After more than four years of trying to expose the truth about what Planned Parenthood has been doing behind the scenes, the Center for Medical Progress is finally vindicated. Its dedication to truth has been an uphill battle, and its perseverance and dedication has paid off. Yet it has not come without cost and a plethora of lessons to offer about media coverage, liberal propaganda, and just how important abortion is to the Left.
In 2015, after working undercover, the Center for Medical Progress slowly and methodically unveiled a series of videos that showed Planned Parenthood actually discussing the process of buying and selling aborted fetal tissue in clinics. Other subsequent videos showed executives drinking wine while haggling over the prices of baby parts. One didn’t deny she wanted to sell valuable organs at top dollar so she could afford a Lamborghini.
At first, left-wing media outlets completely ignored the videos. Then, they assumed the videos had to be “deceptively edited” and they trumpeted this talking point until it died. Eventually, Congress caught wind and investigated Planned Parenthood because of what the videos had shown. They found, at best, that Planned Parenthood needed no federal funding; at worst, they found that Planned Parenthood was possibly aborting babies legally but profiting off those abortions illegally.
Later the Senate and the FBI got involved. In November 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services stepped in to look through its own contracts through the lens of a fraudulent Planned Parenthood and is reconsidering how and even if it should perform research with fetal tissue.
Now, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is allowed to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds in Texas. After all, the videos were in fact accurate, showed illegal activity, and therefore should not be allowed to participate in Texas Medicaid funding.
Now, several years later, it’s clear the videos did not just shine a spotlight on illegal activity, but they showed an ignorant public what abortion actually looks like: that a dismembered tiny human being has an arm and fingers just like a born baby does, just smaller. The Center for Medical Progress videos are the modern-day equivalent of forcing Germans to see the atrocities done in the camps that slaughtered Jews and others. The videos forced America to look, to be informed, and thus to make a decision after realizing the breathtaking knowledge of what’s really going on inside a Planned Parenthood clinic.
All this stemmed from one small organization, dedicated solely to one goal, and which saw that through at great cost. The center and its founder, David Daleiden, have regularly been sued, indicted, and placed under gag orders at the behest of activist judges. To be clear, the Center for Medical Progress boasts few employees, yet it has nearly single-handedly handicapped one of the most fraudulent, immoral organizations functioning with taxpayer subsidies. Since 2015, dozens of Planned Parenthood clinics have shut down, multiple states have opened debate on Medicaid funding, and politicians have tried (though they have most often failed) to defund them.
At first, the media ignored the Center for Medical Progress, so that the public would ignore it, so that Planned Parenthood’s funding and reputation would remain intact and robust. Against all odds, a modern David versus Goliath showed the rest of pro-life advocates just how much good a few people can do when they do their job with purpose, perseverance, and grit.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.