Former Planned Parenthood Director Confirms Her Affiliate Profited from Sale of Fetal Body Parts

On Wednesday July 29, 2015 the Texas senate Committee of Health and Human Services began an investigation into the illegal selling of fetal body parts. Planned Parenthood chose not to attend the hearing.

About 2 and a half hours into the hearing you can hear testimony from Abby Johnson, former Director of the Gulf Shores Planned Parenthood affiliate.

Her testimony supports the videos from the Center for Medical Progress. In particular the portion at 3:18 and following, where she discusses the fees they charged to “recoup” their costs for tissue donation, and what it actually cost to donate specimens for research studies.

This is testimony from the former director. There is at least one Planned Parenthood clinic that charged more for the specimens than it cost. And the extra was, in her words, “sheer profit” for the clinic. She goes on to estimate what a Houston area clinic might make in a given month: $120,000 from the sale of fetal parts to research clinics.

This video is originally from the website of the Texas Senate. You can stream the whole hearing here:
The portion used in this Youtube clip is about 2:30:00 into the hearing.

More about Abby Johnson here.

Previous articles:

Court Stops Release of Some Parts of Anti Abortion Videos

Are Americans Already Desensitized to Selling Aborted Babies?

[I’m going to stop apologizing for posting about this instead of specifically media related topics. I have to write about this right now. I’ll post later about why this is important enough for me to spend so much time on it. But this is something I have to do right now.

Comments are disabled on this post because if you agree with me, great! And if you don’t, the only thing you can say is “she’s lying” so let’s assume that has already been said.]

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Court Stops Release of Some Parts of Anti Abortion Videos

According to the Associated Press (via MSN), a CA court has blocked part of future videos released by the Center for Medical Progress.

“The Los Angeles Superior Court order issued Tuesday prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of three high-ranking StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May.”

A pro-life news site explains further:

The restraining order reportedly only pertains to the footage of the Stem Express employees, meaning that any other footage, including that featuring Planned Parenthood employees, can still be released as planned.

In an exclusive comment to LifeSiteNews after the release of the court order, Daleiden said that, at the end of the day, what happened in the courtroom may actually be a victory for the pro-life group.

“The ruling is very narrow, concerning only one specific meeting, and it is temporary and contingent pending further litigation,” he said. “The judge actually threw out completely the part of StemExpress’ case where they were asking to suppress the documents on their baby parts sales.”

“It was a much better day for us than it was for them and Planned Parenthood.”

The company claims that the videographers broke the law under California’s anti-wiretapping laws. The producers say they followed the law.

Here’s a statement from Center from Medical Progress:

StemExpress, a for-profit company partnered with over 30 abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood, to harvest and sell aborted baby parts and provide a “financial benefit” to Planned Parenthood clinics, is attempting to use meritless litigation to cover-up this illegal baby parts trade, suppress free speech, and silence the citizen press reporting on issues of burning concern to the American public. They are not succeeding—their initial petition was rejected by the court, and their second petition was eviscerated to a narrow and contingent order about an alleged recording pending CMP’s opportunity to respond. The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in the course of our investigative journalism work and will contest all attempts from Planned Parenthood and their allies to silence our First Amendment rights and suppress investigative journalism.

Regardless of your feeling on these videos, any time a subject of a controversial documentary film project is able to get any sort of injunction from the court, restricting any part of the release of that project, filmmakers should pay attention.

In this case, while Planned Parenthood has repeatedly claimed the information in the videos is false and “deceptively edited” (even though the entire interviews have been released) this temporary restraining order is not about that. It only pertains to whether the act of recording these people secretly was against the law or not.

Of course Stem Express doesn’t want more damning information shown. So they are using every means at their disposal to stop it. Planned Parenthood has set the stage already in their letter to news outlets. Part of that letter says:

“CMP gained access to Planned Parenthood facilities under false pretenses and filmed without securing approval from the Planned Parenthood staff being filmed or the patients whose privacy is compromised by this secret videotaping. The material should not be aired.”

I suspect Planned Parenthood to try some sort of legal action in order to “protect the privacy” of their patients.

As a filmmaker, I hope every legal effort to bar this content fails. Unless someone can prove that they knowingly put out false information, there is no reason this should be blocked. It would be a bad precedent for documentary films. So I want the video available.

As someone who is pro life, I want people to realize just how horrible these actions are. So I want people to see these videos.

[UPDATE: Here’s a post on the Constitutionality of the court’s actions.]

Are Americans Already Desensitized to Selling Aborted Babies?

(This might seem like another political post, but really it’s about attention span in the USA for important issues. But it is about a very political issue I am passionate about, so be warned.)

A couple weeks ago my twitter feed blew up with this video: (Warning, not for the faint at heart.)

Over 2 million people watched it. Social media, the news, blogs, everyone was talking about this horrific practice. Even if you support abortion… actually selling the tissue of aborted fetuses is illegal. The woman in the video actually says that Planned Parenthood corporate doesn’t really want to get involved with this sort of thing on the local level. But it’s obvious they know it goes on and don’t care.

Planned Parenthood went on the offensive, claiming deceptive editing, fraud and more. So the people who made the video released the entire unedited interview. It was big news for several days.

Then another video comes out. Someone is negotiating the amount the local Planned Parenthood office will get for each specimen.

This one has been seen by over a million people. Again my social media feeds were lit up about this. Congress even briefly discussed taking away the $500 million in tax money Planned Parenthood gets every year.

I saw Planned Parenthood try to get ahead of the story by spinning footage that hasn’t even come out yet. Saying they think they were taped in certain places, and describing how that footage might be distorted, etc.

I saw an article about why the video makers went undercover to do this. Still pretty big news.

This week, the first episode of the web series was posted.

My news feed has been remarkably quiet.

I waited to watch all three videos until today. I read about them, saw the reactions online and in the news, but I didn’t actually go watch them until today. So, it’s fresh for me.

The first 2 videos disgusted me. To think that people sit in restaurants and talk about selling parts of children that were murdered. That’s disgusting. I know it’s worse because I believe abortion is murder. (and let’s be frank: How can you buy a heart, liver, brain, kidneys, whatever to do research of human health and not agree this is a little person??!!)

But this 3rd video? I will never get the image of these people discussing how good the collection of specimens were, and seeing toes and fingers, kidneys and even a spinal cord of a little person. I fought back tears and swallowed hard not to puke all over my desk. This is atrocious! 

Abortions happen over a million times each year. Here’s a clock that will turn your stomach: Number of Abortions in US and World.

Wait. Maybe it won’t turn your stomach because we’ve already become used to the number of abortions each year.

And now, it seems, barely 3 weeks into a series of expose’ videos, our attention has wavered. The third and most egregious video isn’t really that important to us. And the one next week will be less important. And the one after that… and so on.

It seemed like a good plan. Release a new video each week. Keep the issue in the forefront. But I’m not sure anyone will care a month from now.

I know we get used to things, and just glaze over horrible stuff each day. But fight it. Watch the videos. Contact your elected officials. Tell them what you think. Share this content. This is just wrong.

A Few Video Examples

On the main page of scottlinkmedia.com you can see 3 different sections of videos: short films, church media, and DIY projects and tips. But that’s not every video. I wanted to share a few links to some other projects:

First up is a quick reel of short clips. The logo is now outdated, but you can see variety of projects:

I ended up doing 3 versions of a promo video for an after school program. The spokesmen in the videos kept leaving the organization a few months after the video was completed. Here’s the first Beach Club promo:

One church I worked at needed to fill a 13 minute pre service video to play before an Easter service we were holding at a large arena. On an impulse, I shot this little promo video for an upcoming series:

My family loves to read, and I wanted to experiment with a mini-doc about that:

Anyway, just a few videos from the past I wanted to share.

The State of News in America

It’s to the point where I just don’t believe any headline, and question every article.

Growing up, people used to trust the news to bring you facts; important stuff you needed to know. Generation X got older and we kept on not trusting authority. At some point 24 hour new TV stations were born, and talk radio got popular. And the country got polarized.

I stopped watching national TV news. When I listen to the radio I run everything through my own filter because I know whatever show I’m listening to has to get ratings first. Most of those are opinion shows anyway, but the TV news channels are in the same boat. How to make important stuff entertaining is the biggest concern. Even local news outlets fall into this.

There’s a big national story? Local news had better find a local link to that issue. So they ride the coattails of what national news tells America is important. Even if on a different day, in a different news cycle, the same story wouldn’t be important at all.

In college I took a couple journalism classes. One of the big things I look away was that every story has an angle. Every story has some approach to help make it interesting. Journalistic integrity was making sure that angle didn’t become too slanted. I’m not sure that’s a concern anymore. Do they still teach journalistic integrity and objectivity? If so, who do they use as examples?

Click bait on social media is a huge problem. I have been systematically deleting clickbait links from my Facebook feed. It’s pretty liberating. These posts are designed to make you click through, and then the site shows you advertising, a lot of advertising, while you read the story which is generally more hype than substance. “You won’t believe what…” Nope, I won’t. And I won’t click it. If you want to tell me something, get my attention, write a real headline! But even the real news stores from some of these news sites are suspect. You just can’t take them at face value.

Did that bakery get a gag order or not? That’s the latest one in my Facebook feed. One article says the 1st amendment rights of this couple has been violated. Another says it hasn’t. Solution? Go read the source material for yourself and figure it out. But who takes the time to do this? Most people, I suspect, simply latch onto whatever slant they already like and use that to bolster their current opinion of the politics, issues, etc… You know things are out of hand when joke posts from satirical sites are passed on like they are true. Because we can’t tell the difference anymore! Social media is littered with junk news posts. There might be some fact in them, but you have to dig for it. They’re almost all more slant than angle.

That’s not to say that there aren’t news stories that are well written, balanced pieces. There are. But they are not sensational and they don’t get the views/ratings.

The only solution I’ve found is to keep your filter on. Approach every story knowing that it will probably be full of someone else’s opinion and agenda. But you can probably sort through and find the facts. Then make your own judgement on what the news in that story really is.

“Pastor just said something that blew his congregation away…” Now Hear the Rest of the Story

For the last couple of months (more in the last couple of weeks) I’ve been seeing a picture floating around that portrays a fictional sermon from a pastor. In it the pastor argues that Christians should support equality with a smile because that is the true Christian way.

I’ve seen it enough that the horrible logic just finally got under my skin. Books have been written on both sides of the religious argument for and against accepting homosexuality. This little photo is just so full of misinformation, supposedly coming from a pastor… I couldn’t let it go.

As I said, books have been written on this subject. There were more things that even I could have pointed out in this little story, but I stopped at 3. I certainly don’t claim to have answered every argument, but I did go ahead and make my own story.