Anti-choice fabulist Abby Johnson was once again presented by Tucker Carlson as a credible expert on Planned Parenthood and once again she dishonestly presented the organization as some kind of abortion factory that doesn’t really provide other kinds of health care for women.
Fox News never wastes an opportunity to bash Planned Parenthood. Eagerly assisting them in this effort is Abby Johnson, a former director of a Texas Planned Parenthood.
Anti-choice zealot Carlson often provides a platform for anti-choice extremists. As NewsHounds’ Ellen reported, he encouraged viewers to flout a judge’s ruling regarding the controversial Center for Medical Progress, an extremist group whose bogus sting videos, directed against Planned Parenthood, were actively promoted on Fox. So it wasn’t surprising that, after baselessly telling Carlson’s viewers that Planned Parenthood has an abortion quota, Johnson would be invited back for more.
Guest host and anti-choice zealot, Laura Ingraham (filling in for Carlson) started the propaganda by showing Carlson’s recent interviews that focused on abortion. After a brief clip of what was obviously seen as a heroic “pro-life” argument against an abortion rights supporter, Ingraham informed us that Carlson’s next (pre-recorded) interview would show us “what really goes on inside the walls of Planned Parenthood.” (OMG, women’s health care!)
Johnson began her latest spiel by describing her duties at Planned Parenthood (her back story is full of holes). Within several seconds she repeated her unfounded January claim that she had had an abortion quota. She quickly told another lie when she claimed that abortions constitute half of Planned Parenthood’s profits. According to Politifact, only about 12% of the organization’s profits derive from abortion.
In the seven months since we last saw Johnson make her unfounded “abortion quota” claim, Carlson seems to have done not one bit of investigating. Rather than provide any evidence to back up her claims, he suggested they were valid by not challenging a word. Instead, he sarcastically asked about “all the mammograms and life-saving work that they do.” (Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms, but refers women to providers who do.)
Johnson responded with yet another lie, that Planned Parenthood does not provide pre-natal care and other services “that they say that they do.”
In keeping with a major anti-choice talking point, Carlson articulated the VERY IMPORTANT FOX LESSON: “So, basically it’s an abortion clinic.”
Johnson then made the bizarre claim that Planned Parenthood’s provision of birth control is a ruse because they know that birth control fails and when that happens – voila –innocent young girls come back for abortions which enrich Planned Parenthood’s coffers.
Carlson presented a totally discredited, anti-choice lie when he stated that Planned Parenthood “sell[s] fetal tissue, baby parts.” He announced as fact that Johnson “saw that happen.”
Donating fetal tissue to research facilities is legal. But Johnson continued to make fantastical claims that Planned Parenthood accounted for its donations in such a way as to make huge profits “skirting around the law.”
Tucker: “Right.”
Carlson worked in more anti-choice rhetoric, this time asking whether Johnson’s former co-workers “acknowledge how ghoulish and horrible the whole thing is, just the whole enterprise that you were in the middle of.”
Johnson described the clinic staff as cruel people. She claimed they joked about abortion even though “what we’re doing is really heinous and really gruesome.”
Carlson closed by saying, “This is a subject cloaked by euphemisms and it’s just nice to know what choice really means. Thanks for telling us.”
Watch the heinous and gruesome propaganda from the August 7, 2017 Tucker Carlson Tonight.