It has received an appalling, but unsurprising, lack of media coverage, but a congressional hearing this week has rolled out quite a bit of evidence indicating that Planned Parenthood was selling—and profiting from—fetal body parts. Congressional investigators produced evidence of websites where you could purchase specific fetal parts, and the companies selling fetal parts sold their services to abortion clinics as representing " pure profit."
While Democrats, Planned Parenthood, and their allies in the media have repeatedly attack David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress for the undercover videos they released last year for being inaccurate and misleading, this evidence seems to go a long way toward vindicating the veracity of their reporting. In addition to Planned Parenthood announcing last October it would no longer accept money in exchange for fetal parts, the pro-choice Democrats actually fought to keep congressional investigators from releasing the evidence uncovered this week. Mollie Hemingway (my wife) has a detailed breakdown of all of the discomfiting facts uncovered showing abortion clinics likely "conspired to violate federal laws against fetal human organ trafficking." She summarizes the political reaction to the hearing this way:
Democratic members' strategy appeared to be 1) fight discussion of evidence; 2) say the investigation is too expensive; 3) issue Planned Parenthood talking points against The Center for Medical Progress videos (which were not a topic of discussion at this hearing); and 4) claim that the evidence of fetal organ markets didn't show fetal organ markets. When shown the drop-down order menu for fetal scalps, for instance, DeGette said it wasn't evidence of fetal organ markets. This would be akin to looking at the Amazon.com website and saying it doesn't suggest you can buy books online. This strategy wasn't particularly effective at the hearing, but it does show the danger of believing one's own talking points. An independent audit showed that The Center for Medical Progress videos were not deceptively edited, and Planned Parenthood itself conceded that the statements by its staff featured in the video were not manipulated. But Planned Parenthood supporters (and recipients of Planned Parenthood campaign donations, such as those on the panel) and their allies in the media protested that the videos were nevertheless fraudulent. Their talking point from the very beginning has been that the whole story is made up. Faced with overwhelming evidence of a fetal organ market, the response was to fight discussion of the evidence and then to claim that the evidence didn't really show what it seemed to show. In that sense, their performance at the hearing is similar to the pro-choice movement's response to the initial videos. Who are you going to believe, Jerry Nadler or your own lying eyes? They're banking on the media believing Nadler. (And it's not a bad bet!)
Again, you can read this and many more revealing details in Mollie's piece over at The Federalist .