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(Bloomberg Politics) — Carly Fiorina’s challenge to Hillary Clinton and President Obama is itself being challenged.
Planned Parenthood accused the Hewlett-Packard CEO of “lying” when she described the contents of an undercover video during the second Republican debate.

“There is no polite way to say this: Carly Fiorina is lying,” Planned Parenthood spokesman Eric Ferrero wrote in a statement on Wednesday. “There is no video showing anything like what she claims. It’s just totally false, no matter how many times she repeats it.”

During the Sept. 16 debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., Fiorina gave an impassioned account of the undercover videos that have led some conservatives in Congress to seek a government shutdown unless it defunds Planned Parenthood.

“As regards [to] Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, it’s heart beating, it’s legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,” Fiorina said.

Almost immediately, however, fact-checking groups and journalists began refuting Fiorina’s assertions of what the videos contained. The Tampa Bay Times’ Politifact, for instance, noted that none of the 10 videos released so far by the Center for Medical Progress actually contained the scene described by Fiorina.

The videos, which amount to at least a dozen hours, are produced by the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress. They primarily show people posing as tissue brokers and talking with Planned Parenthood employees about procuring fetal tissue for medical research.

Fiorina’s claim makes it sound like there is actual footage of Planned Parenthood examining an aborted fetus whose heart is still beating, while someone says “we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” There isn’t.
Yet, when confronted with the videos’ selective editing and absence of the scene Fiorina described on the Sunday talk show circuit, Fiorina doubled-down on her claims about what they contained.

“Do you acknowledge what every fact-checker has found, that as horrific as that scene is, it was only described on the video by someone who claimed to have seen it?” Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Fiorina. “There is no actual footage of the incident that you just mentioned.”

“No, I don’t accept that at all,” Fiorina responded. “I’ve seen the footage. And I find it amazing, actually, that all these supposed fact-checkers in the mainstream media claim this doesn’t exist. They’re trying to attack the authenticity of the videotape.”
CARLY for America, the super-PAC supporting Fiorina kept the controversy rolling last week when it released an ad that employs footage of a Pennsylvania woman’s stillborn son interspersed with the candidates debate challenge, leading Planned Parenthood to send her a letter.

“Simply put, the video you described at the debate does not exist, and the video you’re now asking people to watch is not what you claim it is,” Dawn Laguens, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, wrote Wednesday. “This fraudulent video is beneath a serious candidate for the presidency, and you should take it down immediately.”
Conservative critics, however, disagree. Writing at the conservative outlet National Review, Jonah Goldberg concedes that the scene recounted by Fiorina is not found on any of the videos. Then he argues that critics are missing the larger point.
“Fiorina’s critics want to claim that because she didn’t take into account these distinctions, she’s just making stuff up,” Goldberg wrote. “To this end they’ve become Jesuitical nitpickers, muddying the water to conceal the fact that late- term abortions offend the conscience when discussed or displayed with anything like journalistic accuracy.”

To contact the author of this story: David Knowles in San Francisco at dknowles9@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mike Nizza at mnizza3@bloomberg.net