After circulating a heavily edited "sting" video last week accusing Planned Parenthood of illegally selling donated fetal tissue, the antiabortion group Center for Medical Progress released a second condensed clip on Tuesday, meant to incriminate the healthcare provider once more. The follow-up video features Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood's medical director council, speaking with anti-choice actors posing as representatives from a fetal tissue donation group.
"If this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine; if it's still low, then we can bump it up," Gatter says in the clip, seemingly referring to some sort of financial compensation before adding, jokingly, "I want a Lamborghini."
While Gatter's tone -- like Dr. Deborah Nucatola's in the earlier "sting" video -- might be objectionable to some, the Planned Parenthood executive also indicates that the organization and its clinics do not donate fetal tissue for financial gain. Planned Parenthood has already fired back at the video -- a full, unedited version of which has not yet been released -- by maintaining its assertions that it does not illegally sell donated specimens, and that the videos went through "extremely heavy editing" before being released.
“This morning, another very heavily edited video was released by activists who have been widely discredited and who edited a video last week to twist its meaning completely and support false claims,” Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “What we see on this tape is a woman who says ‘we’re not in it for the money,’ and that any money must be related to reimbursement for costs.”
Last week, PPFA president Cecile Richards apologized for the cavalier tone Nucatola used in the first video, but added that anti-choice groups will do whatever they can to make abortion a crime. "We know the real agenda of organizations behind videos like this," Richards said, "and they have never been concerned with protecting the health and safety of women. Their mission is to ban abortion completely and cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood and other health centers."
Ferrero echoed Richards' sentiments on Tuesday, calling the Center for Medical Progress a group of “extremists who have intimidated women and doctors for years in their agenda to ban abortion completely.”
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