Politics Thread

No, both stories are true. Guess you haven't seen the 2 other videos released, including the one with the PP exec haggling over prices of the baby parts because she "wants a Lamborghini".

If they were not making profit from this, why would there be price haggling or talks of exotic sports cars?

If she's really trying to profit from selling dead baby parts she's going about it quite wrong.  I believe the price she quoted was between 30-100 per specimen.  Once you factor in the cost of transporting the material she's probably not making any money.

Hmm...

Mediaite is fairly down the middle. Stories written by people on both sides of the line so you get both perspectives. Just a news site.

Besides video doesnt lie, notice how no real politicians are speaking on behalf of PP. They won't comment on the content of the videos because you can't say anything and make what was recorded look anything other than sick and twisted.

Hell the third vid with another exec shows her eyes light up when the fake rep mentions kickbacks.

Pro life or pro choice, how can you defend those kind of actions?

I see a lot of conservative names on that site - It would still seem to have a certain viewpoint and agenda to me.

You should spend more than a second glancing at the site then. I am on there daily and see enough left leaning articles to know they equal the amount of right leaning ones.

Your anger over the issue is because you oppose abortion. Believe it or not there ARE more operating costs for a medical facility besides ziploc bags. I know PP is a non-profit organization, but that label doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to profit. Do you fault a CEO of a business for wanting to make money?

Planned Parenthood seeks fed study of fetal tissue research

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under fire for its role in providing fetal tissue for research, Planned Parenthood asked the government's top health scientists Wednesday to convene a panel of independent experts to study the issues surrounding the little-known branch of medicine

Planned Parenthood's request to the National Institutes of Health came as Senate Republicans pressed their fight to bar the organization from receiving federal aid. Likely opposition from at least one GOP senator highlighted the long odds the GOP will face in a Senate showdown vote expected early next week.

The group also took its websites down after a hacker attack it blamed on "anti-abortion extremists" blocked access by what Planned Parenthood said are the sites' 200,000 daily visitors. The organization declined to say publicly how it knew the attackers were abortion foes, and said it fixed the problem but took its sites down for the day to "ensure that we are fully protected."

Planned Parenthood, which gets more than $500 million of its $1.3 billion annual budget from federal and state programs, has been under fire since the release of videos showing some of its officials discussing how they obtain organs from aborted fetuses for research. The videos were furtively recorded by an anti-abortion group.

"The inflammatory and misleading videos have pushed this issue into the national spotlight," said the letter from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. "And a thoughtful, careful review by leading medical and ethical experts could do a lot to help the public and policymakers think through this issue and reach informed conclusions."

Anti-abortion groups and many Republican lawmakers have said it is morally wrong for the group to obtain fetal organs for research, and some have accused it of selling the tissue for profit, which would be illegal.

Planned Parenthood says it abides by a law that allows providers to be reimbursed for costs of the procedures, only does it in fewer than five states, and gives the tissue to researchers only with the mother's consent.

The group wrote that it has been "targeted" despite its "limited" role in fetal tissue research, a field it said is dominated by leading medical institutions and the NIH. The videos "clearly aim both to create revulsion at the process of collecting fetal tissue and to foment opposition to legal abortion and Planned Parenthood," the letter said.


Scientists have conducted fetal tissue research since the 1930s, and use the organs — from miscarriages and abortions — to seek treatment and cures for Alzheimer's, Down syndrome and other debilitating diseases. The National Institutes of Health spent $76 million on human fetal tissue research last year.

In the late 1980s, an NIH panel studying fetal tissue transplants for studying Parkinson's diseases said the research was acceptable, saying such experiments were promising and did not influence women's decisions to have abortions. It recommended guidelines aimed at preventing commercial sales of fetal tissue and separating the decisions about having an abortion and donating the organs.

Amanda Fine, a spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Health, had no immediate comment on Planned Parenthood's request.

The Senate GOP bill would end federal support for Planned Parenthood and instead distribute the money to community health centers, state and local agencies and other providers who do not perform abortions.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the bill's sponsor, said Planned Parenthood's role in obtaining fetal organs "is morally reprehensible and wrong." A co-sponsor, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said the videos show what happens when mothers agree to provide fetal tissue for research and "the child that was taken out of them was dismembered and sold for parts."

Democrats stepped up their defense of Planned Parenthood, focusing on the health-care services the beleaguered group provides for millions of women.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the administration strongly disagrees with the bill, adding, "We support them getting the types of services and health care they need."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a long-time moderate, said she would oppose the proposal because it would immediately end the federal aid, "and I don't know how all the patients of Planned Parenthood could be absorbed" by other health care providers. She said such action should await an investigation into Planned Parenthood's practices.

No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas said health centers in his state "can absorb the legitimate health care needs of women for purposes that we all agree on, primary health care."

Republicans have 54 Senate seats but will need 60 votes to keep the bill alive. Cornyn said if the bill failed next week, Republicans would likely raise the issue on future legislation.

A handful of Republican-controlled states have launched investigations into Planned Parenthood. On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered state health officials to inspect Planned Parenthood offices that perform abortions.

The dispute spilled over onto the Democratic presidential campaign trail as well.

Front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton told the New Hampshire Union Leader on Tuesday that the videos were "disturbing," but also said Planned Parenthood "for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women." She said questions "about the whole process" should be addressed broadly, not aimed solely at Planned Parenthood.

Another Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said attacks on Planned Parenthood were "part of a long-term smear campaign by people who want to deny women in this country the right to control their own bodies."

On Tuesday, a Los Angeles court issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Center for Medical Progress — the anti-abortion group behind the covertly shot Planned Parenthood videos — from releasing a video involving leaders of a California company that provides fetal tissue to researchers. It appears to be the first legal action prohibiting the release of a video from the organization.

not necessarily so - it depends upon the hacker's purpose. They're not all taggers

I'd be more concerned with disturbing stories like this one


Teen accused of suffocating newborn son, then going shopping

NEW YORK (AP) — A teenage girl suffocated her just-born baby boy before putting his body in a shopping bag, then going on a trip to a Victoria's Secret store the next day, prosecutors said as she was charged with murder Thursday.

Tiona Rodriguez, now 18, pleaded not guilty, with her lawyer saying it was a stillbirth, not a killing.

The indictment came nearly two years after Rodriguez was arrested on a $45 shoplifting charge at the lingerie store, where a security guard found the body in a bag Rodriguez was carrying.

Prosecutors said their lengthy investigation revealed a girl who became a mother at 14 and was callously determined not to let anyone know she was having another baby.

"She knew she would be in big trouble if her family found out, so she made a plan — to kill this baby," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Rachel Ferrari said. "She had derailed her life once. She was not going to do it again."

To carry out that plan, the then 17-year-old Rodriguez went to a friend's house Oct. 16, 2013, delivered in a bathroom, tore the 8-pound boy's umbilical cord with her hands and asphyxiated him, Ferrari said.

In a text message at some point, Rodriguez used a vulgarity to describe the baby and added she'd "dig a hole" and "put it somewhere" adding an "LOL" — online jargon for "laughing out loud" — and "then we go eat iHop," the prosecutor said.

But defense lawyer Earl Ward said Rodriguez hadn't realized she was pregnant, adding that her condition hadn't been spotted during an annual primary-care checkup a month before the birth. While prosecutors said the baby was full-term, Ward said Rodriguez didn't know how long she'd been pregnant because she didn't even know she was pregnant.

Surprised when abdominal pains turned out to be labor, she held the baby in her hands, checked for a pulse and breathing, found none, rinsed him off and started to cry, Ward said. She wrapped the remains in a bag, took them home and slipped them in a dresser drawer because she couldn't face telling her family, he said.

"She's a confused young girl who had no idea what to do with the fetus after it was stillborn," Ward said. Bringing the remains with her to Victoria's Secret, he said, "shows you how confused she was."

But prosecutors said Rodriguez had tried to hide pregnancies before.

After having her now 4-year-old son — a pregnancy unknown to her family until she went into labor — Rodriguez delivered again in 2012 in her bathtub, Ferrari said. That child didn't survive. Ferrari said that the circumstances of the death are unclear, but that Rodriguez had texted her then-boyfriend about smashing or burning the body to disguise what it was. Ward said that was a miscarriage.

Prosecutors said the latest baby lived at least a few minutes after being born in 2013. Ward said air in the boy's lungs could have been a byproduct of decomposing after death.

The shoplifting case was dismissed last year after time ran out to try it.

Other teenagers and women also have been charged with killing babies after secretly giving birth. In one notorious case, an 18-year-old New Jersey high school senior pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter after delivering a boy in a catering-hall restroom at her 1997 prom, throwing him in a trash can and returning to the dance.

Last week, a 15-year-old in Louisville, Kentucky, was charged with smothering her newborn daughter and hiding the body in her purse.

Just as long as we all agree that none of these stories are as important as the lion that was killed.

Stop locking up convicted murderers and rapists/pedophiles then and have them executed after being found guilty. Solves a ton of overcrowding issues right there and saves taxpayer dollars. Don't kill an innocent child because of laziness or lack of options, which PP should provide but doesn't.

The death of the lion, while upsetting, isn't even on my radar of things that I am concerned about.