Footage from an anti-Planned Parenthood sting video highlighted by Republican candidate Carly Fiorina is almost definitely a miscarriage, not an abortion, according to several medical experts.

The video received renewed attention after Fiorina urged others to watch it during the second Republican primary debate in September.

“As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. 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’,” Fiorina told a rapt audience.

No video showing an event as described has yet been demonstrated to exist by Fiorina’s campaign or made public by anti-abortion activists. But Fiorina has continued to defend her characterization.

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) released a full, 13-minute version of the video last week, with the title “Carly Fiorina is right”. The blurb accompanying the video posted on YouTube states, “This unedited version of the disputed footage proves incontestably that this termination is an abortion.”

The Guardian is not publishing the videos in question, or any direct links to them, but it did ask multiple medical experts to review the footage over the course of the past week because Fiorina’s claims about the video have continued to circulate in the media.

They said they believe there are definitive signs that show the event is a miscarriage that occurred in a hospital, not an abortion clinic.

“It’s a premature delivery, a miscarriage,” Jennifer Gunter, an obstetrician-gynecologist based in San Francisco, told the Guardian.

Gunter and an abortion provider from the midwest, who asked not to be named for personal safety reasons, watched the graphic footage frame-by-frame and concluded:

The bed the woman is lying on is a hospital bed. It is approximately 30% wider than a standard procedure table that a patient would lie on to have an abortion at a clinic. Some abortions happen in hospitals, but few.



The type of stirrups that are holding the woman’s feet and legs, a portion of which can be seen in the corner of the video frames, are not those typically used during a termination and are consistent with labor and delivery stirrups, which give more support.



A screengrab from footage: detail shows the structure of equipment that must hold the stirrups. Photograph: Screengrab

A man is visible in the background in ordinary, non-medical clothing. He appears to move back and forth with a handkerchief in his hand, as if mopping the brow of, and comforting, the woman. It is typical for a companion to be with a partner during a miscarriage, but extremely uncommon during an abortion, the doctors said.



After the fetus emerges, its umbilical cord is clamped. During an abortion, the cord is simply cut, not clamped, the experts said.



As the doctor lifts the fetus across to a table and places it in a metal dish, the camera pans and a portion of a white blanket with pink and blue stripes can be seen at the side of the camera frame. This is known as a receiving blanket and is standard issue in hospital labor and delivery suites to wrap a newborn baby. Such an item would not be found in an abortion clinic, the experts said.



More than 10 minutes after the fetus is delivered, the patient has not expelled the placenta and there is no recorded action by medical staff to accelerate this process. The video ends with no sign of the placenta. In a termination, doctors “would never” wait for this to happen; the placenta would be extracted from the patient, experts said.



“With all the information provided, I feel very confident – if you showed me this video and asked me, as an ob-gyn, what it was, I would say a premature delivery, based on the bed, the stirrups, the techniques – abortion would not even come to mind,” said Gunter.

There is no sound accompanying the images on the video. The harrowing 13 minutes and 13 seconds pass in silence.

The family physician in the midwest who provides abortions but does not work for Planned Parenthood told the Guardian: “I am 100% certain that’s not in an abortion clinic and 99% certain that it’s not an abortion at all.”

The doctor added: “This is a cynical and callous exploitation of a patient’s personal tragedy in suffering this miscarriage … and in such a way as to mislead for political gain.”

Another medical expert, who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization from the expert’s employer, said: “I agree with Dr Gunter. I think she is 100% correct and I have always felt that it was a miscarriage. I cannot say 100%, but I would say it is most likely, and I have reviewed it with [a colleague], who also says it is more consistent with a miscarriage than an abortion.”

The footage of that fetus has emerged as part of a series of videos and other material released since July by CBR, along with fellow anti-abortion organization the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). The video series, which accuses the healthcare group of illegally profiting from the sale of fetal parts, has caused the fraught national abortion discussion to explode in fresh controversy, and Fiorina has drawn attention to the videos over the last several weeks.

On Wednesday, leading anti-abortion activist David Daleiden admitted on CNN that some of the still pictures used in the series were actually images of miscarriages. He did not, however, comment on the video footage.

CBR declined to reveal to the Guardian and others who shot the footage, when or where.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richard, denied that the group breaks the law. A government shutdown over federal funding for the health group was also narrowly avoided.

Since the debate, and despite numerous reports questioning the veracity of her remarks and the footage to which she refers, Fiorina has defended her position, telling NBC: “Taxpayers are having to fund this butchery.”

In response to requests for further comment and clarification from Fiorina, a campaign spokeswoman emailed the Guardian a link to a Fox News item headlined “New anti-abortion video declares Carly Fiorina was right” and highlighted a line in that item where CBR’s executive director, Gregg Cunningham, tells Fox:

“We have incontestably laid to rest the question of whether this is an authentic abortion because we show the abortion.”

But whether what the 13-minute video shows is an abortion is still fiercely contested.

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Cunningham called medical experts’ assessments of the video “laughable”.

“Were this a pre-term delivery of a wanted baby, there would be immediate neonatal intensive care, not least because they would be open to a lawsuit otherwise,” he said. “Why would the delivery physician drop it down in a cold pan? Why would you not at least provide palliative care if he deems the baby not survivable?”

But neonatologist Paul Holtrop told the Guardian on Wednesday that in a situation such as that, the fetus would not be provided medical care because there is no chance of survival at its estimated 17-to-19-week gestational stage.

Cunningham insisted the footage in question “was shot at an abortion clinic” and is of a “borderline case” premature baby being induced and aborted, rather than a non-viable fetus miscarried in a spontaneous delivery.

“I would love to tell you where it was shot. This is like the Holocaust deniers who said the death camp photos were fake. We have video of the pregnancy being terminated. We never talk about when it was taken or where it was taken,” he said.

Cunningham would not confirm if the footage was shot in the United States.

But he said: “This is a recent video.”

He said the audio was removed from the tape as part of a privacy agreement.

When asked if he could prove that it depicts an abortion being carried out in an abortion clinic, Cunningham said: “I can prove it to my satisfaction.”

He refused to confirm or deny if the video showed a Planned Parenthood clinic, saying: “We do not talk about the affiliations of the facility.”

Cunningham also said, however, that he has not seen “every minute of every video” that is part of the latest anti-abortion campaign and therefore cannot confirm if Fiorina was offering verbatim quotes in her debate statements, or if an event exactly as she described happened or is captured on film, adding: “There is no one video.”

“It certainly exists in a series of undercover videos by David Daleiden for the Center for Medical Progress … My impression is she was inferring things from what she had seen and what she had read. She was speaking expansively to characterize something that she understands to be a horrific practice,” he said.

Carly Fiorina’s campaign did not immediately return a request for additional comment.