Turns out those Planned Parenthood videos may not be so deceptive after all

BY CYNTHIA M. ALLEN,

From the looks of it, 2019 already is looking like a bad year for the pro-life cause.

The state of New York just passed a sweeping abortion bill, allowing for what is arguably infanticide — abortion until birth. The law’s passage was met with raucous applause in the statehouse; and to celebrate the macabre victory, the top of the Freedom Tower, where the World Trade Center once stood, was lit up in pink.

Not to be outdone by the Empire State, the Virginia legislature has been entertaining a similar bill — one that would allow for elective abortions up to 40 weeks gestation.

And while this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C., and around the country turned out a large and youthful crowd, the only real reporting on the event occurred after a group of Catholic high school students in attendance had a now infamous encounter with a Native American activist on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

In spite of the apparent ascendance of the pro-abortion left, the procedure’s largest and most conspicuous provider — Planned Parenthood — endured a rather substantial and woefully under-reported blow earlier this month, thanks in part to the relentless efforts of pro-life leaders in the state of Texas.

On Jan. 17, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the state’s right to terminate its Medicaid provider agreements with Planned Parenthood affiliates across the state, determining that a lower court had used the wrong legal standard in ruling that the state lacked the authority to expel the provider.

That’s a big deal, considering the millions of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements at stake.

Writing for the court, Judge Edith Jones didn’t mince words. She chastised the lower court for seeming to claim it possessed expertise in medical procedures superior to that of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s Office of the Inspector General, and for giving no deference to the OIG’s findings or authority.

… the Fifth Circuit had something to say about the [undercover] videos, too. It determined that the OIG’s investigation and review of the videos was thorough and, in an easily overlooked footnote, that an independent forensic review of the videos had determined that, in fact, they had not been doctored, as had been charged.

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