Cecile Richards claims Planned Parenthood has been the victim of ‘fake news’ — but is it true?

Last week, Cecile Richards made an appearance at Recode, a media and technology conference in California for an interview with Kate Swisher, the conference’s co-founder.

During that interview, Richards was asked about the impact that social media has had on Planned Parenthood. Richards was quick to play the victim card, claiming that Planned Parenthood has been a target of “fake news.” When asked to offer an example of “fake news,” she declined, saying she preferred to stay positive. She then changed the subject and began talking about the supposed strong public support for Planned Parenthood.

By “fake news,” Richards may be referring to the undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress showing Planned Parenthood officials and executives haggling over the price of aborted baby parts, joking about needing to hit the gym in order to perform dilation and evacuation abortions, and many other atrocities. A dilation and evacuation abortion is literally the ripping apart of a baby in the mother’s womb, explained in the video below by former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino:

2nd Trimester Surgical Abortion: Dilation and Evacuation (D & E)

Planned Parenthood has attempted to push back against the CMP videos, calling them “heavily edited.” But nothing could be further from the truth. As Live Action News previously noted:

… Planned Parenthood had hired Fusion GPS, a firm which the Weekly Standard pointed out is “an opposition research firm with ties to the Democratic party and has a history of harassing socially conservative Republican donors, possibly on behalf of the Obama campaign,” to analyze the videos. Fusion backed up Planned Parenthood’s claims that the videos were doctored – or did they? Politico actually admitted that the firm found the videos to be free of manipulation (despite their misleading headline) when they broke the story on Planned Parenthood’s paid ‘research’….

Forensic investigators from Coalfire Systems analyzed full footage from the CMP videos and found that what was left on the cutting room floor were bathroom breaks, travel time, and eating time.

Cecile Richards has also claimed the Center for Medical Progress is a well-funded effort. But according to the New York Times, the Center for Medical Progress had received only about $120,000 in donations in three years from less than fifteen “very resourceful, committed individuals” who “believed in the mission and wanted to see it done.” Compare that to Planned Parenthood’s last financial year in which they received $554.6 million through Government Health Services Reimbursements & Grants alone, with a combined revenue in excess of one billion.

Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins notes:

According to their own annual reports, prenatal services at Planned Parenthood have been cut in half since 2009 and cancer screenings have been slashed since 2006. From 2009 to 2013, Planned Parenthood’s adoption-to-abortion ratio is 209-to-1.

Richards has along history of spreading misinformation and outright lies about the nature of Planned Parenthood. She has claimed in the past that Planned Parenthood provides mammograms, but was forced under oath in 2015 to admit that in fact, that was not the case. She also claimed she had never stated that Planned Parenthood provided mammograms — another claim shown to be false in this Live Action video:

Planned Parenthood fact-checks Planned Parenthood on mammograms

Given her long history of using lies as talking points, its unsurprising that Richard’s latest claims about the nature of Planned Parenthood are untrue.

The truth is that through the federal funding of Planned Parenthood, taxpayers are actually paying for a business which commits more abortions and fewer healthcare services every year.