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ABORTION HAS RETURNED to the top of the American political agenda recently, thanks to a series of controversial videos.
Three weeks ago, the pro-life Center for Medical Progress released a nine-minute video that showed senior figures from reproductive health care provider Planned Parenthood discussing fees in return for tissue and body parts from aborted fetuses.
Followed up with further undercover recordings, the episode has sparked a fierce resumption of America’s abortion debate, which has ebbed and flowed since the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade, which legalised abortion nationally.
It has also provoked court battles, an effort to strip Planned Parenthood of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and put the group centre stage at the start of the US Presidential election campaign.
But what do the videos actually show? Are Planned Parenthood breaking any laws? And where will this fight go next?
Here are the facts behind a firestorm taking hold in America.
Who’s who?
Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organisation, started in New York almost a century ago, which has grown to become America’s largest reproductive and women’s health care provider.
It is also the country’s leading provider of abortions, performing 327,653 procedures from June 2013 to June 2014, in around 700 health centres throughout the US.
However, according to its own figures, that makes up just 3% of what Planned Parenthood does, with services relating sexually transmitted infections (STIs) comprising 42% and contraception 34%.
The group also has a political arm, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which conducts lobbying, campaigns on abortion and women’s health policy, and contributes millions of dollars to election campaigns, the vast majority of them Democratic.
The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) is a California-based non-profit group, started in 2013, which calls itself:
A group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances.
It is headed by 26-year-old anti-abortion activist David Daleiden who, around the same time he started CMP, founded BioMax Procurement Services, a registered company which describes itself as:
A biological specimen procurement organization headquartered in Norwalk, CA. BioMax provides tissue and specimen procurement for academic and private bioscience researchers.
It was under this guise that Daleiden and his colleagues posed in secretly recorded meetings with Planned Parenthood officials.
The videos
Warning: This video contains language that some people might find disturbing or offensive.
The videos show several Planned Parenthood officials discussing fees in return for fetal tissue samples at meetings, and showing CMP’s fake “buyers” some samples in laboratories.
Some of the content is graphic and may be disturbing to some viewers, but you can watch all the videos here.
In the first, Deborah Nucatola, a Medical Director at Planned Parenthood, discusses a fee of $30-100 per specimen, and how to extract certain organs intact:
…We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.
Another shows Planned Parenthood staff showing intact fetal organs to the fake buyers, and using a tone and language that some viewers found disturbing or dispassionate, including describing the integrity of a kidney as “five stars”, which was followed with laughter.
The backlash
Planned Parenthood has strongly hit back against the release of the videos.
They argue that the fetal tissue is voluntarily donated by women, it’s used for crucial medical research into conditions such as Alzheimer’s, and that any fees involved are only to cover the organisations costs, and not for profit.
It is legal to organise the donation of fetal tissue, but not to make a profit from it.
Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens also pointed out that the clips had been heavily edited:
The latest tape has at least 20 substantial and unexplained edits. Previous tapes released by this extremist group were heavily edited in order to distort what the people on the tapes actually said. These videos are intended to shock and deceive the public.
In response, CMP released purportedly full versions of some of the videos.
While defending their mission, and attacking CMP, Planned Parenthood’s President, Cecile Richards, did apologise for the tone of comments in the first video:
Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide. In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion.
This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.
Conservative Republican politicians instantly seized on the videos, with all of the party’s 17 presidential candidates condemning them.
Even pro-choice politicians have registered their discomfort, with Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton defending Planned Parenthood in general, but calling the footage “disturbing.”
Presidential candidate George Pataki, former New York Governor and the only pro-choice figure among would-be Republican nominees, said the videos showed a “horrific, hideous contempt for human life.”
The US House of Representatives has launched a congressional inquiry into the issue of fetal tissue donation, and several Republican Governors have started investigations in their own states.
All Republican presidential candidates want to defund Planned Parenthood, which has already become a hot-button issue in primary debates.
Last week, Democrats in the US Senate defeated a bill that would have removed federal funding from Planned Parenthood, and shifted the money to other health care providers.
The stakes are high for Planned Parenthood, which says that out of $1.3 billion in revenue last year, $528 million came from taxpayers.
However, defenders of Planned Parenthood say cutting federal aid wouldn’t affect the abortions it provides because by law, federal money cannot be used for abortions except for cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in peril.
Opponents of Planned Parenthood say squeezing money from the group would force them to prioritise its remaining funds on other services.
What happens next?
CMP has even more videos, and this episode doesn’t look like ending any time soon.
However, last week, a judge in San Francisco issued a temporary order restraining them from releasing videos involving employees of StemExpress – a company that provides “tissue products, primary cells and other clinical specimens to biomedical researchers.”
The National Abortion Federation sued in federal court, alleging that CMP infiltrated its meetings and recorded its members.
Judge William Orrick said if the videos were published, the National Abortion Federation would suffer irreparable injury “in the form of harassment, intimidation, violence, invasion of privacy, and injury to reputation.”
David Daleiden, CMP’s leader, said in a statement that Planned Parenthood and its allies were trying to silence the group and suppress investigative journalism.
Both Republicans and Democrats will revisit the fight next month, when Congress returns from its summer break and dives into budget negotiations.
While some conservatives see that as an opportunity to keep Planned Parenthood money out of those bills, others are hoping to avoid a repeat of 2013′s disastrous debt ceiling negotiations.
But with politicians in both parties fighting for election, not least Republican Presidential primary contenders, it’s quite possible that deep divisions over Planned Parenthood could go so far as to shut down the entire American federal government.
Contains reporting by the Associated Press.
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Sad to see the jobs go but associating the name ‘Fastnet line’ with this service was a bit much. It took 11 and a half hours to get to Wales. You’d be quicker windsurfing.
its named after the fastnet rock just off baltimore in west cork…
The one it goes nowhere near?
its what they named it after and that is a fact go take up the issue with owners.
@ Tony Stanley, I have never been on a ship where the main engines constantly ran unless the vessel is departing soon after arrival. Diesel Generators power the vessel in port.
Heavy fuel oil is only used for propulsion on long voyages when the vessel is finished manoeuvring and clear of land.
A skeleton crew has to stay onboard for safety reasons and they are entitled to electricity like the rest of us.
Now the company has folded the vessel can be off hired and sent back to owners or sold, I hope the crew get any wages they are owed, if you want to pay more for goods imported to this island keep pushing for a carbon tax on ships!
Yes carbon tax on ships , push up the cost of exporting , make us even more uncompetitive and throw what few jobs we have left to the four winds , great idea , sounds like one worthy of Fianna Fail in its heyday.
Sad to see it go ….
Where are Leo Varadkars commits today! He hasn’t been in the news for 17 hours and I miss his fat face.
Comments not commits!
Pity. Though I never used it myself.
So it’s somehow a bad thing that I never used the service then…?! God help us.
I’m sorry to see it go, another dozen or so Cork families in despair today. It was too expensive for the average family though, they could go to France on Brittany Ferries for in and about the same money.
What will happen the Julia? That ship is docked in the city center, all engines running. If they stop the engines, it seizes up I believe, but who pays for the diesel and manpower to keep it going?
i dont think thats true at all
Which part? I can see it is parked there with my own eyes. I can hear the engines turning over. It is manned, and it would be normal enough for large engines to seize when they stop.
Maybe you know more than I do, please, elaborate.
its normal enough for large engines to seize when they stop? what are you talking about…so every ship and large ferry in the world is constantly burning fuel…that is just not true at all…the julia has its auxilery engines running while people are on board as these much smaller engines provide the lights and all that on board.
Are you a marine engineer on the sly ;)… I thought large diesel engines prefer to run long and steady, Very long time since I did mechanics though, things must have changed. :)
Are people living on it so, that they are still running them?
The question still is though, what will be done with a big fat ship docked in cork city center.
P’s right ya know!
An auxiliary power unit operates to keep power levels up on the ship but this is powered by the diesel onboard, in most ships of this nature the engines are placed in a low idle power mode with the engines to prevent them from stopping altogether! The props may not be turning but thing are still in action to prevent mechanism from seizing up and to keep things greased! This is one of the reasons the shipping industry is one of the highest pollutants in the world (despite never getting even a fraction of the green taxes that air travellers suffer from despite aviation only contributing a fraction of the greenhouse gases that ships do) and why you almost always see smoke coming out of the funnels of stationary ships in harbours!!!!!
@Tony Not to mention the bunker fuel used is just a step up from burning bitumen.
Thanks Tony! I was just looking up the Julia. The ship is 30 years old, engines are bound to be ancient and inefficient at this stage, and probably need a bit of nursing.
I am sure they have to pay port taxes while it is berthed in the docks in Cork.
The engines were changed in the past 18 months, so should be effecient. Hope they manage to sell it to pay off their debts. @P Wurple Having watched your posts over a few months I notice your pouncing on anyone that may have a differing option to you. Belittling people like asking them are they Marine Engineers, give people an inch, it’ll make their experience on here a biymt better and hopefully they will come back and be regular contributors!!
Michael, I am direct, always have been. Maybe it comes across as harsh on the internet. I was not being sarcastic or belittling to anonymous, there are buckets of merchant navy, navy and marine engineers in cork, this is where the college is, why would he not be one? I will take anyones direct experience or knowledge over my own measley hunch. I even stuck in a friendly smiley. :)
Plus, I was the one being jumped on, not the other way around.
Correct, you are direct and I feel you are harsh on people also, that’s what I was highlighting. I also know where the Maritime College is, as I live here in Cork. I’ve said my bit and was honest about it. Take my advice, chuck it aside, but I had the balls to say it to you, with respect!
The sad fact is that with upgrades, bypasses and new bridges the road from Cork to Rosslare makes the Rosslare – Fishguard route quicker and cheaper than the Julia.
Well, it does, but when your business plan was thought up over night, you buy the wrong ferry, you upset your main income from the start, and the service is shoddy, you can not expect a enterprise like this to last in the modern era.
Was very handy when I was moving over and back from London ….. It used to go from Cork late evening so you could go to the bar and have a nice few pints, get a berth and get the hard down and then 3 hrs on the M4 and your in London ….. Shame
sad indeed, we’ll miss the Julia.
you wha now?
Where’s the Minister for Tourism and Trade ??
what a shame used it several years ago
“Head down” …… Apologies
Was not viable. Management were inept. Cork CC should not have gotten involved. Embarrassing.
Travelled on it once last year returning from Wales. Had travelled over from Rosslare and returned via Swansea -Cork. No facilities at either end (buses / train links) for foot passengers. The Welsh taxi driver said it made no difference to the taxi business as so few travelled (apart from Volcanic Ash Cloud week). The boat itself was dirty, smelly and hadn’t one bit of information about Ireland, never mind the SW. Were so few passengers (~25) & cars (max 20) on board that week (the week before Whit) I’m not surprised at this. Plus, I saw somewhere that the business plan for recovery projected growth based on passenger / freight capacity that the boat physically couldn’t take anyway.
Poor service and abysmal planning can’t be made workable simply because the idea might be nice.
fair point William. if it wasn’t for aeroplanes this 1920s business plan may actually have worked!
This service was never going to work, due to bad management from day one. It’s a shame, the amount of money that has been wasted, and maybe the chance of ever getting a boat back again, due to this.
The Swansea Cork route is now probably dead, and no hope of bringing extra tourist into the W Cork/S Kerry region, which was the main intention of the boat, but unfortunately, didn’t happen
A great shame, and we’ll miss it.
It was obvious to anyone with a brain it was never gonna work out unfortunately. Better off if the money was invested in marketing or even the hotel in Beara could have been finished off. The tourists are in killarney and kerry, it’s just a matter of getting them to travel further south and promote in international media also. Why not market a drive from killarney right down around west cork, back through cork city and fly out from there again. It could work in both directions. Flights and car hire are so cheap now and all the B&B’s and hotels will get on board with it too. But instead all that money was wasted on an ancient ship that was probably fit to be scrapped when they bought it. Swansea to cork over 10-12 hours like. How was that ever going to compete with airports from all over the world.
Not enough demand, hence no supply
It’s a wonder someone has blamed Michael O’Leary.
s**te…hasn’t
Sorry to see this ferry service end — many a good memory travelling to & from uk & sleeping over …..
Whilst sad for those who have lost their jobs, the notion a ferry service taking 12 hours across the Irish sea was ever going to be viable is just complete nonsense. The BS coming from local interest politicians on the news this evening was predictable nonsense. This service brought nothing either to the cork / kerry economy nor for that matter swansea’s were i worked for 12 months. The greatest mystery I and numerous others could not work out was were all these supposed vast numbers of visitors were going, certainly not swansea. The freight business was also too small as the ferry could not handle the loads of ferry’s used by Sea Link and the dreadful Irish (every nationality) ferries. Its not a surprise that all county councils, government agencies and especially tourism bodies both in Ireland and wales ran a mile when this company came looking for funds. Sad to say today’s decision was inevitable.
If there are similar losses at both termini it should be cost neutral on both local economies.
have your say