Carly Fiorina on Thursday morning defended claims she made during the CNN Republican presidential debate that the Planned Parenthood sting videos showed a kicking fetus as employees discussed harvesting its organs. However, reports indicate that the videos recently released by the anti-abortion group The Center for Medical Progress did not include the scene Fiorina described.
During the debate, Fiorina told her Democratic opponents to look at the videos and “watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
During a Thursday morning interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” host George Stephanopoulos asked Fiorina if she incorrectly characterized the videos.
“Analysts who have watched all 12 plus hours say the scene you describe – that harrowing scene you described — actually isn’t in those tapes. Did you misspeak?” he asked.
“No, I didn’t misspeak, and I don’t know who you’re speaking about in terms of watching the tapes, but I have seen those images,” Fiorina responded. “I don’t know whether you’ve watched the tapes, George. Most people haven’t. Certainly none of the Democrats who are still defending Planned Parenthood have watched those tapes.”
Stephanopoulos then referenced a report by Vox’s Sarah Kliff, who said that she watched all of the videos released and that she did not see the scene Fiorina described.
“Well, you know, there’s a lot of commentary about these tapes being doctored. In fact, that’s what the mainstream media keeps talking about, is the tapes and their origin,” Fiorina replied. “Rest assured I have seen the images that I talked about last night. Rest assured that human lives are being aborted fully formed in order to harvest body parts.”
Kilff recently watched all 12 hours of the footage released by The Center for Medical Progress, and detailed what she saw, noting that Fiorina’s description does not match anything in the videos.
“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,” Kilff wrote. “Either Fiorina hasn’t watched the Planned Parenthood videos or she is knowingly misrepresenting the footage. Because what she says happens in the Planned Parenthood videos simply does not exist.”
Kliff does point out that The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway found a documentary series produced by The Center for Medical Progress that uses footage from Planned Parenthood, as well as stock footage not shot in a Planned Parenthood clinic. According to Kliff, the documentary does include footage of a kicking fetus, but that footage was not shot in a Planned Parenthood.
That documentary, “Human Capital,” also includes an interview with a former Planned Parenthood technician who said she was once ordered to procure a brain from a fetus, according to Vox. Kliff notes that in the documentary, there is no “mention of instructions to ‘keep it alive so we can harvest its brain,’ so it’s still not the footage Fiorina describes having watched.”
