Intimidation: North Dakota Planned Parenthood Warns Local Media About Airing Controversial Sting Video

Valley News Live has published a press release they received from Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota regarding the secretly recorded video of the group’s officials discussing the sale of baby body parts.

“Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota warned news outlets today that airing undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress could violate ‘patient privacy,'” reports VNL. “Planned Parenthood says the videos violate laws however no wrong doing by the Center for Medical Progress has been proven.”

Planned Parenthood also tries to link CMP with the murder of a prominent abortion doctor.

“The board members of this group believe that abortion is ‘genocide,’ and employ people who went to jail for attempting to bomb a women’s health clinic,” the press release states. “They are also connected with the man who murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.”

Brutal.

“The best defense is a good offense,” they say, and that’s what Planned Parenthood is doing here. They’ve claimed repeatedly that the videos are heavily edited, but that’s not true. CMP has released the full, unedited versions of the videos for anyone wishing context to see.

As to the claim that CMP is employing abortion clinic bombers and is connected to the murder of George Tiller, I have no idea if the claims are true or not, but it smacks of muddying the waters. Even if those things are true, does it make the revelations in the videos released by CMP any less shocking and repugnant?

Put another way, is it any less wrong for Planned Parenthood to negotiate profit margins on dead baby parts because CMP supposedly has some less-than-savory characters working for it (if we believe the PP accusations, which we probably shouldn’t)?

C’mon. This is a pretty transparent attempt to intimidate the news media away from airing video Planned Parenthood knows is devastating for extreme position on abortion.

The full press release is here.

You can watch the videos on the CMP website, including the full and unedited versions.

UPDATE: Per state Rep. Chris Olson in the comments section, it appears as though the claims about the connection between CMP and Tiller’s murder/abortion bombings are false.