Hillary Clinton called out Republicans for their “inaccurate allegations” against Planned Parenthood – and in specific: the Republican presidential hopefuls from last week’s debate.
Carly Fiorina was particularly graphic and dishonest when she “gave a harrowing description of the Planned Parenthood sting videos” at last Wednesday’s debate, and challenged President Barack Obama to watch “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
Clinton told John Dickerson of CBS’ “Face The Nation” that she has seen “excerpts” from those videos and has “certainly read about them,” adding
“[W]hat I am troubled by are the misleading, inaccurate allegations about them that we heard from Republicans at their debate. This is really an attack on Planned Parenthood, which provides a lot of health services, from cancer screenings , to contraceptive services, to so many other of the needs women have.
And to shut down the government, which some Republicans are advocating, over funding for Planned Parenthood, which takes care of millions of women’s health needs, is just the height of irresponsibility.
Dickerson asked Clinton what her reaction was to viewing the Planned Parenthood videos, ans she replied that “as Planned Parenthood has said, these were misleadingly edited. They were intentionally taken out of context.”
The fact is that, if we want to have a debate in this country about whether we should continue using — or doing fetal research, then it’s not only Planned Parenthood that should be involved in that debate. All of the experts, all of the scientists, all of the research institutions, everybody who is looking for cures to Parkinson’s, for example, should be asked, should we continue this?
But so far as I am aware, what they did, despite the way it was portrayed, is within the laws that were set up for this.
As to a federal ban on late-term abortions, an issue the Senate is set to vote on, Clinton answered that “This is one of those really painful questions that people raise. And, obviously, it’s really emotional.”
I think that the kind of late-term abortions that take place are because of medical necessity. And, therefore, I would hate to see the government interfering with that decision. I think that, again, this gets back to whether you respect a woman’s right to choose or not. And I think that is what this whole argument once again is about.
You can watch Clinton discussing the Planned Parenthood issue, below:
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