SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERA pro-life House member and national pro-life organizations are calling for Congress to immediately defund Planned Parenthood following the release of the blockbuster undercover investigative video from the Center for Medical Progress purporting to show the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of America speaking about how to abort a baby in a way such that its body parts can be useful for medical and scientific research. “The fact that Planned Parenthood performs upwards of 327,000 abortions a year is heartbreaking and barbaric enough on its own,” Rep. Diane Black said in a statement to Breitbart News. “The news that its employees engaged in the selling of aborted babies’ body parts is almost too much to bear and shows that Planned Parenthood’s disregard for innocent human life was even worse than we imagined.”SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER “Now that we are armed with further proof of the evils of Planned Parenthood, Congress must pass my legislation – The Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act –so that we can cut off this agency’s largest stream of federal funding without delay,” Black added.
National pro-life organizations are also reeling from the story. “The results of this investigation are truly horrific,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, in a statement to Breitbart News. “This generation is already turned off by Planned Parenthood once they learn that they have abortion quotas, the extraordinary amount of money they receive from taxpayers and that they commit a quarter of all abortions done yearly.” “The buying and selling of baby body parts is indefensible and the straw that will break the camel’s back,” Hawkins continued. “Planned Parenthood is a gross money-maker and care nothing for the women, and children, they harm in the process.” Live Action’s Lila Rose said, “This investigation by the Center for Medical Progress reveals the unimaginable horror that is Planned Parenthood.” Rose’s organization has also conducted multiple undercover investigations on Planned Parenthood’s abortion facilities and so-called sex education for young women.
“The exploitation of human life, the cover-up, and the black market profiteering by America’s largest abortion chain is not only egregious and heartbreaking, but exposes how the abortion giant is corrupt to the core — from the CEO, Cecile Richards, down to the local clinic,” she added. “As Live Action has investigated through the years, Planned Parenthood’s barbaric practices reveal their contempt for rule of law and human life.” Rose said this latest exposé of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of baby parts for profit “should be the final nail in the coffin for the abortion giant.” “Congress must take immediate action to stop all taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and end the bankrolling of this horrific human rights abuser,” she said. Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser said the undercover video shows “the dark side of humanity as did the case of Kermit Gosnell.” “The moment when the destruction of a human being becomes just business as usual is a moment we must address,” she continued, adding:
Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, so devalues human life they are now in the business of harvesting body parts. They are wheeling and dealing with tiny hearts, livers, lungs, and even heads, of the children their practitioners destroy during late term abortion procedures. This is an eye-opening, stomach-churning moment. We are a better nation than this. Ending late term abortion will preclude this horror. During fiscal year 2013-2014, Planned Parenthood received more than $528 million in taxpayer funding, or more than $1.4 million per day, in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements. Taxpayer funding accounts for 41 percent of Planned Parenthood’s overall revenue. ForAmerica’s Chairman Brent Bozell also called on Congress to defund Planned Parenthood immediately. “The Republican-controlled Congress must defund Planned Parenthood now. Immediately,” he said in a statement. “The horrific truth that the top doctor at Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted babies compels Congress to recognize it has been funding a 21st century Josef Mengele.”
“Anyone or either party who plays politics with this ghastly, inhuman behavior, or fails to exercise his/her responsibility to end taxpayer funding of it, should be condemned as participatory in it,” Bozell continued. “Let President Obama veto the budget over this. It will crush his presidency, and end this ghoulish practice for once and for all.”The popularity of celebrity doctors always baffles me. Whether its Dr. Phil — whose license to practice psychology has been retired since 2006 — or, more recently, Dr. Oz. In all fairness I have to admit that I’ve only ever watched a few episodes of Dr. Oz and those were mainly because someone else was watching it at the time, but that was enough to call into question any medical advice he has to offer. You see, he’s really big on “alternative” medicines and diet pills and he promotes them heavily on his show. Stuff like raspberry ketone or green coffee extract both of which he has proclaimed as “miracles in a bottle” on his show and both of which haven’t been shown to do jack or shit when it comes to weight loss.
However, the lack of scientific evidence beyond a sketchy study or two isn’t enough to prevent Dr. Oz from promoting them heavily. At it turns out, these outrageous claims by Dr. Oz have been egregious enough to land him in front of a Senate subcommittee that’s looking into the whole green coffee extract nonsense. There he was grilled by Senator Clair McCaskill, Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. She did not go easy on him: “When you feature a product on your show, it creates what has become known as ‘Oz Effect,’ dramatically boosting sales and driving scam artists to pop up overnight using false and deceptive ads to sell questionable products,” the Senator explained. “I’m concerned that you are melding medical advice, news and entertainment in a way that harms consumers.” via Dr. Oz Grilled By Senator Over “Miracle” Weight-Loss Claims – Consumerist. It’s a fair statement and you’re probably guessing that Dr. Oz ended up feigning ignorance or trying to claim the products really do work.
Nope, he admits that — at best — the products he promotes as “miracles” are crutches that can not replace proper diet and exercise: Dr. Oz openly admitted that the weight-loss treatments he mentions on the show are frequently “crutches… You won’t get there without diet and exercise,” and that while he believes in the research he’s done, the research done on these treatments would probably not pass FDA muster. “If the only message I gave was to eat less and move more — which is the most important thing people need to do — we wouldn’t be very effectively tackling this complex challenge because viewers know these tips and they still struggle,” said the doctor. “So we search for tools and crutches; short-term supports so that people can jumpstart their programs.” In short, he knows better. As he should if his medical degree is legitimate in any sense of the word. McCaskill wasn’t letting him off the hook so easily: Sen. McCaskill quoted three statements that the great and doctorful Oz had made about different weight-loss treatments on his show:
•(On green coffee extract) — “You may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they found the magic weight-loss for every body type.” •(On raspberry ketone) — “I’ve got the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat” (raspberry ketone) •(On garcinia cambogia) — “It may be the simple solution you’ve been looking for to bust your body fat for good.” “I don’t get why you say this stuff, because you know it’s not true,” said McCaskill. “So why, when you have this amazing megaphone, and this amazing ability to communicate, why would you cheapen your show by saying things like that?” At this point the good doctor defended his claims on the basis that he believes the products in question do work despite the lack of any reason to do so and then admitted that his claims result in scam artists jumping to sell this crap to everyone dumb enough to listen to him, often using his likeness and statements to endorse it
“I do personally believe in the items that I talk about on the show,” responded Dr. Oz, who acknowledged that statements he’s made in the past have encouraged scam artists and others looking to make a quick buck on people looking for an easy way to lose weight. “I do think I’ve made it more difficult for the FTC,” he continued. “In the intent to engage viewers, I use flowery language. I used language that was very passionate that ended up being not very helpful but incendiary and it provided fodder for unscrupulous advertisers.” Call me old fashioned, but when you’re making medical claims I would think you would want to avoid “flowery” language. However, this raises another point: The intent of Dr. Oz’s show isn’t to give you sound medial advice. It’s to entertain you. He feels he has to engage his viewers by making outrageous claims because apparently the truth won’t get him the ratings that really pulls in the big bucks. “My job, I feel, on the show is to be a cheerleader for the audience and when they don’t think they have hope, when they don’t think they can make it happen, I wanna look — and I do look — everywhere… for any evidence that might be supportive to them,”