‘This Really Is About Taking Away Access to Safe Abortion’

Janine Jackson interviewed Jodi Jacobson about the Planned Parenthood “sting” videos for the August 7, 2015, CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Jodi Jacobson: “Planned Parenthood is the most investigated organization, probably, in the history of the United States.” (image: We Act Radio)

JANINE JACKSON: When an anti-abortion group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress released a secretly recorded video purporting to show a representative of Planned Parenthood discussing making money from the sale of fetal tissue, some saw a hardly veiled effort to damage the women’s health organization and the broader cause of women’s reproductive health and autonomy by blowing smoke suggesting some sort of criminal enterprise.

But big media, while editorially supportive of abortion rights (along with the majority of the US public), are in election mode, and Republican presidential candidates are making hay with the video. And so what could have been a day’s story about an amateur stunt designed to further a well-known argument continues to make headlines. Here to help us see what’s going on is Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief at RH Reality Check.

Welcome back to CounterSpin, Jodi Jacobson.

JODI JACOBSON: Thank you. I’m so glad to be joining you.

JACKSON: For some, of course, any opportunity to say that abortion is ghoulish and horrific is a good one, and we’ve seen a great deal of lingering over details about fetal body parts that’s clearly just meant to provoke disgust about abortion per se. But the pretense here, the reason that it’s supposedly news, is that this isn’t about the fact that abortions happen, it’s the supposed uncovering of Planned Parenthood’s venality, because they’re actually making money from abortion. So maybe it’s not really women’s rights that they care most about, I suppose we’re meant to think.

So, for the record, for those who’ve avoided the story, what does Planned Parenthood do and not do with regard to fetal tissue?

JACOBSON: Well, first I want to underscore what you just said, which is that, you know, this really is about taking away the access to safe abortion services that we take for granted. What has been done here is to use a normal research process and make it seem ghoulish. Planned Parenthood obviously offers abortions. Women go to Planned Parenthood because they’re known as a trusted caregiver. Some of those women decide that they want to donate the fetal tissue that results from their abortion to science, and Planned Parenthood facilitates the transfer of that fetal tissue to researchers.

By law, they are allowed to recover the cost of storing, shipping and taking care of the tissue, and that’s what they do. There’s no profit involved, there’s never been any evidence of a profit involved. And what this group has done, using altered, falsified videos, is to try to imply that somehow Planned Parenthood is engaged in making a profit from fetal tissue.

JACKSON: So if the question is, does Planned Parenthood sell fetal body parts, the answer really is no. And there have been—and I’ve seen media factchecks that say that, essentially. Even if it sounds like so much sound and fury to some of us, this kind of noise-making and distraction does have a real impact in terms of actual threats on abortion providers, and making it more difficult for women for whom access to reproductive healthcare is already difficult. So it sounds as though it’s kind of smoke and mirrors, but it can have a real effect in the world.

JACOBSON: Absolutely has a real effect. I mean, now we’re going to spend untold amounts of taxpayer dollars on fake investigations at the federal level into Planned Parenthood. Then we’re going to spend untold thousands or millions of dollars at the state level in Texas and Ohio and all these other places, Louisiana, to investigate Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is the most investigated organization, probably, in the history of the United States, with the fewest ever, in fact no, productive investigations. In other words, no investigation has ever found any wrongdoing, and yet the so-called fiscal conservatives continue to spend your, mine and everybody else’s money investigating Planned Parenthood.

JACKSON: And if this purported show of concern for human life should lead directly to threats against the lives of doctors, not to mention women, that’s really not such a hysterical leap to make. I mean, the original founder of the Center for Medical Progress, the group behind these videos, is Troy Newman. And what might listeners know about Troy Newman?

JACOBSON: Troy Newman is leader of Operation Rescue. And Operation Rescue has been connected to murders of doctors, or has literally directly and indirectly supported the murders of doctors. For example, Cheryl Sullenger, who is an employee of Operation Rescue and is on the board of the Center for Medical Progress, her phone number was found on the dashboard of the car of the murderer of Dr. Tiller in Kansas. This murderer murdered Dr. Tiller, literally assassinated him in the vestibule of his church. In other cases, Troy Newman has made it clear that he thinks it’s a justifiable homicide if you kill a doctor who provides abortions.

JACKSON: Finally, I know that you can’t blame media for everything, but I do feel that as long as reporters feel that they have to report every politician’s claims basically credulously, to give weight and attention to baseless assertions because they were in fact made by a—

JACOBSON: Right.

JACKSON: —person who’s running for office, then there’s always a benefit to saying the most inflammatory—

JACOBSON: Outrageous.

JACKSON: —distorted thing. Because even if it’s criticized, the journalists’ rule still requires going back to that person to credulously entertain whatever cockamamie thing they say next.

JACOBSON: Right, and look at Donald Trump; that’s the sort of ultimate example.

JACKSON: Exactly. Well, I know you’re at a journalism conference right now. What would you like to see more or less of in terms of media coverage here, or what could journalists be doing to help us cut through this story?

JACOBSON: Well, I would really like to see journalists stop reporting as basic fact things that are said by these groups without immediately investigating what exactly has happened.  I mean it didn’t need to wait several days for Media Matters, for example, to understand that those videos were doctored. Any journalist should have looked at those videos, looked at the complete video before they reported on the short version, and seen that they were doctored. That’s good journalism. Reporting false assertions as though they were fact, and later on another page inside the paper making a correction, is not good journalism.

JACKSON: We’ve been speaking with Jodi Jacobson from RH Reality Check. You can find them online at RHRealityCheck.org. Jodi Jacobson, thank you very much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

JACOBSON: Thank you for having me.

You can also support FAIR on Patreon! Click the button below!