The Texas Office of the Attorney General today praised a ruling by a federal judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit granting its motion to unseal the full, unedited undercover video showing a willingness by Planned Parenthood officials to traffic in fetal body parts and manipulate the timing and methods of abortions. Faces of non-Planned Parenthood personnel in the video must be blurred, the court ruled. The video is central to the state’s appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked Texas Health and Human Services from cutting off state Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood.
“Planned Parenthood doesn’t want the entirety of the video unsealed because it magnifies the horrific nature of abortion and the organization’s violation of accepted medical and ethical standards,” said Marc Rylander, director of communications for the attorney general’s office. “When you hear a Planned Parenthood official’s willingness to alter abortion procedures to obtain better fetal tissue specimens, and when you hear the description of how abortion doctors took fetal tissue samples home in a cooler for their outside research projects, it underscores the organization’s callous disregard for the sanctity of life.”
After reviewing all of the video, the inspector general of Texas Health and Human Services concluded that Planned Parenthood is “not qualified to provide medical services in a professionally competent, safe, legal and ethical manner” and removed it from the state’s Medicaid program last year.