Anyone with an ounce of sense or knowledge would not have believed the preposterous claims against Planned Parenthood. Its destruction/delegitimizing/defunding is the Holy Grail of the American antiabortion movement.

In July, the first of several Center for Medical Progress videos was released. Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s senior director of medical services, Deborah Nucatola, was secretly videotaped as she ate lunch with people she believed to be executives from an Irvine human biologics company. They pretended to be seeking sources of fetal tissue for medical research.

In what was supposed to be some sort of “bombshell,” antiabortion crusaders claimed that Nucatola admitted harvesting aborted fetal parts, changing abortion procedures to accommodate the harvesting of aborted fetal parts, then illegally selling the aborted fetal parts to medical researchers.

I watched and rewatched the video. I read the transcript. Although Nucatola’s conversation may have been unsavory — who wants to talk about fetal body parts over salad? — I never believed for a moment that she was describing anything illegal or unethical.