Friday, October 23, 2015

Undercover videos of National Abortion Federation conferences leaked, include conversation and workshops with Michigan abortionist

Undercover videos taken by the Center for Medical Progress were leaked online yesterday.  The Center for Medical Progress has been under court order preventing them from publicly releasing the videos but the videos were recently turned over to Congress. The videos were apparently leaked by a Congressional staffer. 

There are 11 videos in all.  They include conversations with abortionists, abortion clinic staff and workshops at National Abortion Federation conferences.  The content of these videos shows why the National Abortion Federation sued the Center for Medical Progress to prevent them from releasing them to the public. 

Michigan abortionist Lisa Harris is featured in a number of the videos.  One video is of a conversation with Harris regarding the possibility of obtaining fetal body parts where she discusses how her Planned Parenthood clinic formerly provided “fetal orbits” (eyeballs) to researchers.   

In another video entitled "Planned Parenthood Michigan Workshop Video," Harris answers a question from an audience member (the question starts at around 16:00) and encourages the audience of abortion clinic workers to admit to the violence of abortion.  Harris says, “I actually think we should be less about denying the reality of those images (images of aborted children) and more about acknowledging that yeah that’s kind of true. Given that we see the fetus the same way and given that we might both agree that there’s violence in here, ask me why I come to work everyday. Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing.  Let’s just give them all that.”  




In the same workshop, another presenter discusses women who regret their abortions and callously equates women who regret their abortions with athletes who regret hurting their knees. 

During another workshop (2nd Trimester Provider Self Care 2/4) discussing how late-term abortionists need to care for themselves, Harris describes how she had a chance meeting on a plane with a judge in Michigan who had been signing all her judicial bypasses to allow minors in Michigan to have abortions without parental consent.  Harris says the judge told her he did more judicial bypasses than almost anyone in the country.  She also discusses problems abortionists have with sharing their experiences such as a patient having their “8th abortion.”   

Another video (2nd Trimester Provider Self Care 4/4) of the same workshop shows the audience of abortion clinic workers bursting into laughter when workshop speaker Uta Landy reads other abortionists sharing their feelings of doing 2nd trimester abortions and one abortionist talks about how an eyeball fell in his lap during an abortion (at around 9:27).

In a conversation with undercover journalists, Planned Parenthood exec Deb VanderHei says some Planned Parenthood affiliates may want to provide fetal body parts to "increase their revenues" and there is nothing the national office could do about that.