So, on poking around, it appears that I may have erred in saying that the unedited videos were released after the edited ones. Previously when I’ve looked into ITR’s cited claims, I’ve nearly always found that his cites did not support his claims, and I remain suspicious that this time I’ve missed something important. But I know one thing that’s important: to admit when I’m wrong. So I retract the claim that the unedited videos were released after the edited ones.
This, of course, does not affect the point that the edited videos were the ones discussed far more than the unedited ones, and that if we’re talking about whether CMP engaged in deceptive speech against PP, we must look both at the edited and unedited videos.
To be fair, Planned Parenthood execs are undoubtedly pressuring white women into unnecessary abortions as well, to raise money for luxury office furniture and junkets to the Caribbean. :eek:
I haven’t looked at each investigation. But to take one example, the Massachusetts investigation concluded that Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts broke no laws.
Indeed: the Massachusetts PP does not have a tissue donation program!
So my question would be: Did any videos implicate Massachusetts Planned Parenthood members? If they did, then the investigation exonerates them. If no videos purport to show Massachusetts PP staff selling remains, then the Massachusetts investigation isn’t relevant.
I see what you’re saying. However, it’s kind of interesting that three states include PP affiliates that donate tissue for research, and 11 states have launched investigations into PP. This points to the absurd witch-hunt aspect of these investigations.
The fact that it was not “the truth” in any way, shape, or form is what is at issue, and does deserve to be punished.
Groups like this are deliberately and maliciously misrepresenting their case in an effort to deny women the health care that they need and deserve, all for the goal of pushing their primitive Hebrew superstitions onto people who may or may not share those same beliefs.
Let’s get some facts. Numerous posters in this thread have said or implied that the Center for Medical Progress committed libel, but Planned Parenthood is not suing over libel. The lawsuit claims invasion of privacy and other illegal activities were used to obtain the videos. It does not claim that anything in the videos incorrectly depicts what Planned Parenthood executives and doctors actually said.
To win a libel lawsuit, you need to prove that the target of the lawsuit actually published a deliberate lie. Center for Medical Progress’s videos did not say anything false. Nobody in this thread has provided any evidence that they did.
Deceptive editing of videos is certainly a thing. (Michael Moore comes to mind, yet oddly I don’t see any liberals demanding that he be criminally prosecuted.) No one has provided any evidence that the CMP videos were edited deceptively. They were merely edited for length.
Without going back to watch the videos, the first one I saw was interspersed with video of a congressional testimony explaining that the selling of fetal tissue is illegal, and had text overlaid that would set up an uninformed viewer with the idea that PP is selling fetal tissue in violation of federal law.
Now I myself didn’t get that impression, but the way I came across the video was by reading the explanation of what was going on before I watched it, so I could see their deceptive tactics play out. But I know that many many people did get the intended impression. Whether the editing crosses the line into the legal definition of libel, I don’t know, but it’s quite clear that the intentions of the editing were to give the viewer an impression of something that wasn’t actually true.
Obviously I am pro-life. But the tactics of many of my fellow travelers here are disenheartening. An investigation when there’s some credible evidence of wring-dong is fine. Here, the watchword seemed to be, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s no smoke, isn’t that suspicious too?”
But maybe I’m wrong. So I invite ITR, or anyone that thinks I am wrong, to give me a specific state and a specific allegation of wrongdoing on PP’s part involving selling fetal tissue. Perhaps I will learn something.
Oh, come on. This is unnecessarily rude. LHoD posts a correction and a retraction, and you have to be jerky about it? Acknowledging a screwup can be difficult, as I have no doubt you understand. Do you really want to discourage it?
There was one state where a fetal-tissue-related investigation determined that PP was guilty of some sort of wrongdoing, though that wrongdoing was completely unrelated to the fetal tissue sales scandal. Accounting irregularities or something like that? I want to say it was a Midwestern state - Ohio or Wisconsin, perhaps?
And Florida’s investigation found essentially unrelated wrongdoing after Scott political appointees rewrote the agency findings to include new definitions for some existing rules.