Carly Fiorina made a gut-wrenching case for defunding Planned Parenthood on Wednesday night during the presidential debate, using emotional rhetoric to argue that congressional Republicans should force the president to veto a bill defunding the organization.
But her description of the contents of a sting video, part of a series released over the summer, wasn’t quite right.
“I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, to watch these tapes,” Fiorina said. “Watch a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
The video does show a moving fetus, but the “someone” who is speaking is not talking about that particular fetus. The video is courtesy of two antiabortion groups, the Grantham Collection and the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, and is played while a former procurement technician recalls being instructed on gathering tissue after an abortion.
“Since the fetus was so intact, she said, ‘OK, well, this is a really good fetus and it looks like we can procure a lot from it. We’re going to procure a brain,’” the former technician, Holly O’Donnell, said in the video.
O’Donnell’s memory of the event and the image included in the video is graphic, but Fiorina’s description is wrong and exaggerates the video’s contents.