Cartoon: Pro-Life Journalism

pro-life-journalism

Transcript of cartoon:

PANEL 1
A man in a jacket and tie is listening to a woman in a striped shirt speak.
WOMAN: We at Planned Parenthood don’t sell fetuses. We donate fetuses for medical research. There’s a fee for expenses, but we never profit.

PANEL 2
The man turns his back towards the viewer and is facing the woman’s word balloon from panel 1, which has remained in the cartoon, but is now mostly hidden by the man stepping in front of it. He has produced a magic marker and is making marks on the woman’s word balloon; the marker makes a “squeak squeak squeak” sound effect. The woman is puzzled by this development.
MAN: Hold on a minute…

PANEL 3
The man has turned back towards the viewers, and is holding up the woman’s word balloon from panel one. He has crossed off most of the words on the balloon; the remain words read “We at Planned Parenthood… sell… fetuses… for… profit.” He is pointing an accusing finger at the woman while yelling. The woman looks very surprised.
MAN: LOOK! SHE CONFESSED!


From the Wikipedia page about the so-called “Center for Medical Progress” videos:

The CMP presents the videos as evidence of Planned Parenthood engaging in the illegal sale of fetal tissue and organs, and their dummy corporation Biomax offered one clinic US$1,600 for liver and thymus tissue, but the affiliate declined the offer. The New York Times has characterized the offer as an attempt to “trap the affiliate in the act of accepting a high payment for fetal tissue”.

In the unedited version of the first video, PPFA staff repeatedly state that the organization makes no money from tissue donations, and that the US$30–100 charge only covers procurement costs.[1] PPFA have said they may donate fetal tissue at the request of a patient, but such tissue is never sold. At one point in the video, a PPFA staffer states “nobody should be ‘selling’ tissue”, and “that’s just not the goal here”.

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43 Responses to Cartoon: Pro-Life Journalism

  1. 1
    nobody.really says:

    This is such a fine cartoon.

    No, it’s not my favorite. No, it’s not the funniest or the cleverest. But the message is so clean and clear — and it conveys the message in a way that you could only do with a cartoon! It’s a message uniquely fitted to the medium.

    I read it and my first reaction is, “That’s such an obvious joke.” But my second reaction is, “So why haven’t I seen it everywhere?” Perhaps this is the mark of genius: I only seems obvious in retrospect.

  2. 2
    Ampersand says:

    Thanks, NR!

    When I thought of this gag, the first thing I did was google around to see if someone’s already done it, because it IS obvious. But I couldn’t find anyone else having done it (although maybe someone did and I just didn’t find it), so I went ahead and drew it.

  3. 3
    Pete Patriot says:

    Like how escorts just sell companionship for a period of time, and any sex that happens is coincidental and uncompensated?

  4. 4
    Ampersand says:

    In order to answer Pete’s question, I had to mentally translate from “hostile and obnoxious sounding comment” to “English.” In this case, I decided that, translated into English, Pete’s question was:

    There are cases, such as escort services, where people pretextually act as if they’re not doing something for a profit, but nonetheless are. How can we know that Planned Parenthood’s fetal donation program isn’t such a case?

    Pete, in the future, please try to make that translation before you post. Because I think a lot of people will miss your argument because of the hostile tone its stated in.

    Well – no. Whatever people claim for legal purposes, it’s generally understood that the whole point of hiring an escort is to have sex. Charlie the escort probably would not be associating with Schroeder the client if Schroeder wasn’t paying Charlie. Furthermore, Charlie’s profits are in fact coming from that transaction. (And I don’t see anything wrong with that, btw. I think Charlie should have a legal right to make money by selling sex, if that’s what Charlie wants.)

    In contrast, the large majority of Planned Parenthoods don’t do fetal donations at all, so you can hardly claim that the only reason abortions are taking place at Planned Parenthood is because of the fetal donations. Furthermore, when the few Planned Parenthoods that did donate fetal tissue charged an expense fee, they were probably losing money, not making a profit. From Politifact:

    Nucatola’s comment [on the video], though, isn’t evidence that Planned Parenthood or its affiliates are selling “body parts” or fetal tissue for profit. The full video shows that after Nucatola mentions the $30 to $100, she describes how those amounts would be reimbursement for expenses related to handling and transportation of the tissues. Nucatola talks about “space issues” and whether shipping would be involved.[…]

    We also asked experts in the use of human tissue for research about the potential for profit. Sherilyn J. Sawyer, the director of Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s “biorepository,” told us that “there’s no way there’s a profit at that price.” She continued in an email:

    Sawyer, July 20: In reality, $30-100 probably constitutes a loss for [Planned Parenthood]. The costs associated with collection, processing, storage, and inventory and records management for specimens are very high. Most hospitals will provide tissue blocks from surgical procedures (ones no longer needed for clinical purposes, and without identity) for research, and cost recover for their time and effort in the range of $100-500 per case/block. In the realm of tissues for research $30-100 is completely reasonable and normal fee.

    Jim Vaught, president of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories and formerly the deputy director of the National Cancer Institute’s Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research, told us in an email that “$30 to $100 per sample is a reasonable charge for clinical operations to recover their costs for providing tissue.” In fact, he said, the costs to a clinic are often much higher, but most operations that provide this kind of tissue have “no intention of fully recovering [their] costs, much less making a profit.”

    Planned Parenthood is continuing the fetal donation program – which is good, fetal tissue has been used in essential medical research – but they are now absorbing the expenses themselves.

    By the way, even if your comparison hadn’t been a completely fact-free fantasy, how would that be an excuse for the incredibly dishonest way pro-lifers edited the videos, and for the way the pro-life movement has continued standing by the videos even after it was known that they were deceptively edited?

  5. 5
    Pete Patriot says:

    The pro-lifers aren’t dishonest because most people think that if something looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. If you hand over cash and get some fetal tissue, it looks like a sale. “Substance over form”.

  6. 6
    Ampersand says:

    A lie is a lie, Pete. If you take a videotape of someone, and edit it so that they seem to be saying something other than what they said, that’s lying. If someone says “I carry a gun and shoot at people, but I only shoot blanks, because I’m a movie actor,” and Linus edits the tape of that to say “I carry a gun and shoot at people,” what Linus did was lying. It’s that simple.

    It’s so weird that you’re spinning and special pleading, and claiming to be for “substance over form,” when you’re trying to claim lying isn’t lying.

  7. 7
    Grace Annam says:

    Pete Patriot:

    The pro-lifers aren’t dishonest because most people think that if something looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. If you hand over cash and get some fetal tissue, it looks like a sale. “Substance over form”.

    So if I’m understanding you correctly, if a person films something which actually is not a duck, and the video shows them pointing out, repeatedly, how it is not a duck, and then another person selectively edits the video to show only the most duck-like evidence in the video, including editing the dialogue, “See, that’s not a duck!” to “See, that’s a duck!” … that’s not misrepresentation.

    Can’t say I agree.

    And the thing they’ve filmed is still actually not a duck.

    You know, certain conservatives are fond of accusing other people of Orwellian language. But when it comes to the real thing, that’s a beaut, right there. Misrepresentation = truth.

    Grace

  8. 8
    Copyleft says:

    If I give my brother in Texas a DVD player, and he agrees to pay for shipping, have I just sold a DVD player? Am I in competition with Best Buy?

    There is no duck here, Pete. Just a lot of silly geese hiding behind the bushes making quacking noises and hoping somebody falls for it.

  9. 9
    Pete Patriot says:

    Are any of you going to even going to try and defend your position? You’re literally just assuming it’s a donation (not for any reason that anyone’s given, just because liberal programming compels you), the only logic here is “It’s a donation, because we say it’s a donation”.

    If you enter into a deal where you get cash and someone else gets fetal tissue, then surely the transaction has all the elements of a sale? The only reason people are saying it isn’t is because it would be legally and politically difficult for them otherwise. But if you sell a bundle of interlinked services/commodities, you sell the bundle, saying you sold this and not that is a veneer. You actually sold the whole thing as a piece. This is clearly why PP stopped doing it, because the finessed justification stinks.

    Imagine instead of Planned Parenthood, that this is a bundle sold by Evil White Male Patriarchy Corp. They’ve figured out by using donations/sales to invent what transactions did or didn’t take place as convenient they can game accounting, tax and legal rules to avoid paying out money and to generally be oppressive. Are you cool with that?

  10. 10
    Ampersand says:

    Pete, I’d like to see you address Copyleft’s example, which you ignored even though it’s obviously relevant to the argument you just posted. You said:

    If you enter into a deal where you get cash and someone else gets fetal tissue, then surely the transaction has all the elements of a sale?

    In that case, would you say that Copyleft has sold the DVD player to their brother? Because I think most people would agree that what Copyleft described could be accurately called “I gave my brother a DVD player but he paid for shipping.”

    I recently said “okay” to someone who wanted some comics I was giving away, but he wasn’t in town, so he offered to pay for shipping. Did I actually sell those comics?

    The conclusion, I think, is that there is more than one kind of transaction which can be described as “A gave B cash and B gave A an item.” (Or, as Grace said, just because something shares a couple of traits with a duck doesn’t prove that it’s a duck). One such transaction would be a sale; another would be a donation or gift in which the receiver pays for the cost of transportation. If that’s true – and you haven’t even attempted to refute it – then merely saying “money was paid, fetal tissue was received” isn’t enough to logically show that a sale took place.

    There are a few ways we can look at a transaction to see if it was a sale. One is to ask, do the people involved think it was a sale? Another is to ask, did the person allegedly selling actually make any profit from the transaction? Neither of these are ironclad, but if the answer to both is “no” then that’s a pretty strong indication that we’re looking at something other than a sale.

  11. 11
    Pete Patriot says:

    Potentially, yes, if you could unbind the transactions. So if you could just go round and pick the dvd player up, but instead get it posted, then you could argue you’re just paying for postage as an add on. And you can definitively prove they’re un-bound transactions by paying the postal service yourself (i.e. not passing cash through the gifter), and that’s what I would advise you to do if there was a law preventing you from buying dvd players.

    However, that operation can’t be performed with tissue collection and distribution. There’s literally no one other than PP who can do that job, you can’t segregate it from the actual surgical operation and tissue supply – it’s intrinsically part of the same process. So the dvd counter-example is inappropriate.

  12. 12
    Ampersand says:

    and that’s what I would advise you to do if there was a law preventing you from buying dvd players.

    But if the question is “what does the law say,” then what Planned Parenthood did wasn’t illegal, so that should end the discussion.

    The law says “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration,” but goes on to say “The term ‘valuable consideration’ does not include reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.” So legally, no “valuable consideration” was given in exchange for the tissue.

    The DVD counter-example isn’t exactly like the PP situation in every way. But in the way that matters to your argument – “if cash is given for item, then it’s a sale” – it’s sufficient to show that your definition of “sale” is not correct.

  13. 13
    Pete Patriot says:

    The DVD counter-example isn’t exactly like the PP situation in every way. But in the way that matters to your argument – “if cash is given for item, then it’s a sale” – it’s sufficient to show that your definition of “sale” is not correct.

    My definition?

    the exchange of a commodity for money

    : the exchange of goods, services, or property for money.

    . The exchange of goods or services for an amount of money or its equivalent

    an act of exchanging something for money

  14. 14
    Grace Annam says:

    If you enter into a deal where you get cash and someone else gets fetal tissue, then surely the transaction has all the elements of a sale?

    But if the cash is covering my expenses, then in the end, I don’t get cash. The people who are charging me for whatever expenses I incurred get cash, in return for the services they have provided.

    A few weeks ago, a friend of mine heard that a member of my family needed a small tablet computer. He had one which he was no longer using, and he offered to give it to my family member, if my family member covered shipping. The family member sent my friend the cost of shipping, and one day later the computer arrived, by ground shipper. My friend had mailed it as soon as he heard it was wanted. My friend’s cash balance was never positive, in this transaction. He shipped it, which put him in the hole to the extent of that cost, and my family member filled the hole back in. The only point of the cash changing hands was to motivate the shipper to move the widget from point A to point B. The fact that the widget’s ownership changed had nothing to do with the transport method; it was a gift, or donation.

    Grace

  15. 15
    Grace Annam says:

    Notice, by the way, that my entire response in #13, and the argument it addresses, is beside the point. Because in #5, you said

    The pro-lifers aren’t dishonest…

    They filmed something, and then altered the film so that it seemed to show something else, and then represented it as accurate. That’s a textbook example of dishonesty. Even if they were right, this evidence is laughably bad, to the point that it casts doubt on everything else they might do and all other evidence they might present, because, demonstrably, they have no qualms about altering evidence to make it look like it proves something which in fact it doesn’t. The fact that they advanced it as the smoking gun suggests that it’s their strongest evidence, which discredits their whole argument.

    Moving on,

    Pete Patriot:

    …not for any reason that anyone’s given, just because liberal programming compels you…

    Whereas you, being presumptively free of programming, apparently act like an asshole in this manner entirely of your own volition.

    All it does is spoil what could be an interesting discussion. I strongly doubt that anyone has ever said to you, “Pete, your reasoning was pretty lousy, but you’ve convinced me. You know how? Your sarcasm. That just won me over completely.”

    So, you do you, but if your objective is not “show my ass in public” then I’m at a loss to explain what your objective is when you trot out stuff like that.

    Pete Patriot:

    This is clearly why PP stopped doing it, because the finessed justification stinks.

    Alternatively, perhaps they did a cost/benefit analysis: “This practice, while it is legal and ethically correct, has been successfully weaponized by people who want to shut us down. We can spend $X arguing with them publicly, or we can spend $Y covering the cost of the program and move on to other things. Oh, look. Y is less expensive than X. Let’s do Y.”

    Grace

  16. 16
    Harlequin says:

    If you enter into a deal where you get cash and someone else gets fetal tissue, then surely the transaction has all the elements of a sale?

    There’s nothing here you’ve said that’s specific to fetal tissue donation for research, as opposed to other kinds of organ or tissue donation. I don’t know your feelings on those topics, of course, but I suspect most Americans don’t have trouble with the fact that some money changes hands (usually from insurance to hospitals, sometimes from charitable foundations to hospitals) in the course of organ harvest and transplantation to cover the costs of e.g. surgery or tissue transportation.

  17. 17
    Fibi says:

    I normally stay out of any conversations about the PP tapes because of the concerns Amp and Grace raised above — I just don’t like weighing in with any argument that boils down to “fake but accurate.” I don’t like the tapes. That said, it’s not clear to me that the donation programs stayed faithfully on the “donation” side of the sale/donation line (which can be blurry).

    Copyleft (#8), Amp (#10), and Grace (#14) all have made comparisons to shipping charges. The problem with this analogy is that both donors and recipeints agree that the $30-100 reimbursement is for more than shipping; as Amp quoted the law above:

    “The term ‘valuable consideration’ does not include reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.”

    Implantation, processing, preservation, quality control and storage are all more akin to a handling charge than a shipping charge. So, a more apt analogy would be if Amp asked someone to pay not just shipping but also a handling charge. In that case we would need to determine whether the handling charge was “reasonable” or whether it was inflated to allow Amp to profit without showing a profit on the books.

    Again, quoting Amp:

    There are a few ways we can look at a transaction to see if it was a sale. One is to ask, do the people involved think it was a sale? Another is to ask, did the person allegedly selling actually make any profit from the transaction? Neither of these are ironclad, but if the answer to both is “no” then that’s a pretty strong indication that we’re looking at something other than a sale.

    I agree that asking whether the participants view the transaction as a sale can be a useful starting place and Amp has quoted two directors of biorepositories in comment #4 stating that they believe that the charges simply allow cost recovery. However, I think it’s fair to take these claims with a grain of salt since both the donors and recipients could face legal consequences if the transactions were deemed to be sales.

    To me the biggest red flag is the variability in reimbursement. It’s certainly possible that the costs associated with “transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage” of some tissues are three times higher than the same costs for other tissues. I would have liked for a journalist to ask these tough questions of the directors of biorepositories. As I said, it’s possible there’s an answer, but until someone offers an alternative explanation it looks like supply and demand.

    So, while Amp asked the question:

    I recently said “okay” to someone who wanted some comics I was giving away, but he wasn’t in town, so he offered to pay for shipping. Did I actually sell those comics?

    I would ask:
    If Amp puts a widget on Alas that allows anyone to get a free comic provided they pay shipping and handling; and the handling charge varies from $10-$30 dollars depending on which comic you asked for; is he in the market of selling comics?

  18. 18
    Lee1 says:

    I agree that asking whether the participants view the transaction as a sale can be a useful starting place and Amp has quoted two directors of biorepositories in comment #4 stating that they believe that the charges simply allow cost recovery. However, I think it’s fair to take these claims with a grain of salt since both the donors and recipients could face legal consequences if the transactions were deemed to be sales.

    If you follow his link there are multiple other experts who agree that it’s extremely unlikely PP is making a profit at $30-100. And there was no mention in the article of any of them having been part of transactions with PP; if that’s the case, it seems like a pretty big stretch to say they’re not being honest because of fear of legal consequences.
    I can also tell you personally as a professional biologist who stores and ships various types of (non-human) animal tissue as part of my research, taking into account all of the expenses associated with acquisition, storage, QC, avoidance of contamination, shipping, etc., that price range is completely reasonable. And I’m sure with human tissue it’s even more expensive due to the additional regulations involved.

    To me the biggest red flag is the variability in reimbursement. It’s certainly possible that the costs associated with “transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage” of some tissues are three times higher than the same costs for other tissues.

    It’s not just “certainly possible,” it’s demonstrably true that costs for storage/processing of different tissues, including the amount of processing/QC needed based on the intended downstream use, can vary widely. Again, I don’t work with human samples, but I can assure you that the costs associated with dried blood, fresh/frozen blood, skeletal muscle, heart muscle, fecal material, etc. vary quite a bit. I’m not sure what different tissues were being considered here, but I have no doubt that there’s a lot of cost variation for brain tissue vs. liver tissue vs. kidney tissue, etc.

  19. 19
    kate says:

    Are any of you going to even going to try and defend your position? You’re literally just assuming it’s a donation (not for any reason that anyone’s given, just because liberal programming compels you), the only logic here is “It’s a donation, because we say it’s a donation”.

    There have been at least four state level invstigations which have exonerated Planned Parenthood as well:

    Completed probes in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, and South Dakota have spent thousands in taxpayer money but turned up no evidence that Planned Parenthood is trafficking in the sale of fetal tissue.

    Lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana, and South Dakota aren’t particularly known for their “liberal programming”. This is what convinced me that there was nothing there.

  20. 20
    Sebastian H says:

    I haven’t investigated the issue well enough to provide real opinions, but I’m on the internet so here goes.

    More seriously, the stuff that Fibi raises definitely complicates the issue, especially as in some cases contractors (definitely in ongoing relationships with PP) were used for various portions of the transaction, and they were definitely getting paid at some sort of ‘for profit’ level which is then back translated into “necessary charges” from Planned Parenthood’s accounting.

    I would analogize figuring it out to transfer pricing problems with in and out of country subsidiaries. Lots of them are totally legit, lots of them aren’t. Do you really need to pay the doctor extra? How much extra? How much of it is absorbed in numbers, how much is really individual per fetus?

    We understand perfectly well in corporate conglomerates that the disturbing part is what counts as legal in moving all that money around. The same is true of pro-lifers and this issue. (Which is to say they aren’t as transparently misguided as you seem to suggest. Except the people who actually faked footage or faked the editing. They are frauds).

  21. 21
    Mandolin says:

    Is a similar level of concern being displayed toward transactions involved with the medical transfer or donation of other tissues?

  22. 22
    Eytan Zweig says:

    I’m finding it hard to be swayed by arguments that amount to “There were many transactions, and I don’t understand every aspect of every one of them, so there simply must be something illegitimate going on”.

    Essentially, it seems to me that Fibi and Sebastian H mostly determined that guilt is plausible based on lack of evidence (“I don’t know everything that happened, therefore something must be up”). That’s not how guilt works.

  23. 23
    Harlequin says:

    Sebastian H:

    The same is true of pro-lifers and this issue. (Which is to say they aren’t as transparently misguided as you seem to suggest. Except the people who actually faked footage or faked the editing. They are frauds).

    I mean, I’m sure they sincerely feel that there’s something wrong here. But if you look at their actions, it’s clear that their discomfort with reimbursement for the costs of fetal tissue donation is less important, in the aggregate, than their hatred of Planned Parenthood. After all, given limited political capital, they didn’t try to make all tissue donation illegal (or reimbursement for its costs illegal), even though PP isn’t the only place that provides this service, and as you note wasn’t the only organization involved in these transactions even when they took part. (EDIT: Or rather, some people did, but they didn’t get nearly as much traction as the anti-PP folks.) The people upset by the videos went after PP instead. Or, to follow on Mandolin’s question, a similar level of concern isn’t even being displayed towards transactions involving fetal tissue, if PP isn’t one of the organizations involved. (There is certainly some. But the response was not, and is not, nearly as large.)

  24. 24
    Sebastian H says:

    “Or, to follow on Mandolin’s question, a similar level of concern isn’t even being displayed towards transactions involving fetal tissue, if PP isn’t one of the organizations involved. ”

    Look, people get unfairly worked up about genetically modified foods for no good reason. People get unfairly worked up about vaccines for no good reason. People freak out about Monsanto both when it does bad AND when it does good because they are suspicious about it based on the bad it does. People go ape shit about Israel/Palestine when they haven’t talked about China/Tibet in decades or Turkey/Cyprus ever.

    It is perfectly appropriate to point out that the pro-lifers who are concerned about this are unfairly concerned. It isn’t appropriate to make it sound like unfair concern is something that only a certain disfavored class of people do. If you don’t trust an organization, and they do things that on the face of it look a little bit shady, you are skeptical of people who want to hand wave it away. Being biased for your side and against your enemies is what people do. We have to fight it make good decisions.

    How skeptical you are is based largely on your prior ideological commitments, not how bad it actually looks. In this case the self-dealing looks on the face to be maybe a bit shady. Maybe it turns out you really do have to pay the doctor contractors that much extra.

    [to be clear, I’m saying the cartoon is fine, while the commentary drift isn’t]

  25. 25
    Ampersand says:

    I’m curious; for those who are saying that accusing Planned Parenthood of selling fetuses for profit is warranted (even if you’re willing to admit that the videos were dishonest), what sort of evidence would it take for you to say that such accusations are not warranted?

  26. 26
    Ampersand says:

    Also, one foundation of the anti-Planned Parenthood case is that sometimes people claim to be doing something on a pretext, even when they’re really doing something else. (I.e., “Planned Parenthood is claiming to be donating fetal tissue and only accepting money to cover expenses, but actually they’re selling fetal tissue for profit.”)

    I don’t think that’s a fair statement about Planned Parenthood, for the reasons stated by many people in this thread – but the idea that sometimes people do things on a pretext while actually doing something else, is fair. Sometimes people do that. As I’m sure everyone here agrees.

    That being the case, let’s consider that these accusations – which were initially based on videos that were clearly fraudulent – might themselves be a pretext. If – say – a smart GOP senator or governor – someone who is educated and has a research staff available to look into the issue – is still claiming that PP is selling fetal tissue for profit, and is unwilling to accept any evidence to the contrary, and is using that claim to legally harass Planned Parenthood or to argue for cutting funding – then I think it’s fair for us to consider that his or her concern about fetal tissue sales is just a pretext, and their actual goal is to harm Planned Parenthood.

  27. 27
    Mandolin says:

    Sebastian, is your argument that there are many pro-life rank and file folks who are engaging the information in an incorrect but good faith way?

    Sure. Probably.

  28. 28
    Harlequin says:

    It isn’t appropriate to make it sound like unfair concern is something that only a certain disfavored class of people do.

    If this was directed at me, I didn’t mean to imply that it was–indeed, I’m familiar with the kind of pattern I was describing from seeing it from all kinds of folks, those I agree with and those I don’t.

  29. 29
    Charles S says:

    Sebastian,

    While many people may be engaging with this issue in an incorrect but good faith manner, nothing about what you are doing here looks good faith to me. You are making an argument from ignorance when you really have no excuse for doing that (yes, you declare your ignorance, but even if your only engagement with the subject is this thread (in which case, even if this is the internet, you should engage with a little humility), even here you have been provided with clear pointers to extensive evidence disproving your non-argument). Arguments from ignorance are a pretty shitty form of bloviation in the best of cases, and this isn’t the best of cases.

    People were murdered on the basis of these videos. Have some fucking respect. Have some fucking decency. Don’t give us Devil’s Advocate bullshit arguments from ignorance and then follow it up with tut-tutting complaints about how both sides do it. Honestly, I’ve read your comments here and on several other blogs for years, and I would expect better of you than this.

  30. 30
    Sebastian H says:

    Saying that I was arguing from ignorance was a joke. I know they don’t always come off so well in the internet.

    I’m not actually making a devil’s advocate argument. I’m arguing against the view which I perceived to be that something was especially wrong with pro-life people for looking at something that is a little funny about an organization they distrust as if that might be a sign that they are up to something. It may be that I perceived something that wasn’t there–that everyone understands that the anti-GMO people do similar things, or that some of the Israel/Palestine people (on both sides) do similar things.

    Here’s the way it could be shady–I speak from experience about how large organizations and especially not-for-profit organizations work with contractors and how they sometimes finesse expenses and how it sometimes feels shady.

    Not-for-profit organizations often still end up enriching all sorts of people. The NFL was not-for-profit for decades. Very often a not-for-profit will pay a contractor to do something. Very often that person will be closely related to the local chapter of the not-for-profit. Often times that payment will have a notional value–you could set it at many possible values and it would be tough to prove if it were high or low. I saw it recently in a local community theater, where the director essentially got all of the money that passed through the company. From an accounting perspective, if your non-profit charges more money, but pays a contractor all of it, they aren’t making a ‘profit’ on the transaction. But if it is going to a quasi-insider (or a real insider) then in many respects the transaction still ends up being shady if they are charging a lot and calling it ‘profitable’ isn’t ridiculous even though the not-for-profit company notionally doesn’t have a profit on it.

  31. 31
    kate says:

    That being the case, let’s consider that these accusations – which were initially based on videos that were clearly fraudulent – might themselves be a pretext. If – say – a smart GOP senator or governor – someone who is educated and has a research staff available to look into the issue – is still claiming that PP is selling fetal tissue for profit, and is unwilling to accept any evidence to the contrary, and is using that claim to legally harass Planned Parenthood or to argue for cutting funding – then I think it’s fair for us to consider that his or her concern about fetal tissue sales is just a pretext, and their actual goal is to harm Planned Parenthood.

    I don’t think it is about Planned Parenthood, per se, but about abortion writ large. These interviews were doctored to try to make abortion providers look like cartoon villians. Planned Parenthood is just the largest target available.
    I’d like to boost Harlequin’s point @21, none of these people seem to be concerned about similar practices which are common with other types of tissue and organ donation.
    And, seriously, THREE Republican majority state legistaltures (at least, me @19) have been unable to make any charges stick against Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is clearly not breaking the law in these cases. To the best of my knowledge, no investigations have led to findings of wrongdoing on the part of Planned Parenthood.

  32. 32
    Lee1 says:

    @ Sebastian H 30

    Often times that payment will have a notional value–you could set it at many possible values and it would be tough to prove if it were high or low.

    I don’t understand why you seem to be ignoring the fact that (at least from what I’ve read) pretty much every person with some legitimate expertise in this area is saying they were almost certainly operating at a loss at the $30-$100 rate, not making a profit. Tissue storage, processing, QC, transportation, etc. is an expensive process.
    Do you have any evidence to the contrary that makes you think these transactions were “shady”? (And not just “sometimes non-profits make a profit so I’m suspicious of PP,” but specific evidence regarding these specific transactions.)

  33. 33
    JutGory says:

    I detest PP. From its inception to the present day, it is a horrible organization, even if it may do some good things. I hate that it is supported with public dollars, just as I dislike all crony capitalism.

    That being said, they really can’t help the predicament they are in (if they want to continue trafficking in fetal body parts).

    They may be allowed to recover costs, but I suspect those costs are not based upon discrete examples.

    For instance, they have to pay a Tech to obtain the specimens. Let’s say that she gets paid $20.00 per hour. Let’s say that it takes a minimum of 15 minutes to deal with any fetus (prep time). Then, it takes 5 minutes to obtain each specimen (see, even here I fudged it because it is perfectly reasonable that some specimens would take more time to harvest than others).

    Now, here comes the high school math problem:
    Fetus 1 only yields a brain;
    Fetus 2 yields a brain and two kidneys;
    Fetus 3 yields a brain, a kidney, a liver, two lungs and a heart.
    How much does each brain cost?

    So far, the brain of Fetus 1 costs $6.66; the brain of Fetus 2 costs $3.33; the brain of Fetus 3 costs $2.50. The 15 minute prep ($5.00) gets spread out over the number of specimens obtained.

    Now, if I am in the market for fetal brain tissue, I want the brain of Fetus 3. If Fetus 3’s brain has been sold, I want Fetus 1’s or Fetus 2’s brain at the Fetus 3 price.

    That is not even counting delivery costs. Brains may cost more to ship than muscle or bone specimens.

    And, it is cheaper to ship the specimen across town than across the country.

    And, if you want more than one specimen, shipping becomes cheaper on a per specimen basis.

    And, if Tech 2 obtains the specimens, well, he is a man, so he gets paid 23 cents more on every dollar than Tech 1 gets paid (he is making $24.60/hour).

    So, if you sell me a Tech 2 Fetus brain, I want it at a Tech 1 price.

    So, what is PP going to do? Is it going to price out every single specimen to determine the “actual” cost? Is it going to let Fetus 1’s brain deteriorate because it was too expensive to harvest, leading to a wasted resources on Fetus 1. Or, will it drop the cost in order to move it?

    No. It will likely average its costs over a large number of fetuses. $30.00 per specimen. $50.00 per specimen. Whatever. They will lose on some and they will gain on others. It’s not entirely arbitrary because they know what their shipping costs generally are and how much they pay Tech 1 and Tech 2. But it’s not entirely accurate, either. But, on the average, they don’t want to lose money, even if their goal is not to make money. But, they probably make money off it, even if their goal is to break even.

    PP is really in a no-win scenario here.

    So, are they “selling” body parts? Last summer, I moved. I kept getting mail from the former occupant. I called him and he picked up the mail. He said he was moving out of state. He asked me to forward any additional mail to him and he gave me $10.00 for postage. I sent him one envelope full of mail. I think it cost $1.37. Did I sell him his mail? No. Did I profit off of the transaction? I guess so.

    -Jut

  34. 34
    Charles S says:

    No. It will likely average its costs over a large number of fetuses. $30.00 per specimen. $50.00 per specimen. Whatever. They will lose on some and they will gain on others. It’s not entirely arbitrary because they know what their shipping costs generally are and how much they pay Tech 1 and Tech 2. But it’s not entirely accurate, either. But, on the average, they don’t want to lose money, even if their goal is not to make money. But, they probably make money off it, even if their goal is to break even.

    Nope, they set their estimated cost below their actual cost and accept that they are only recovering a fraction of their costs. Actually, now they set their charged cost at $0 and accept that they are not recovering any of their charged cost. Both parts of that are well known, and pretty obvious even if they weren’t well known. If it is a crime to charge a price higher than my costs, and there are lots of people who hate my organization, then I take a loss on the activity to ensure I’m not over-charging. I’m running a contribution supported non-profit, so taking a loss on a very small part of my activities is not a serious problem.

    All of that is pretty obvious, but, since you hate the organization, you make up reasons to imagine that they are engaged in petty malfeasance on top of the monstrous evil you believe them to engage in.

  35. 35
    Charles S says:

    Sebastian,

    Okay, so you actually know that PP has been extensively investigated and that there is no evidence that they engage in corrupt over-payment of contractors, but on the basis that it is possible for a non-profit to do that (and on the basis of nothing else involved in this discussion), you are going on at length about how it is conceivably possible that PP does that.

    I am shocked to discover that it is possible for a corporation (profit or non-profit) to secretly enrich its management’s cronies, against the stated purpose of the organization. Shocked! However, you explaining that this is a possible action for an organization to take tells me absolutely nothing about what PP does.

    I understand what the original fraudsters were doing. They produced a dishonest piece of propaganda that got a lot of media attention to PP’s involvement in performing abortions, inciting one of their fellow forced-birthers to go out and murder 3 people. Job well done!

    I have no idea what you and fibi and JutGory think you are doing by trying to baselessly impute petty malfeasance to Planned Parenthood. You three think they are evil for performing abortions (and maybe Jut Gory thinks they are evil for providing family planning and contraception, I don’t know), but someone on your side falsely accused them of petty malfeasance, so now you feel compelled to defend that accusation, even though it is a proven fraud? Why not just move on/back to accusing them of being baby killers? Sticking with the debunked accusations of petty malfeasance seems unlikely to get any more people murdered, so why bother keeping at it?

  36. 36
    JutGory says:

    Charles S @34:

    All of that is pretty obvious, but, since you hate the organization, you make up reasons to imagine that they are engaged in petty malfeasance on top of the monstrous evil you believe them to engage in.

    Nope. I emphasized my dislike of the organization before I explained they were in a no-win situation because “actual” costs is probably not something you can calculate accurately. I also said that they probably were not really “selling” body parts, as alleged, even if they were making money off it. (And, yes, they have changed their practice not to recover costs since this came out, but we weren’t really talking about that.)

    You see, my sympathy is in spite of my distaste for them. But, you can infer whatever you want about petty malfeasance. It is probably because you disagree with me that you make such an inference.

    (See, I can play the ad hominem game too.)

    -Jut

  37. 37
    Jake Squid says:

    It really isn’t that difficult to figure out your costs. You may not know the exact cost for this particular sample of fetal tissue but you do know your average cost per sample. It isn’t nearly as complicated as you make it out to be. If it were that difficult no business could know their costs.

    I feel sure that PP knows their costs.

  38. 38
    Sebastian H says:

    Charles S, you are confusing explanation with defense.

    I can explain why people are drawn to Trump without defending him or them.

    I can explain why fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist vegans act out of public self aggrandizing righteousness in ways that undercut their ability to appeal to people who don’t already agree with them without defending them.

    I can explain how anti-GMO people and anti-vaxxers are drawn to the politics of purity and a dramatic misunderstanding of statistics without defending them.

    My problem with the first few comments on this thread was that they seemed to be casting the pro-life suspicion of PP as surprisingly weird or surprisingly anti-rational. In fact it is perfectly explicable and totally normal on all sides to mistrust organizations or public figures you have ideological prior dislike for and to over-trust organizations or public figures you are ideologically aligned with.

    Now that trait is indeed BAD. But it is perfectly normal, not at all shocking, and not at all some characteristic that is overrepresented in pro-life people.

  39. 39
    Harlequin says:

    My problem with the first few comments on this thread was that they seemed to be casting the pro-life suspicion of PP as surprisingly weird or surprisingly anti-rational.

    Could you point to the specific comments that made you think so? The first one I see really addressing motivations was mine @23, which I didn’t specify was an analysis you could make of any group because I thought that was a given, as I already explained. Then there’s Amp’s @26, which was turning back a claim a number of people had already made about PP onto anti-PP folks–you can hardly claim that’s unfairly targeting pro-life people. Most of the stuff about people’s motivations after that is coming in as specific responses to your comments; everything before that is more in the vein of “producing counterevidence to the anti-PP claims” and not “implying that anti-PP folks are especially irrational”, AFAICT. But I’m happy to admit my bias is with PP, so I might be missing something?

  40. 40
    Sebastian H says:

    The slippage of David Daleiden (did you know his name?) into Pro-Life Journalism starts in the cartoon but is arguably ok in cartoon format (where you need explanatory shorthand). It seems to be extended into just any old pro-lifers after that. This is made worse by Pete’s sarcasm (sorry people sort of on my side,=–glare) and the responses to it (Grace at 15 for example). About the same time there is repeated expression of mystification about why pro-lifers could even initially think there was anything wrong. So I described the way in which people get things wrong based on associative fallacies. This was apparently interpreted as a defense of faking evidence, which I don’t agree with at all, and apologize for not being clear enough about.

    The conclusion of my argument was meant to be “We understand perfectly well in corporate conglomerates that the disturbing part is what counts as legal in moving all that money around. The same is true of pro-lifers and this issue. (Which is to say they aren’t as transparently misguided as you seem to suggest. Except the people who actually faked footage or faked the editing. They are frauds).”

    The response to that from Mandolin was the curt enough to be misunderstood “Is a similar level of concern being displayed toward transactions involved with the medical transfer or donation of other tissues?”

    Which misses the point I thought I was making regarding motivated reasoning which I then try to expand on. (Which to be fair you seemed to get at the beginning of 23 but then decide that you don’t by the end of the comment).

    So then I try to make really clear in 24 that I’m not defending the conclusions but am rather explaining them by calling them “unfair concerns”. I then try to explain how people come to them. Which apparently didn’t convince Charles who suggests in multiple comments that I’m defending them in bad faith and that they don’t deserve a defense, because they are very nasty people. (‘they’ again very poorly defined)

    Harlequin later suggested that she didn’t mean her comments to be understood as critiquing just pro-lifers.

    Interestingly to me I just realized my own cognitive bias, which I will share and if you find it boring I apologize.

    When reading comments sections I usually read everything from where I last read to the end before commenting. (To see how things developed and to see if the points I want to make have already been made and because I don’t switch from reading mode to writing mode easily.) So for example I read 25-29 before responding and all of 1-19 before writing 20 even though 20 is largely a response to the first 6 or so comments. So it is very possible that I let the development of further comments color my understanding of the thread even when I specifically quote something earlier (which was written before they saw how the thread would develop). And for all I know it may not be 100% person specific (which isn’t fair, but is human).

  41. 41
    Lee1 says:

    @ Sebastian H 40

    The conclusion of my argument was meant to be “We understand perfectly well in corporate conglomerates that the disturbing part is what counts as legal in moving all that money around. The same is true of pro-lifers and this issue.

    You still haven’t answered the question that I (@32) and others have asked – do you have some knowledge or direct experience that leads you to believe PP was making money off this, even though every person (again, at least that I’ve seen) has said it was probably a loss for them? If so, would you be willing to share it? Because while you say

    I’m not defending the conclusions but am rather explaining them by calling them “unfair concerns”

    you’ve repeatedly called the transactions “shady,” which makes it sound like you consider them fair concerns.

  42. 42
    Sebastian H says:

    The transactions are through contractors, many of whom work for PP in other capacities. That kind of double dipping inherently has shady aspects and is a great method of hiding payments, though also super prevalent in non profits of all kinds. My direct knowledge is in the structure of non-profits and the tricky ways that things can look (and often be) bad.

    I’m using shady to mean something like “ethically gray” not “obviously terrible”.

  43. 43
    Lee1 says:

    @ Sebastian H 42
    That sounds to me basically like what I said above, “sometimes non-profits make a profit so I’m suspicious of PP,” and if that’s your position fair enough. I’ve just seen no direct evidence to support claims of profit making related to these fetal tissues and was wondering if you knew of any. I don’t have any experience dealing with non-profit finances, and clearly you do. But at least from my point of view I’d want to see a little more before I call a non-profit or its transactions “shady.”