A pro-life organisation has proven that Republican presidential bet Carly Fiorina was not making up a story, as her critics claimed, when she challenged Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the Sept. 16 Republican presidential debate to watch a video showing "a fully formed foetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.'"
The Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR), in partnership with the Grantham Collection, has released the full version of the video showing what Fiorina described. The 13-minute long video shows the birth of what CBR describes as a "17 1/2 week foetus."
The video shows the foetus lying in a metal pan with a clamp attached to its umbilical cord. A portion of this video was used by another pro-life organisation Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in the series of sting videos it released to uncover the illegal and repugnant practices being done at Planned Parenthood clinics.
After the debate, critics accused Fiorina of lying about the Planned Parenthood tapes showing a fully formed foetus with its heart beating and legs kicking being cut to pieces by a technician who was instructed to harvest its brains and other organs. Media outlet Vox's Sarah Kliff branded Fiorina's revelation as "pure fiction," according to Breitbart News.
However, the Federalist later provided the video in question, which showed a "fully formed foetus... its legs kicking." A portion of this video appears in episode 3 of the CMP videos.
In the video, former tissue procurement specialist Holly O'Donnell describes an intact foetus with a beating heart. She is heard saying, "I don't know if that constitutes it's technically dead, or it's alive."
The foetus in a metal bowl shown in the video came from Grantham Collection and Center for Bioethical Reform.
The Washington Examiner fact-checked the claims of Fiorina and said that the "footage of a baby who survived an abortion—notably, this baby—may not have been at Planned Parenthood, and we have no reason to think he or she was cut up for his or her organs."
Fiorina, Breitbart said, "appears to have conflated the video of the foetus with the story being told by O'Donnell at the same time."
"It's fair to say Fiorina's description was incorrect to the degree it treated both incidents as relating to one foetus; however, both the brain harvesting incident and the video of a fully formed, kicking foetus are real," it said.
"This is an absolutely real video of an abortion," said Gregg Cunningham of the Center for Bioethical Reform. "People always try to claim the images and video are not real."
He added that they have an agreement with abortion clinics that prevents them from releasing any information about the identity of the clinic.
"Violating these prohibitions could subject CBR to legal liability and jeopardise clinic access for current and future projects. We are even obligated to delete the audio track on all of our videos," the centre said.
