The Center for Bio-Ethical reform released the full video of Fiorina’s “fully formed fetus.” It’s a premature delivery.
Slate has a good summary of the issues involved and has a wonderful conclusion about what the full video adds, “the revelation that the fetus came out of a woman’s body.”
Greg Cunningham, the curator of the illegally obtained video and the founder of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, told Time magazine that it had to be an abortion “owing to the lack of medical treatment offered to the fetus.” The statement underscores the fact that Cunningham has no idea what he is talking about as the fetus is 17-18 weeks and hence pre viable so no one would render care. It is highly atypical to offer neonatal care before 23 weeks. A neonatologist who attempt to resuscitate a 17 week delivery would be considered unethical.
It is easy to see how someone who has no obstetrical training might think this could be something other than a previable premature delivery. Cunningham’s statements clearly show he is no medical expert and isn’t in the position to explain it. However, I am.
Here are all the issues with the video from start to finish:
- It is illegally and clandestinely shot. I feel very badly for the poor woman in question and wonder why Fiorina and our elected officials are not as outraged as I am about her violation and exploitation. I had second thoughts about watching it myself given the lack of consent from the woman, however, I felt if I could end the conversation about it faster by weighing in. Time magazine or Slate have links.
- The prep of the patient. The physician (I’m assuming) pours surgical prep/cleaner on the woman’s perineum. We don’t do that anymore for spontaneous deliveries or for abortions that involve induction of labor. This tells me this video is at least 15 years old or from another country.
- The delivery. It is a spontaneous delivery as the operator waits for the fetus to be expelled. This is what we do with a previable premature delivery. If this were shot mid way through a 2nd trimester abortion (meaning the Laminaria in the cervix, which are osmotic sticks that help the cervix dilate, had just been removed) it is highly unlikely the operator would have waited for a spontaneous expulsion.
- The cord is clamped on the fetal side. If this were an abortion it would just be cut. Really. No one ever does this with an abortion as it serves no purpose.
- Waiting for the placenta. The clamp is left on the placental end and at the end of the video the placenta still hasn’t delivered. If this were an abortion the placenta would be removed with suction immediately, no one would wait 11 minutes. Ever. Every abortion clinic has a suction machine.
- There is no proof this video is in a Planned Parenthood clinic never mind in the United States. This could easily be an operating room.
Instead of wasting tax payer dollars over highly edited videos our government should be investigating who illegally taped this woman’s delivery. If Cunningham says he didn’t take the video then of course he also can’t be sure what was going on. He can’t have it both ways.
Dr. Jen Gunter 
I have gone into preterm labor at 16 weeks. They did not put my baby in a sterile stainless bowl. They wrapped her in a blanket. They took her footprints. I was not put to sleep. They didn’t dump betadine solution over her head as she exited the womb. This serves NO purpose other than to keep fetal tissue free from bacteria for ‘other future uses’. This video was a second trimester abortion via induction. Whatever other issues you want to debate is fine but regardless of gestation don’t pretend that lack of medical care to a LIVING baby (or fetus if you prefer) is routine in cases of miscarriage because it is NOT. It’s not even routine to deny care and human decency to a clinically dead baby. I have suffered many miscarriages and a stillborn delivery. I’ve even had a partial birth abortion due to fetal abnormalities which were putting my life at risk. I know what happens in every situation. I was walked through ALL the gory details of the partial birth abortion prior to consent. And in situations where a baby is born fully intact as the result of induction, the placenta isn’t immediately suctioned from the womb. You wait for it to detach, much like you would after a healthy, full term delivery. The simple fact is this is a common occurrence. It is a legal one. It is actually more ‘humane’ than what is being done in clinics across the country, Planned Parenthood or not. Do you know who Kermit Gosnell is? Do you believe he’s the only doctor committing such atrocities in the USA? Do you even consider what he did to be an atrocity or do you feel he was railroaded? Do you deny organ & tissue harvesting from fetal tissue being used in research? If so, on what basis? Why are people so hot to deny what is legal and what you don’t have issue with on a moral basis? Second trimester abortions are legal and as you know they aren’t pretty. There is always some soulless physician somewhere looking to ‘bend the rules’ in order to profit from his or her dirty deeds. Gosnell wasn’t the exception to the rule, he’s the exception that proves the rule. So quit trying to deny the ugliness of late term abortions. They are LEGAL so why do you care what that video shows, especially if you routinely deny a moving (or unviable) fetus any ounce of humanity? By the way, back in the day when I was in high school, I took many a classmate to planned parenthood. I got an up close and personal view of what goes on behind the scenes and what I witnessed (aside from the late gestation) looked identical to what’s in that video. There were canisters of aborted fetal tissue lined up next to the coffee maker & refrigerator in the ‘break room’. Hygiene has never been their strong suit.
Some women don’t want to see or hold their baby after a second trimester loss. In that case at 17 weeks it would be very unlikely that the doctor would pause to wrap the baby, some might but not all. Also, the person taking the video has spent a lot of time on the fetus, so I wonder if this person is grilling the doctor and asking questions which would of course contribute to the delay? It is also very possible that after the placenta was delivered the baby was wrapped and given to the mother. It appears as if there is a receiving blanket on the table, so that was likely the intent. There is no medical care to give to a 17 week fetus. They don’t live for hours, they may have a heart beat for a minute but the second they are born they have no oxygen delivery.
Betadine would never be used to keep fetal tissue “free from bacteria.” It isn’t possible, so you are wrong. The betadine is for the women, but even then it is futile and does nothing so that is why no one does it anymore. This suggest an older video or an older OB/GYN or another country.
What is going on here is in no was related to Kermit Gosnell, which is of course what happens when there are very few legal and safe providers. There are sadly charlatans in every field and when a safe procedure costs $1200 and has a 3 day wait and you only have $400 and someone is willing to take it and you are desperate people like Gosnell flourish. More restrictive laws encourage that. I’ve cared for women damaged by untrained providers.
If there is an induction of labor for genetic reason at 17-18 weeks the operator might wait for the placenta, but then again that’s usually when getting the placenta to pathology matters.
Organ harvesting isn’t even a medical term. Fetal tissue is used for research and I am glad it is. We don’t have to worry about polio because of it. 11 State Attorney Generals have already cleared Planned Parenthood from any profit component in donating fetal tissues, so I am quite confident this isn’t some side business.
I care what the video shows because I care about facts and the truth. The people passing this off as an abortion clearly don’t. They videoed people working at Planned Parenthood without permission (illegal). They claimed status non profit when they were not (illegal). They recorded a woman’s delivery without her consent and plastered pictures of her vulva on the Internet (illegal). And then the nice twist of passing off a stillbirth as an abortion (not illegal, but didn’t you use the term soulless?). Oh yeah, and not providing audio or the full event from start to finish so we would have context.
Some premature babies don’t get the memo that prior to 23 weeks they are “not viable” and any attempts to preserve their life is “unethical” !!!
This video is at 17-18 weeks so any attempt would be unethical given survival 0%
It’s an abortion.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/29/graphic-content-carly-fiorina-was-right-group-releases-full-abortion-video-mentioned-in-gop-debate/
Nope https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/proof-the-fiorina-was-right-video-is-an-exploited-premature-delivery-theres-a-male-support-person-in-the-room/
I hope you posted that there? Not that they would publish it…
Breitbart? Is he still dead?
Brava! Nicely done.
As an outsider to all this, it interests me how much respect pro-lifers profess for the pre-viable, and how little respect they display for everyone else.
Many of them are also apparently supporters of capital punishment, and of the right to bear arms. So much for supporting life.
THANK YOU. I should’ve outgrown it by now, but I find it troubling the way the same voices cry out for abortion restriction on the basis of a love for humanity, and then advise indifference to climate change and mass murder.
Not to mention supporting political candidates who would love to do away with welfare, healthcare and everything else that would potentially benefit a child that was born into poverty. What good Christians they are…
To the “pro-life” movement, the “babies” seem almost immaterial. They appear to be a useful backdrop, much as “the troops” are to the Republican Party – a useful tool to use in attacking their Enemies, but completely uninteresting once they have served their purpose. Be aware that for all ideologues and con-men, definitions are very slippery. Don’t assume that any word used by an ideologue actually means what you think it means. Keep Inigo’s Observation always in the front of your mind.
#6. No proof this shot is from a Planned Parenthoot clinic…, no proof it’s not either. And you’re saying Planned Parenthood doesn’t have operating rooms? Isn’t that part of the problem? Substandard facilities, etc. that have led to deaths of the mother when this abortions go bad. See Stories on Gosnel for examples among others.
If it’s a “spontaneous” abortion then how does the child bearer just “happen” to “spontaneously” be in a clinic or hospital?
So much for the Hippocratic oath.
Thank you for showing how a non medical person couldn’t possibly interpret this video.
Spontaneous abortions/pre viable premature deliveries happen in the hospital all the time. Every day in fact. Women come to the hospital with symptoms and things progress or they do not.
Planned Parenthoods do not have substandard facilities, that is some kind of right wing fallacy.
Child bearer? Is that some new anti-choice code for pregnant women or woman?
Some Planned Parenthood have out patient surgery suites. But like I wrote, there is no proof this is from a Planned Parenthood or even in the United States. And, the evidence points to this being a premature previable delivery.
“child bearer” = the only purpose women serve for misogynists (well, maybe not only – there’s also cooking and household chores)
Well, Larry, there’s also “laying on your back with your legs in the air splayed,” which I guess is related to being a “child-bearer,” and which a public official in the state of Missouri thought it was perfectly okay to define as the only thing women know about.
Abortion is just about the safest outpatient surgery ever, and it is safer by orders of magnitude than pregnancy and childbirth. Re-read the article and you will learn why it is a spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, if you prefer.
“Spontaneous abortion” is the medical term for a miscarriage. It’s not someone deciding to get an abortion on the spur of the moment. It refers to the body expelling the fetus (“to abort” means to bring to a premature ending) for no known reason. About 50% of all pregnancies result in spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) – most of them before the woman has any clue she is pregnant, because the fertilized egg fails to implant in the uterine lining, but miscarriages are quite common thru the first trimester.
“…miscarriages are quite common thru the first trimester…” and less common in the second trimester, but they certainly do happen.
Thus, this video taken of a previable (that means impossible to survive outside the womb; and a heartbeat for a minute after expulsion is hardly “surviving” and is probably a function of a still-attached placenta) fetus that’s so immature that you can see organs under the nearly transparent layer of skin.
Planned Parenthood has procedure rooms, professional ones with surgical table drapes, not linens from the back of someone’s closet. It’s very likely this is not a US OR.
Dr. Jen, being a “preemie” myself this video is highly disturbing to me. On CNN this idiot from this “medical ethics” place called the baby “A creature”!
I was 2 lbs 12 oz. I spent the first 2 mos in a incubator.
I also doubt this is from the US and had to be obtained from a third world country, one of those christian charities I’m thinking.
Its disturbing how they prod and poke the baby. Why not put a towel over the baby and let die in peace. Do you know why they did that? If the baby was not viable?
For these people to be exploiting this video and Carly Firoina “I’m right” I can’t believe the unmitigated gall of this horrid woman! I sincerely hope she doesn’t have children.
These people who did these videos are domestic terrorist and should be put in jail. I’ve heard that the FBI or Feds are demanding all info as to where and when and how these video were obtained.
And Carly you should be so proud!
Not!
What a disgusting woman. A pig in lispstick for sure!
Good grief.
My own son’s birth was spontaneous! Wife wasn’t feeling right. Went to see the doctor and he immediately said this baby is in trouble and he’s being born now! That’s how “spontaneously” my wife “happened” to deliver our son. In a hospital.
As to ” no proof it’s NOT at PP”. Well if that sort of logic appeals to you then there’s no proof it didn’t happen in Timbuktu. Or your own garage. Or that you weren’t the doctor in the video.
If you’re (genuinely) worried PP has substandard facilities shouldn’t you be asking for MORE funding for them??
Did you even bother to think any of your comment through for just a second before you posted it? Or did your faux outrage cancel out your critical thinking skills?
There’s no proof that you aren’t a child-abuser, Treemac…, no proof you’re not either. The good news is that in this and most advanced countries, it’s the responsibility of the party making the accusation to prove that they’re right. It’s not up to Dr. Gunter or Planned Parenthood to prove that this video is not an abortion and not from their clinics. It’s up to Greg Cunningham, the purveyor of this video, and those who re-distribute it to prove that it is. So far, he’s done a pretty poor job. Why? Cunningham says (Time magazine) that he’s confident it was an abortion because the baby was not provided with care. Except that medical experts (which Cunningham isn’t) have weighed in that 17-week prematures do not get care, as they have 0 chance of survival. So, in essence, he’s talking out of his a–.
Thank you for addressing this so clearly and quickly.