This week, a grand jury in Houston, Texas, not only cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing after it was accused of selling “baby parts” to an undercover anti-abortion activist group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress, but it also voted to indict two of the group’s founders for tampering with government documents and soliciting those hypothetical fetal organs.
As Late Night host Seth Meyers put it Tuesday night, this was the news story that initially had “Republicans more excited than your IT guy was about The Force Awakens.” This was especially true for GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, who has made the videos the primary focus of her flailing campaign and “stretched the truth the most” about what they allegedly contained.
“Carly Fiorina made these lies a huge part of her campaign. And even after they were repeatedly proven false, she doubled down on them,” Meyers said. “But hey, she took a gamble and that gamble paid off. If she hadn’t, she might not be polling as high as ninth place.”
Because of the “emotional” factors inherent in the abortion debate, Meyers had an alternative solution to defunding Planned Parenthood, as several GOP candidates have vowed to do: “I propose we defund planned bullshit.”
“You know, the bullshit where you edit tapes and make fake ID’s and you set up a make-believe company and you send a phony email trying to buy fetal tissue,” Meyers continued to applause from his audience, “just the bullshit you put work into, all for the purpose of defunding an organization that provides healthcare to over 650,000 women.”
In addition to the criminal indictment of the anti-abortion activists, Planned Parenthood recently filed a civil lawsuit that accuses the group of conspiracy and fraud.