Abortion footage cited by Carly Fiorina 'that only happened in her head' released in full

Brett T. | 5:05 AM on October 01, 2015

Amanda Marcotte, who claimed that the grisly abortion video Carly Fiorina described during the second Republican debate “only happened in her head,” might want to check out TIME, which reveals the source of the video Fiorina described and links to the complete footage.

https://twitter.com/amandacarpenter/status/649359254189686784

Michael Scherer reports that the footage Fiorina described was collected by Gregg Cunningham, the founder of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and an anti-abortion activist.

David Daleiden, who created the Center for Medical Progress videos, edited in the Cunningham footage to illustrate a story that he had been told on camera of a medical technician witnessing an abortion that resulted in an extracted fetus with moving legs and beating heart.

The full source video, which is extremely graphic, lasts about 13 minutes, and shows a fetus being extracted from the mother, placed in a metal bowl, prodded with medical instruments and handled by someone in the room. At times the fetus appears to move, and at other times it appears to have a pulse.

TIME at first reported that Cunningham was convinced the footage was of an abortion and not a miscarriage, as no attempt was made to give medical assistance. However, the article was updated to note that “current medical guidelines do not call for resuscitation of a fetus at 17 and a half weeks.” We’re reminded of Sen. Barack Obama’s argument against passage of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in 2001:

… whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a child, a nine-month-old child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.

I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.