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Planned Parenthood Sues “Complex Criminal Enterprise” Behind Deceptive Videos
—By Nina Liss-Schultz | Thu Jan. 14, 2016 3:00 PM EST
Planned Parenthood officials announced Thursday that the organization is suing the Center for Medical Progress, the group behind last summer's series of misleading and heavily edited videos that created a firestorm over whether the Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue donation program broke the law. The federal lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, also named David Daleiden, the face of the Center for Medical Progress, Troy Neumann, the CMP's secretary and a well-known anti-abortion activist, and several other CMP members as defendants.
The series of videos, released this summer by the secretive CMP, purported to show Planned Parenthood staff and other abortion care professionals discussing how to traffic fetal tissue for profit. Donating fetal tissue for medical research is legal in the United States, as is receiving reimbursement for the costs associated with the donation. Only two states have fetal tissue donation programs, and Planned Parenthood has categorically denied that it has profited from them. Both state and federal investigations into the health care group's donation programs have found no evidence of wrongdoing. In the fall, Planned Parenthood announced that it would no longer accept reimbursement for the tissue donations but would pay for them.
Planned Parenthood in California is one of two state affiliates that donates fetal tissue.
The federal lawsuit accuses the CMP of racketeering, illegally creating and using fake driver's licenses, and invading the privacy of and illegally recording Planned Parenthood officials and staff. The suit describes the CMP as a "complex criminal enterprise conceived and executed by anti-abortion extremists," and says that "the aim of the fake enterprise—which stretched over years and involved fake companies, fake identifications, and large-scale illegal taping, was to demonize Planned Parenthood."
Harassment, threats, and attacks against abortion providers surged ninefold after the release of the first video in July. And Cgongressional and state lawmakers have used the debunked videos as reasons to defund or restrict the activities of Planned Parenthood. Ten states have introduced legislation restricting either the process of fetal tissue donation or its use in biomedical research. The House and Senate both approved measures to defund the group, which is the nation's largest provider of women's health, serving nearly 3 million Americans every year. States have also moved to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates, though those attempts have largely been blocked.
"This case is about a network of anti-abortion extremists and the laws they broke in order to spread lies and harm Planned Parenthood," Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told reporters. "This is a fraud build on illegal acts and a web of lies. They lied about who they were and what they wanted to discuss with Planned Parenthood. They colluded with right wing state legislators and members of Congress."
Supreme Court Throws Out Arkansas' Abortion Ban
One of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country is toast.
Anti-Abortion Ads That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Stab His Computer Screen
Young Marco Rubio, he of the dry mouth and bat-wing ears, may be marginally less skeevy than the cock-nosed, cold-hearted Canadian, Ted Cruz, or slightly more sincere than the febrile snake oil salesman, Donald Trump. But he is, without a doubt, just as much of a shit-bit as either of the two leading Republicans.
As the Rude Pundit has previously noted, Rubio put out one ad with his head talking against a black backdrop about how much he loves hisself some Jeebus with a capital goddamn J. Now, never one to let a good hategasm go un-ejaculated, Rubio has put out an anti-abortion ad in Iowa just in time for the 43rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. Obnoxiously titled "Life," the ad shows the Rubio head talking about not abortin' the babies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csjYH6wj8A8
One thing sticks out in this plea to the evangelicals of the Iowa GOP to love him. It ain't when Rubio says that he wants to limit abortions, especially "those late-term abortions where children who are viable outside the womb are still being killed," even though that's buying into an extremist conspiracy theory about the incredibly rare late-term abortion. And it ain't when the ad ends with Rubio surrounded by his own litter of children, showing that he's a virile man capable of impregnating his wife multiple times (although it's unclear how helpful it is for Rubio to show that he is causing the number of Hispanics to rise in the country).
No, what really sticks out is this line: "If I have to make a choice, I am going to choose life." See, that's the end of the fucking argument. If you have a choice and you make a choice, you are pro-choice. You can't be anti-choice and say that there is a choice. One you choose, whether you choose "life" or choose to have an abortion, you can't then say, "But I'm against choice." Fuck you. If you get to choose, so does everyone else. Marco Rubio is pro-choice. He says so himself.
But not content to practice his motherfuckery in a 30-second commercial, Rubio penned an editorial for the Quad-City Times in Iowa. "Even one abortion is too many," Rubio says, without clarifying that he really means it: no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. So fuck you, 13 year-old who get pregnant when you were raped by your stepdad. You're having that fuckin' baby because God wants you to.
And then he offers, "We are a nation that encourages parents to dream big when they first catch a glimpse of their child in an ultrasound." And dreaming is all that the parents can do since Rubio's own "plan" to provide parental leave is bullshit. This is not to mention Rubio's desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood, thus taking away the ability of many women to have healthy pregnancies and births.
Rubio says he doesn't "want to tell anybody what to do with their bodies or their lives." That's such an obvious lie in an ad where he invokes "our Creator" that it's surprising that God didn't reach down His Mighty Huge Hand and squeeze Rubio's head until it popped like a grape.
Justices Won't Let North Dakota Enforce Tough Abortion Law
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Jan 25, 2016, 9:43 AM ET
The Supreme Court will not allow North Dakota to enforce a law banning abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
The justices on Monday turned away the state's appeal of lower court rulings that struck down the 2013 fetal heartbeat law as unconstitutional. The law never took effect, and abortion rights supporters said it was the strictest anti-abortion measure in the country.
A West Michigan substitute teacher says she was fired for using an anatomical word during a teaching lesson. The Battle Creek substitute teacher was fired on Friday, and says she had no clue saying the word "vagina" would cost her her job. If you ask Allison Wint why she was fired from Harper Creek Middle School, she will tell you it's because she uttered the word "vagina."
"Yes, I did say that word however I was saying it in the context of art history; I wasn't being vulgar," she said.
The substitute art teacher claims she said it to a room full of 8th graders trying to explain historical interpretations of Georgia O'Keefe's paintings. But to school officials, Wint crossed the line—and violated school policy.
"Byrum, D-Onondaga, caused a disturbance on the House floor Wednesday when she wasn't allowed to introduce an amendment to the abortion regulations bill banning men from getting a vasectomy unless the sterilization procedure was necessary to save a man's life," the Detroit News reports.
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