It’s hard to think of anything more ironic than Bill O’Reilly complaining about the U.S. getting more barbaric – not because Republican legislators would rather shut down the government than allow it to help people get health insurance, e.g. – but because Planned Parenthood allows patients getting legal abortions to donate the fetal tissue to medical research.
After the latest sting video from the anti-abortion group with the Orwellian name of Center for Medical Progress, O’Reilly viciously attacked Planned Parenthood, whose services are mostly devoted to providing non-abortion health care for women. O’Reilly didn’t bother to note a few things that might have given his viewers pause - such as the extreme and violent background of the group consulting with CMP, which includes connections to the assassin of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion provider whom O’Reilly repeatedly demonized on the air as a “Dr. Tiller, the baby killer.” Nor did “No Spin” O’Reilly think it mattered that the videos are deceptively edited.
Even worse, O’Reilly misled right in the opening sentence of last night’s Talking Points:
O’REILLY: Gruesome undercover videos showed the organization selling the organs of dead babies.
Actually, as FactCheck.org found, Planned Parenthood does not profit from but gets legally reimbursed for costs associated with abortion patients' donations of their fetal tissue to research. Furthermore, FactCheck notes, such research has led to “some groundbreaking scientific discoveries.”
Yet, O’Reilly wanted to destroy women’s access to all Planned Parenthood’s medical services now – based on those deceptive videos – and ask questions later. Then he had the nerve to accuse those who see otherwise of being inhumane:
O'REILLY: Talking Points is appalled about the lack of leadership in America and also about the apathy on the part of many individual Americans who could not care less what happens to the unborn. Congress must now get involved and at least suspend tax payments to Planned Parenthood until a federal investigation is completed.
If Congress does not do that, we can then rightly be criticized by countries Iran and Russia as being a barbaric nation. We will lose all moral authority in the world.
As Crooks and Liars points out, our moral authority in the world almost certainly has nothing to do with defunding Planned Parenthood's services for poor women. Besides, none of Planned Parenthood's federal funds go to abortion.
After his Talking Points, Democrat Kirsten Powers appeared along with conservative Monica Crowley. Although Powers has been a strong voice against O’Reilly’s BS in the past, she was disappointingly supportive of him here. Nevertheless, her call for an investigation prior to defunding Planned Parenthood was deemed too lenient for O’Reilly. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that another group dedicated to serving the poor that O’Reilly hated, ACORN, was stripped of federal funding and folded in the wake of a previous string of deceptive videos hyped on Fox BEFORE they were eventually cleared of wrongdoing?
“In the interests of justice, there’s enough evidence out there,” O'Reilly said, by way of rebuttal to Powers' suggestion. I’m sure the same argument could be made for doing away with trials and going straight to lynching.
Watch O’Reilly try to camouflage his barbarism under a cloak of morality, below, from the July 28 The O’Reilly Factor.
Nucatola also said – I think every provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue, and they absolutely want to accommodate them. They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘This clinic is selling tissue, this clinic is making money off of this.’ I know in the Planned Parenthood world they’re very very sensitive to that. And before an affiliate is gonna do that, they need to, obviously, they’re not—some might do it for free—but they want to come to a number that doesn’t look like they’re making money.
It’s all about the perception that they are not profiting from it. Also, StemExpress put out a marketing flyer to PP clinics stating over and over again about “profits” and “profitability” for PP clinics. Um, that sounds like profit to me. And anyone with 2 working brain cells can see that. Also, the UNEDITED videos indicate positioning the baby (and even a PP doctor said, “it’s a baby” in the 4th video) to get intact organs which is against the law.
Like I said, nice try.
STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK!! This is all a pack of lies and anybody with two working brain cells knows it. But what do wimpy “progressives” (and I’m progressive too, just not wimpy) do? We agree that there needs to be “an investigation”. NO! There’s no need – the facts are the facts. Someone just needs to have balls enough to stand up to these religious right wing whackjobs and say fuck you – enough is enough!!
