Why we should stand with Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood has faced controversy lately after a video released last week claimed that the company was “selling baby parts” after abortions. This video was released by a group called the “Center for Medical Progress” (ironic name much?), filmed by David Daleiden as part of a series of sting campaigns meant to “call out Planned Parenthood”. Despite the fact that these videos were heavily edited and incredibly biased, this video trended on Twitter and Facebook for a few days, with many politicians now stating that Planned Parenthood should be “defunded” and “investigated”. These videos were purposely released just in time for Congress to discuss next year’s budget, which means that Planned Parenthood is in very real danger of being defunded, which would mean women everywhere would lose affordable medicine and reproductive health.

The problem? This claim that Planned Parenthood “sells body parts” and is doing something illegal is false. This video proves nothing but how far anti-choice groups will go to take away women’s health and women’s body autonomy. There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when discussing this video, all of which contradict this bogus and sensationalist claim.

The first is the history of the organization who posted the video. The Center for Medical Progress is an organization completely against abortion, making these videos with the full intention of making Planned Parenthood look bad, and has done little besides that. One of the group’s leaders, Troy Newman, actually defended the murder of an abortion doctor, saying that it was “justifiable.” The filmmaker has released videos on Planned Parenthood before, but evidence has shown that, much like this video, the videos were heavily edited to make Planned Parenthood look bad. This bias matters because it not only impacts the angle of the video, it impacts how the video is edited and what questions are asked, based off the answers a group wants. The edited video took out the part where the president said, as she said in later statements, that she makes no money off of stem cell research. The money she was talking about was compensation for shipping expenses. Why does bias and editing matter? Because this group took quotes from the President and placed them out of context so that Planned Parenthood would look bad, even deleting parts where Deborah says Planned Parenthood doesn’t make money off of tissue donations. Therefore, it now looks like Planned Parenthood does something awful and illegal, when in actuality they’re doing something that saves people’s lives.

Bias and editing aside, these claims don’t make any sense. Planned Parenthoods across the nation are being shut down due to lack of funding, and current Republican candidates are fighting to completely defund Planned Parenthood. Despite the fact that the federal government does not and can not fund abortions, people are watching this video and legitimately thinking that our taxpayer dollars fund it. They don’t. Also, since abortion is only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s total services, it’s absurd to think that a ton of money can be made off of this.

This video is dangerous because activists and politicians who are anti-choice now have the power to use this to further their agenda. This video distracted politicians from a bill that could help wounded veterans, putting the bill in danger, and is now causing politicians to focus more on “ending” Planned Parenthood than helping Americans. Planned Parenthood uses their funding to perform 400,000 pap tests, 4.5 million STD tests, and has prevented 516,000 unwanted pregnancies a year. This is an organization that has saved people’s lives and is essential for women’s health and reproductive rights. Don’t let one video take that away from you.