The website PolitiFact slammed LifeNews.com with a misleading “fact check” this week regarding a report about Senator Kamala Harris’s prosecution of journalist David Daleiden after he exposed Planned Parenthood’s aborted baby body parts trade.
The August article about Harris received renewed attention this week as the pro-abortion senator campaigns for vice president of the United States with Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden.
According to PolitiFact, the LifeNews headline “Kamala Harris Tried to Put Pro-Lifers in Jail Who Exposed Planned Parenthood Selling Baby Parts” and several widely-shared Facebook posts about Harris are “false.”
However, it based its rating, in part, on Planned Parenthood’s claims that it did nothing wrong, writing: “We found there’s a major flaw in these posts: A dozen states investigated Planned Parenthood but never reached a criminal finding against the organization for tissue sales. Planned Parenthood has denied the accusations.”
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PolitiFact also claimed “the term ‘baby parts’ is wrong and greatly misleading” – despite documents and statements from abortion industry leaders that mention aborted baby’s livers, hearts, brains and heads. It preferred the more sanitized term “fetal tissue.”
The focus of its so-called fact check, however, was on Harris and the allegations that Planned Parenthood sold aborted baby body parts. The truth is that Harris, as California attorney general, ignored the allegations against Planned Parenthood, her close political ally, and went after the journalists who exposed it instead.
To refute claims about Planned Parenthood’s guilt, the fact checker mentioned how about a dozen states investigated the abortion chain but did not find evidence of illegal activity.
“Despite all the worry, state investigations have yet to find any evidence that Planned Parenthood was selling or profiting off fetal tissue,” it quoted from a 2016 NPR report.
However, it failed to mention that several state investigations did uncover illegal activity involving second-trimester abortions and the disposal of aborted babies; and others struggled to obtain evidence because the abortion chain refused to cooperate with the investigations.
What’s more, U.S. House and Senate investigations did find evidence of illegal activity at Planned Parenthood, prompting the Department of Justice to launch an investigation.
Then, in May, a video of unsealed sworn testimony by Planned Parenthood officials included more evidence of potentially illegal aborted baby body parts sales:
The video also features sworn testimony from Dr. Dorothy Furgerson, the longtime Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country. Dr. Furgerson signed PPMM’s contract with StemExpress to sell fetal body parts to StemExpress per specimen “determined in the clinic to be usable”, and Dr. Furgerson’s endorsement appears on a StemExpress brochure handed out at National Abortion Federation meetings advertising “fiscal[] rewards” and “financial profits” to the abortion clinics who provided fetal tissue to StemExpress. When asked if the purpose of the brochure was “to obtain more potential sources of fetal tissue,” Dr. Furgerson testified, “Yes, I understood that that’s what they were trying to do.”
The video shows StemExpress paid Planned Parenthood solely based on the number of “usable” samples that StemExpress could harvest from PPMM’s abortions, at least an extra $65 per abortion if the customer ordered a fetal organ plus a blood sample. PPMM does over 17,000 abortions a year, and unsealed invoices show PPMM making $25,000 in just 3 months from StemExpress. When asked how much money an abortion clinic could make per year from selling fetal body parts, the founder and CEO of Planned Parenthood partner Advanced Bioscience Resources, Linda Tracy, was forbidden by her lawyer to answer.
PolitiFact did not mention any of this, nor did it bring up how an Orange County district attorney did what Harris failed to do and, as a result of the investigation, shut down two Planned Parenthood partner companies after they admitted to illegally selling aborted baby body parts.
The fact checker also claimed the “part about Harris going after two pro-life ‘journalists’ is more muddled.” But it confirmed that she did launch the investigation that led to charges with possible jail time for Daleiden and fellow Center for Medical Progress investigator Sandra Merritt.
In 2017, the California attorney general’s office charged Daleiden and Merritt with 15 felony charges related to state privacy and recording laws. Daleiden and Merritt are still fighting for justice in court against current California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a pro-abortion Democrat who took over after Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate. They could face jail time, if convicted.
According to PolitiFact:
It’s correct that Harris as California’s attorney general never brought charges against Planned Parenthood for this activity. …
Harris was California attorney general when her office started investigating the activities of the anti-abortion activists. She had moved on to the U.S. Senate by the time charges were brought against them for violating state privacy laws.
New documents suggest Harris took direct instructions from Planned Parenthood about the raid before her office agents went into Daleiden’s home and seized computers, video footage and video equipment.
At the same time, Harris was accepting campaign donations and other support from Planned Parenthood. Even the pro-abortion Los Angeles Times editorial board criticized her office for prosecuting the journalists in a way that jeopardizes the freedom of the press, calling it a “disturbing overreach.”
Despite the strong evidence against Planned Parenthood and Harris, Facebook flagged LifeNews.com’s story as “false and misleading.” These supposedly reliable fact checkers are not as reliable as they seem. Their surface investigations seem one sided in favor of abortion activists when they fail to give their readers all the evidence.
