Fact-checking the fact-checkers: Why is the media in denial about what the Planned Parenthood videos show?

When Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina referenced video footage of a baby that survived an abortion who was filmed “on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking” during the second GOP debate on Wednesday, the media called her a liar.

Amanda Marcotte of Slate said that the video didn’t exist:

It was quite a performance, and it opens the question of what Fiorina was inhaling before she watched those videos. There is nothing in the videos made by CMP, either in the edited or full-length versions, that has anything approaching images of legs kicking or hearts beating.

Sarah Kliff of Vox called it “pure fiction:”

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.

Refinery 29 has also claimed that the videos don’t exist in a piece entitled: “Fiorina’s Planned Parenthood Comment Was Graphic, Upsetting — And Totally Made-Up.”

Fusion also joined the media’s bandwagon of denial and nearly copied Planned Parenthood’s talking points in their report:

To be clear, Fiorina, like the other Republicans attacking Planned Parenthood, doesn’t have her facts straight. None of the videos have anyone talking about “harvesting” brains. The supposedly macabre video she’s talking about was highly, selectively edited by right-wing activists.

In the video in question, a technician is talking about harvesting the brain of an alive, fully formed fetus. While she tells her story, there is footage of another baby of roughly the same gestational age as the one whose brain she harvested. This baby is seen still kicking and its heart still beating.

While it is obviously not the same baby as the one she harvested the brain of, the footage helps viewers to understand what a 19-week old baby looks like when hearing the testimony of an ex-employee who harvested brains from babies of the same age. Illustrating stories with appropriate images is a common journalistic technique, one used by all media outlets.

Others assert that the baby was stillborn, a falsehood that goes back to The Hill, which made this claim in a story in August:

The anti-abortion-rights group targeting Planned Parenthood is acknowledging that its most recent video used an image of a stillborn baby that was made to look like an aborted fetus. The Center for Medical Progress posted a new link on its video late Thursday, adding that one of the images was actually a baby named Walter Fretz, born prematurely at 19 weeks.

This is inaccurate on multiple counts. The video shows two different babies, neither of whom are stillborn. One was an image of Fretz, who was not a stillborn baby, but was born born prematurely at 19 weeks and died in his parents arms. This image of Fretz appeared during the 8:59 minute mark of the video, where he appears to be wrapped in a blanket and have a clip on his umbilical chord to keep it from getting infected.

Earlier in the video, around the 5:56 mark, there is footage of another baby boy around the same gestational age as Fretz who is not stillborn either, but a baby who survived an abortion and was left in a metal bowl to die. In the footage, he kicks his legs and twitches his arms during the final moments of his life, and a pair of forceps lays beside him. The footage was provided by The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a pro-life organization headquartered in Lake Forrest, California.

The Hill’s claim is inaccurate, as neither of these babies were stillborn. Both were born alive and died outside of the womb. One was a survivor of an abortion who was left to die of exposure in a metal bowl at the abortion clinic, while the other was born to a mother who wanted him, and died in her arms.

The baby seen in the footage at the 5:56 mark was indeed taken from inside an abortion clinic, according to the owner of the footage. Gregg Cunningham, executive director of The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, the organization that obtained the footage and provided it to CMP, said in a statement to The Federalist:

“The video clip we provided to CMP depicted an intact delivery abortion. It was filmed at an abortion clinic. It was not a miscarriage. Mothers don’t go to abortion clinics to miscarry. Had this case been a miscarriage, the mother would have presented at a hospital and her baby would have been rushed to an Isolette for appropriate neonatal care — not abandoned to writhe and eventually expire in a cold, stainless steel specimen vessel. As regards the organizational affiliation of the abortion facility in which this termination was performed, our access agreements forbid the disclosure of any information which might tend to identify the relevant clinics or personnel with whom we work. Preserving confidentiality is vital to future clinic access. I can, however, assure you that the footage in question is not anomalous. It is representative of the frequent outcomes of many late term intact delivery terminations performed at clinics of all organizational affiliations.”

The media have consistently failed to cover the Planned Parenthood footage, and now they are covering up the truth. The reality is that babies of the same gestational age are having their organs harvested every day. These videos feature graphic footage of abortionists mangling babies to harvest organs to sell. They feature abortionists admitting that babies often survive those abortions. They show high-level Planned Parenthood officials encouraging this organ-harvesting scheme, acknowledged that it is happening, and attempting to skirt scrutiny from it.

The videos Carly Fiorina referenced do indeed exist, and they reveal the barbaric realities of the abortion industry.