Colorado Planned Parenthood Tragedy: Carly Fiorina Shares the Blame

Fiorina lied about the Planned Parenthood "video." She lied as loud as she could.

I was going to say she has blood on her hands, but based on my friends' reaction when I said that, I softened the title of my post. It is true she shares the blame. She does, however, own a lion's share of the blame because of her strident, callous lies about "body parts" in several national venues, including two GOP debates.

Today's Washington Post has a story of the role Carly Fiorina and others played in this tragedy.

Abortions are legal. Some fetal tissue has been, legally, donated by women who had abortions, generally at their own request. Planned Parenthood assisted in these donations and collected modest fees to help pay for the various costs, such as transportation, etc. This donated tissue helps in research, which may lead to cures for disease and longer, healthier lives for countless people.

That would be the end of the story if not for some highly distorted, mightily edited videos shot by people with a clear anti-abortion agenda. As deceptive as these videos were -- pictures of stillborn babies not associated with Planned Parenthood, for example -- they were used, prominently by Fiorina, as tools to fight abortion. Even Republican members of Congress have declared they would shut down the federal government if Planned Parenthood isn't "defunded" as a result of these faked videos. (Planned Parenthood isn't federally "funded." It's simply eligible to receive payments by those using Medicaid for its non-abortion health services. A very minor amount of funding also comes via the Title X program to serve low-income families with family planning and birth control.)

Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood has stopped these fetal tissue donations because of the uproar created by these deceptions foisted on an ignorant world by some crafty anti-abortionists. It's an embarrassment that so many Americans can become tools of such craftiness.

And now the chickens come home to roost in the form of dead people in Colorado at the hands of a loner declaring "no more baby parts."

And I'd be wrong to say Carly Fiorina, among others, has blood on her hands? I'm sorry, but she and the rest of the candidates do. Shame on them, and shame on America for the extent to which we have held up a portrait of an ignorant, savage, violent Neanderthal country for all the world to see. These GOP candidates and congresspeople have acted disgracefully, and we are right to condemn them. I hope many people do.

Check the comments on the above linked WaPo story. Many people agree with me. We can only hope this slows down the momentum the anti-abortion crowd had gained at the expense of American women and the truth.

Here's how Carly Fiorina regards the "truth:"

Reaction keeps coming in. Yahoo Politics points to the uncomfortable spot the GOP candidates find themselves in post-Colorado Springs.

An early Daily Caller article decrying the early condemnation of Republicans for the attack only succeeds in offering links to commentators who were too fast to assess blame, but who nonetheless appear prescient as word comes in that, indeed, the killer's motives were likely inspired by false body-part rhetoric by Fiorina and others.

Here's an article shedding light on the shooter's motives that revolve around his statement of "no more baby parts."

For clarification, here's an article about how Planned Parenthood doesn't use federal funds to provide abortions, and here's an article that explains that Planned Parenthood never sold fetal tissue for profit. I was taken by this quote from the article:

The donation of aborted human fetal tissue may come as a shock to a public unfamiliar with the practice but it is, in fact, a longstanding one. According to the American Society for Cell Biology, scientists have been researching human fetal tissue since the 1930s, with aborted tissue playing a part in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s development of the rubella and varicella vaccines in the 1960s. Ronald Reagan put a hold on using fetal tissue for transplants in 1988 while other forms of fetal tissue research continued and Bill Clinton subsequently lifted Reagan’s moratorium in 1993.

Good to know.

"No more baby parts." Pretty clear what motivated him and who stirred this up.