apology for the “tone” of the doctor featured in the video:
“Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide. In the video one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion, this is unacceptable and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.”
After a considerable delay, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton addressed the videos, and while she consistently and strongly defended Planned Parenthood, she also called the videos “disturbing,” and said that the controversy “raises questions” about the “whole process” of tissue donation.
Then, there was White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, who steadfastly fended off the attacks (and even launched a counterattack of his own on Fox News) for weeks by referring reporters to Planned Parenthood’s statements, to editorials from other news outlets, and to FactCheck.org. Then, this week, came the first crack. In response to CNN’s Jim Acosta, Earnest conceded that the videos were “shocking”:
“Well, Jim, you’ve heard me say a couple of times now, including on your network, that these are videos that were released for their shock value. And they clearly are shocking. I think that’s the reason that you saw the President of Planned Parenthood apologize for the statements that are included on that video just a day or two after the videos were released.”
The general thrust of these statements is to try to acknowledge what they all see as a poor public relations byproduct of these videos, while maintaining that Planned Parenthood has done nothing wrong. Sure, the videos are gross, and they show medical personnel speaking coldly about emotionally-fraught medical procedures, but they aren’t “selling” fetal tissue, and Planned Parenthood is very important to women’s health.
What they are succeeding at, though, is promoting the notion that Planned Parenthood has something to apologize for, and reinforcing what is the entire point of these videos. Conservatives aren’t trying to build a criminal case against Planned Parenthood, they are building a case against abortion rights. Getting people to see images of fetuses and detached medical personnel isn’t a byproduct of their campaign, it is the entire point.
What Earnest, Clinton, and Richards should be saying, if they’re going to comment on it at all, is that these videos depict medical professionals speaking privately in candid terms that are shocking to laypeople, but which are normal to anyone who has ever actually spoken candidly with a medical professional. Yes, get them alone, and doctors and nurses are gross, because that’s how they can do their jobs. Yes, looking at fetal tissue is gross, but it is also legal to donate, and essential to life-saving research. That lady eating a salad has nothing to apologize for, except maybe to the people she was eating lunch with, who were lying to her. I have a great deal of respect for the beliefs that inform women’s choices, but I absolutely believe that within the law, those choices should be between a woman and her doctor, even if her doctor is gross to eat lunch with.
Abortion rights are a lot like fire extinguishers: the degree to which you care about them is directly proportionate to the degree to which you need them. That’s why there is such a soft middle on the subject of abortion rights. Many women, and many more men, can’t imagine why someone would need an abortion after twenty weeks, until they do (or until they need their wife or girlfriend to get one). It is that soft middle that is left to defend the right of a woman to choose, and these videos are designed to chip away at it.
Attacking Planned Parenthood has the added strategic advantage of allowing people who are moderately pro-choice to stay on the right side of that line, while making it awkward for them to defend the largest organization dedicated to protecting that freedom. If they succeed, though, they’re also ensuring that many more abortions will become necessary. Only three percent of PP’s activities are abortion-related, but they provide millions of women with birth control, cancer screening, and other services, services which other organizations and clinics don’t have the capacity to provide at that level.
I don’t think this effort to defund Planned Parenthood will succeed, but the relentless parade of imagery, and the concessions by supporters that there is some kind of there there, only make it more likely.
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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
