Updated: PP Responds: RNC Chair Priebus Suggests Democrats Support Infanticide [View all]

[DonViejo]

Last edited Thu Apr 4, 2013, 10:50 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: TPM

In an article published Wednesday on the conservative website RedState, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus blasted Democrats for supporting Planned Parenthood, while floating the damning suggestion that the likes of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) support infanticide.

"The President, the Senate Majority Leader, the House Democratic Leader, and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (in whose home state this hearing occurred) made funding Planned Parenthood an issue in the 2012 campaign," Priebus wrote. "They should now all be held to account for that outspoken support. If the media won’t, then voters must ask the pressing questions: Do these Democrats also believe a newborn has no rights? Do they also endorse infanticide?"

Priebus appeared to predicate much of his piece on recent testimony from a Planned Parenthood lobbyist before the Florida legislature. The lobbyist was posed a number of hypotheticals on what the women's healthcare organization would do if a baby survived a botched abortion.

"Not once in her testimony did the Planned Parenthood representative say the newborn baby has a right to life. Not once did she say anyone has a duty to care for the child," Priebus wrote. "Whether the living, breathing child survives is up to the adults in the room because, as we now know, Planned Parenthood doesn’t believe the baby has rights."

Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/rnc-chair-priebus-suggests-democrats-support-infanticide

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Update

Planned Parenthood Responds To ‘Infanticide’ Charge From Priebus

TOM KLUDT 7:51 AM EDT, THURSDAY APRIL 4, 2013

After Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus penned a scathing op-ed piece Wednesday suggesting that Planned Parenthood — and Democrats — support infanticide, the reproductive health organization issued a clarifying response.

In the piece, published by the conservative website RedState, Priebus highlighted recent testimony from Alisa LaPolt Snow, a Planned Parenthood lobbyist, before the Florida legislature. During the testimony, Republican legislators posed a number of hypotheticals to Snow on how Planned Parenthood would handle a botched abortion. “What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving? What do your physicians do at that point?” asked one GOP lawmaker.

Snow's answers left a number of Republicans, including Priebus, up in arms. The chairman pointed to her testimony as evidence that Planned Parenthood and pro-choice Democrats must endorse infanticide. But in a statement provided to TPM on Wednesday, Planned Parenthood said that those Republican legislators "demanded speculation about a vague set of extremely unlikely and highly unusual medical circumstances."

Last week, a panel of Florida state legislators demanded speculation about a vague set of extremely unlikely and highly unusual medical circumstances. Medical guidelines and ethics already compel physicians facing life-threatening circumstances to respond, and Planned Parenthood physicians provide high-quality medical care and adhere to the most rigorous professional standards, including providing emergency care. In the extremely unlikely event that the scenario presented by the panel of legislators should happen, of course Planned Parenthood would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.

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http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/planned-parenthood-responds-to-infanticide-charge-from-priebus?ref=fpa