Is Butchering Fetuses Still News?

The tenth investigative video targeting the Planned Parenthood Federation of America hit the Internet this week, but has the press already grown numb to the scandalous practices exposed by the series?

Yes, Carly Fiorina last night breathed new life into the scandalous behavior by the abortion giant as revealed by these videos: “I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes, watch a fully-formed fetus on the table with a heart beating and legs kicking while someone says, ‘we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,’” she said during Wednesday night’s GOP debate in a stirring indictment of the organization.

But even so, many news agencies have been ignoring the issue. There is deep irony here, as this latest video shows officials fretting about the media firestorm that would follow if the public learned about the realities of Planned Parenthood’s activities.

The video focuses in part on an executive’s fear that the information might become public knowledge.

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Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, a senior medical adviser to Planned Parenthood, speaks specifically about selling fetal organs, telling an undercover prospective buyer, “Obviously, we would have the potential for a huge PR issue by doing this.”

The buyer assures her, “It’s something we’re very discreet about it. Everybody has to be very — yeah.”

She smiles and responds, “Yeah,” before offering to put the buyer in contact with other national office abortion people.

Deb VanDerhei, the national director of the Consortium of Abortion Providers, speaks multiple times about the PR disaster that would unfold.

“I have been talking to the executive director of the National Abortion Federation, we’re trying to figure this out as an industry, about how we’re going to manage remuneration,” VanDerhei said.

She pauses before pointing out, “Because the headlines would be a disaster.” The buyer assures her, too, and she agrees. “We have to be discrete about it, absolutely,” the undercover buyer said.

The undercover video team tries to get answers about the policy for selling fetal parts.

VanDerhei and others confirm, “We are absent a policy and that’s relatively intentional.”

She says the policy in place is simply to think things through and “think ‘New York Times headline’ when you are creating your policy.”

She says the policy in place is simply to think things through and “think ‘New York Times headline’ when you are creating your policy.”

Later in the video, she also reminds the buyer, “It’s an issue you might imagine that we’re not that comfortable talking about on email.”

Despite the clear attempt to not leave a paper trail about this and not allow the American people find out, for Planned Parenthood the worst has happened. But by the tenth video, the attention is off them and there isn’t a “New York Times headline.”

The flagging  press interest in the videos could take some of the steam out of the effort by conservatives in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and to rally support should the confrontation lead to a government shutdown.

The shutdown fight was launched when outrage over the videos was still fresh, and conservatives may now be left with only a shell of their original PR firepower. But opponents of Planned Parenthood’s baby-part selling can still console themselves that the funding fight could revive interest in the issue.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life political action committee helping women win elected office, has been rallying for the scandal to not be forgotten.

“Now is the moment for Congress to make the case that Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion enterprise — should be defunded of the more than $500 million taxpayer dollars it receives each year, and that the funding should be redirected to more comprehensive health care centers,” Dannenfelser said. “No one should feel comfortable affixing his or her name to a budget that prolongs this atrocity.”

This article has been updated.