With some members of Congress seeking to strip Planned Parenthood of half a billion dollars in federal funding — and hard-core Republican conservatives threatening to shut down the government entirely unless this happens — the County Board of Supervisors and Santa Barbara City Council both passed resolutions praising the organization for providing low-cost reproductive health services to thousands of city and county residents who otherwise might go without. Putting Planned Parenthood on the hot seat is the antiabortion group Center for Medical Progress, which has just released its 10th video showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissues, obtained via abortion, to biomedical research labs. The video makers — posing as representatives of a fictitious biomedical lab seeking to buy such samples — contend they’ve exposed Planned Parenthood officials figuring out how to maximize revenues off the sale of fetal body parts while chatting with the bogus buyers over lunch at a Pasadena bistro.
The videos have become the stuff of news headlines, multiple lawsuits, and violently contradictory interpretations in the past two months. Planned Parenthood and its supporters have insisted the videos have been edited to distort the facts. Under federal law, they are allowed to recoup only the costs of freezing, packaging, and shipping such samples from tissue donors to the recipient lab, and no profiteering is allowed. Thus far five states have concluded there’s no evidence substantiating the filmmakers’ claims, but many other states are still looking into the matter.
Passions ran fast and furious at the County Board of Supervisors, where no fewer than 37 antiabortion activists — describing in vivid detail the multiple mutilations visited upon aborted fetuses — urged the supervisors not to pass the resolution. One speaker described fetal tissue extraction — used over the decades in researching cures for polio, Alzheimer’s, and cancer — as akin to “cannibalism.” Several speakers accused Supervisor Salud Carbajal — now running for the 24th Congressional District — of electioneering from the dais in putting, along with Supervisor Janet Wolf, the resolution on the agenda in the first place. Carbajal responded by proudly touting his military service, adding, “This is about giving a choice to women over their bodies.”