Hillary Clinton defended her support of Planned Parenthood on Thursday evening after being asked to respond to Carly Fiorina’s comments during the Republican debate about the sting videos targeting the group.
During the Wednesday debate Fiorina blasted Clinton for standing by Planned Parenthood and criticized the clinic’s work with fetal tissue, describing a scene she claims she saw in the sting videos released by an anti-abortion group. Fiorina said she saw “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.” No such scene takes place in the videos, according to those who have watched the entire set of available videos.
During an interview on CNN, host Wolf Blizter explained that Planned Parenthood has denied Fiorina’s description, as Clinton nodded and said, “That’s right.”
When Blitzer asked Clinton whether she had watched “those very, very controversial videos,” she parried to blasting Republicans for pushing a federal government shutdown over a call to defund Planned Parenthood.
“What this is about is the fact that some of the Planned Parenthood facilities perform abortions, which is legal under the laws of the United States,” she continued. “I understand that the Republican Party and particularly the candidates we heard from last night, wish that were not the case, wish that abortion were illegal and they could turn the clock back.”
When asked if she was confident that Planned Parenthood has not broken the law, Clinton noted that the organization has been very willing to answer questions about its abortion services and fetal tissue research.
Clinton said that if the current debate in Congress “has to do with the kind of research that is done legally in the United States, then that is an issue that goes far beyond any Planned Parenthood example.”
“There’s a lot of accusations that are being hurled about,” Clinton said.
“If it’s the services that they are trying to shut down, like providing family planning or breast cancer screenings, that is just wrong and women deserve to be given support to get those services provided,” she continued. “If they want to shut down the legal provision of abortion services, then they’ve got a bigger problem, because, obviously, they – Planned Parenthood – does not use federal dollars to do that.”
Watch part of Clinton’s interview with Blitzer via CNN:
So, according to the CNN on-air stylebook, lies are indicated by the use of the word ‘very’ twice before the word ‘controversial’.
“Hits back”
Meh…more like a slap on the wrist…this was somewhat milquetoast and a lost opportunity to call them out with liberal use of the “L-word”. Not the kind of performance I want to see from her.
Judging Fiorina by her own standard, she is a liar, and the media should call her on it, and then demand to know if she is ready to apologize. Much like they insisted Clinton do on the e-mail “scandal”.
Agreed. It’s good to hit the underlying matters of purpose and principle as she does, but she needs to go directly at the lies and manipulation as well. This felt a bit Michael Dukakis.
It’s Wolf Blitzer. The man can barely understand that he should not try to breathe at the same time as swallowing his morning shrooms lest he choke. But yeah, CNN is a joke. Frankly though, if one were to play the analogies game with candidates and “news” networks, it would probably look something like…Cruz: Faux :: Clinton: CNN. Clinton and CNN are both too busy trying to please the middle to be bothered with the defending the truth and calling out lies.
And then there’s poor Bernie, who probably would have to be compared to NPR. Sigh…