The Post issued a correction after NR reached out.
Undercover videos filmed by the Center for Medical Progress in 2015 showed top Planned Parenthood doctors, employees, and directors discussing fetal-tissue trafficking — spurring a controversial years-long investigation into the abortion group’s alleged efforts to profit off the sale of fetal remains.
Activists launched a campaign to discredit the videos, which they speculated at the time were fabricated. Although studies and courts have proven the videos to be authentic, the Washington Post claimed this week that the videos were “heavily doctored.”
In an article published on May 28, headlined “Trump oversight picks include scandal-hit ex-lawmaker, antiabortion lawyer,” Washington Post reporters Meryl Kornfield and Lisa Rein accused Health and Human Services inspector general nominee Thomas March Bell of leading “House Republicans’ efforts to investigate Planned Parenthood based on heavily doctored videos by antiabortion activists and on debunked claims that the group was profiting from the sales of fetal tissue.”
When asked for comment, the Washington Post issued a correction, attributing the claim that the videos were doctored to “media reports.” The Post also supplemented its article with links to four sources, all of which the Post said were examples of media reports to back up “claims that videos by antiabortion activists were doctored.”
However, the four linked sources do not provide evidence that the videos were fabricated.
Planned Parenthood lawyers and supporters argued after the videos were released in 2015 that the CMP videos were deceptively edited. The organization hired a Democratic opposition-research firm, Fusion GPS, to prove as much.
Although Planned Parenthood claimed that Fusion GPS’s report showed the videos to be “heavily edited” to “distort and misrepresent” actual events, the report did not show any evidence that footage was fabricated or edited in a misrepresentative manner. The hours-long footage did contain “cuts, skips, missing tape, and changes in camera angle,” Fusion GPS concluded, but the firm’s analysis “did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation” nor did it show evidence of audio manipulation.
A forensic analysis commissioned by Alliance Defending Freedom likewise found that, while the footage contained “non-pertinent” edits, it was authentic and showed “no evidence of manipulation.”
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit endorsed that finding in a 2019 opinion written by Judge Edith Jones, in which Jones noted that “the record reflects that OIG had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited. And the plaintiffs [Planned Parenthood] did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage.”
The videos in question contain footage of Planned Parenthood employees discussing the prices of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has maintained that employees discuss reimbursement for “procurement costs” in the videos, and that employees never mentioned “selling” fetal tissue. Employees also discussed ensuring that the body parts of aborted babies remained of sufficient quality to be transferred to procurement organizations.
“So then you’re just kind of cognizant of where you put your graspers, you try to intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not going to crush that part, I’m going to basically crush below, I’m going to crush above, and I’m going to see if I can get it all intact,” one woman said on the recording, talking about the procedure by which technicians extract specific tissue.
Courts ultimately did not find that Planned Parenthood engaged in for-profit trafficking of fetal remains. The debacle did, however, amplify a political discussion about Planned Parenthood’s use of taxpayer money.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed its reconciliation bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which contained a provision that would cut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.
“There is no excuse for forcing taxpayers to prop up a scandal-ridden industry that prioritizes abortions, gender transitions, and partisan political activism, instead of prenatal care, cancer screening, and other legitimate health services that are in continual decline,” President of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Marjorie Dannenfelser said on Thursday.