After today's debacle of a Planned Parenthood "investigative hearing," I suppose the forced birth zealots needed to rehabilitate themselves.

Here's how they did that. They released a stock video from the so-called Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a hardcore forced-birth advocacy organization. Clips from that video were spliced into videos released by David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress with narration overdubbed of someone claiming they saw something that wasn't on that stock video.

Time.com writer Michael Scherer triumphantly announced tonight that the entire 13-minute video was released showing what Carly says she saw. Congratulations to Time! They're now in the same league with Breitbart, who couldn't wait to saturate their headlines with this non-story. They have the full video, if anyone has the desire to see such a thing. I don't.

The full source video, which is extremely graphic, lasts about 13 minutes, and shows a fetus being extracted from the mother, placed in a metal bowl, prodded with medical instruments and handled by someone in the room. At times the fetus appears to move, and at other times it appears to have a pulse. There are no images on the full video of any attempt to harvest the brain of the fetus, and there is no sound. Cunningham said the jump cuts in the video are the result of the camera being turned off and on.

Well, if a forced-birth zealot says it's true, then we should just accept that as fact, right?

Wrong. But wait, it gets even worse.

Cunningham says he is confident the procedure was an abortion, and not a miscarriage, owing to the lack of medical treatment offered to the fetus. He said he estimated the age of the fetus at about 17 and a half weeks. “It is unimaginably more horrifying than the clip that we licensed for CMP to use and that Carly Fiorina made reference to in the debate,” Cunningham said.

Once again, I see what he did there. First, he offered his nonmedical opinion that the procedure was an abortion. And then he offered a second nonmedical opinion about the age of the fetus. And THEN, he admits that it's NOT THE SAME CLIP he licensed to Carly Fiorina.

This video is utterly irrelevant to Carly Fiorina's claims, and it has absolutely no relationship to Planned Parenthood. Even Cunningham had to admit that.

Cunningham, an anti-abortion activist, declined to identify the date, location or authors of the video in an interview with TIME Monday night, saying his group makes agreements of confidentiality in an effort to acquire images of abortions. He also made no claim that the images shown in the video had anything to do with Planned Parenthood, the organization that Fiorina and others have targeted for federal defunding. “I am neither confirming or denying the affiliation of the clinic who did this abortion,” Cunningham said.

Let's talk about Gregg Cunningham, and who funds him. He's a former intelligence officer. He's not a doctor, and he's not qualified to make the proclamations about the age of the fetus or what brought that fetus to be on the film (abortion or miscarriage).

A retired Air Force Reserve colonel and former Pennsylvania state representative, Cunningham founded the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform with the aim of spreading images of abortions and fetal remains, in an effort to shift the national debate. He said he worked as an intelligence officer at the Pentagon, where he learned the importance of using graphic images in wartime propaganda to establish popular sympathy for victims and anger at enemies.

So he admits to being a forced-birth propagandist, and yet that fact is buried down toward the bottom of the article, where many readers won't be bothered to

His so-called Center for Bio-Ethical Reform is funded by rich fracking forced birth zealot Farris Wilks, via his Thirteen Foundation.

Always remember this. Planned Parenthood provides health services -- including abortion -- to low income women. Targeting Planned Parenthood merely targets those people who have no other alternative to get the services they need.

It doesn't prevent abortion. It causes more. Rich women will always get abortions when they need them. It's only poor women who would be left to fend for themselves.

Bottom line with this story? It doesn't change the fact that Carly Fiorina lied, that she continues to lie, and that the purpose of her lie is to make people angry and hateful, fueled by propagandists' manipulations.

Update: Dr. Jenn Gunter, who actually is qualified to make the determination about whether this was an abortion or a miscarriage, explains why Cunningham is full of it.

Here are all the issues with the video from start to finish:

1. It is illegally and clandestinely shot. I feel very badly for the poor woman in question and wonder why Fiorina and our elected officials are not as outraged as I am about her violation and exploitation. I had second thoughts about watching it myself given the lack of consent from the woman, however, I felt if I could end the conversation about it faster by weighing in. Time magazine or Slate have links.
2. The prep of the patient. The physician (I’m assuming) pours surgical prep/cleaner on the woman’s perineum. We don’t do that anymore for spontaneous deliveries or for abortions that involve induction of labor. This tells me this video is at least 15 years old or from another country.
3. The delivery. It is a spontaneous delivery as the operator waits for the fetus to be expelled. This is what we do with a previable premature delivery. If this were shot mid way through a 2nd trimester abortion (meaning the Laminaria in the cervix, which are osmotic sticks that help the cervix dilate, had just been removed) it is highly unlikely the operator would have waited for a spontaneous expulsion.
4. The cord is clamped on the fetal side. If this were an abortion it would just be cut. Really. No one ever does this with an abortion as it serves no purpose.
5. Waiting for the placenta. The clamp is left on the placental end and at the end of the video the placenta still hasn’t delivered. If this were an abortion the placenta would be removed with suction immediately, no one would wait 11 minutes. Ever. Every abortion clinic has a suction machine.
6. There is no proof this video is in a Planned Parenthood clinic never mind in the United States. This could easily be an operating room.

Instead of wasting tax payer dollars over highly edited videos our government should be investigating who illegally taped this woman’s delivery. If Cunningham says he didn’t take the video then of course he also can’t be sure what was going on. He can’t have it both ways.