Right-Wing Media Compared Abortion Providers To Nazis

Bill O'Reilly On Planned Parenthood's Fetal Tissue Donation: “Many People Feel This Is Nazi Stuff.” During the July 30 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Republican presidential Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) to compare fetal tissue donation from abortions to so-called “Nazi stuff,” adding “this is what they did in the Third Reich with these experiments.” O'Reilly also falsely stated that Planned Parenthood was “selling” the donated fetal tissue. From The O'Reilly Factor (emphasis added):

BILL O'REILLY (HOST): The body parts we were talking about in the video we showed -- 18 weeks, 18 weeks, ok. That's what they're harvesting. These babies or fetuses -- depending on your belief system -- are developed to the point where you can get these body parts, but of course, you have to kill the baby in a way, and this is what we have heard as well, it's an industry. It's like, ok here's how we're going to kill it so we can harvest it.

Now many people feel this is Nazi stuff. This is what they did in the Third Reich with these experiments. Would you go that far?

CHRIS CHRISTIE: Listen, it's disgusting. It's disgusting, it's unacceptable. And I think to most common sense Americans in this country, no matter where you are, by the way, on the choice issue -- I'm pro-life -- but no matter where you are I think you look at something like this and say, this is not the kind of thing we want happening in our country.

O'REILLY: All right. And the excuse, of course, is to be fair to Planned Parenthood said we're selling them to research and all of this so that diseases can be combatted. [Media Matters, 7/30/15]

Fox's Sean Hannity: Planned Parenthood Officials Sound Like “High Ranking Official[s] In The Nazi Regime.” On the July 16 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show, Hannity argued that the secretly recorded conversations with Planned Parenthood officials in the Center for Medical Progress' videos sounded like “the things you'd expect to hear from a high-ranking official in the Nazi regime.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/16/15]

Rush Limbaugh Compared Fetal Tissue Donation For Medical Research To Nazi Germany, “We As A Country Went To War” To Stop It. On The July 21 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh equated the medical services of Planned Parenthood to Nazi Germany:

RUSH LIMBAUGH: They're advocating pregnant women to go and have their babies' body parts harvested

[...]

We as a country went to war to stop another country that was in effect doing things like this. It was World War II and it was Adolf Hitler and the Germans. We have not become that. We may have pockets of our perverted, sick culture that have become that. But it's not who we are. It's not who the majority of the country is. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 7/21/15]

RedState: Planned Parenthood Is “Our Auschwitz.” A July 29 RedState blog post claimed that the Center for Medical Progress videos demonstrate that Planned Parenthood is “our Auschwitz.” Writing that Planned Parenthood is “outpacing” the Nazis, the post claimed that for the organization “extinction is not enough. They want to make money off the slaughter.” [Media Matters, 7/29/15]

Breitbart News Compared Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards To Hitler. Breitbart News, in an August 24 article featured the Planned Parenthood logo in the shape of a Nazi swastika and stated, “Planned Parenthood has since 1970 performed 7 million abortions, comfortably surpassing Hitler.” Breitbart News also wrote that the organization's president, Cecile Richards, “is well on her way to personally matching Hitler's body count.” [Media Matters, 8/24/15]

The Blaze Columnist Compared Planned Parenthood To A “For-Profit Concentration Camp.” Matt Walsh, writing at Glenn Beck's news website, The Blaze, likened Planned Parenthood to a “for-profit concentration camp,” writing “the similarities between the Nazis and the abortion industry run even deeper, as the former were also known to chop their victims up and sell parts of them for profit” (emphasis added):

But I suppose our perpetual “shock” at Planned Parenthood is kind of like the viewer who watches a documentary about Auschwitz and comes away calling it “eye opening.” In one sense it is, but in another, it ought not be. This was a place where Nazis murdered human beings in bulk. That's why the concentration camps existed, to exterminate people. What do you think it's going to look like? Once you understand what they did, how can you be additionally shocked by the peripheral details? They gassed women and children and burned their naked bodies like heaps of garbage. Why would you be “shocked” to find out that, in the meantime, they also tormented and starved them?

And that's how it is with abortion clinics. Each one is a for-profit concentration camp, and together it took them less than half a century to murder 50 million human beings. In fact, the similarities between the Nazis and the abortion industry run even deeper, as the former were also known to chop their victims up and sell parts of them for profit. [The Blaze, 7/14/15]

IA Radio Host Simon Conway's Misleading Anti-Planned Parenthood Campaign Includes Nazi Comparison. Simon Conway, an Iowa conservative radio host who frequently hosts Republican presidential candidates, compared what Planned Parenthood is falsely accused of doing with how the Nazis treated Jewish people during World War II during a conversation with then Republican presidential candidate Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA). From the September 8 edition of the Simon Conway Show (emphasis added):

BOBBY JINDAL (R-LA): Maybe we should investigate this woman who's eating her salad, drinking her wine while she talks about -- and let's be honest, they are science deniers. They want to say specimens and fetal tissue. They don't want to say the words 'babies' they don't want to describe she's actually talking about dismembering babies.

SIMON CONWAY: The reason is exactly the same reason the Nazis got away with what they got away with in World War II -- they dehumanize. Jews weren't actually human, okay? They weren't completely human, so it was okay to do what they were doing. You know speaking as a Jew who has very little family for -- hmm I wonder why? So you know, I'm a Jew and that's what they did. They dehumanized Jewish people.

What Planned Parenthood is doing is they're dehumanizing babies. They're not babies. These are just a collection of cells, so it's perfectly okay to rip a baby out of a mother and then try and sell its parts. It's perfectly okay because it's not really a human being. [WHO Radio, Simon Conway Show, 9/8/15]

Right-Wing Media Figures Invoke Nazi's Notorious Medical Experimentation While Discussing Fetal Tissue Donation

Limbaugh Compared Tissue Donation For Scientific Research To Nazi Doctor's Human Experimentation. On the July 15 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh invoked notorious Nazi physician Dr. Josef Mengele, who specialized in deadly human experimentation on prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp, to claim that fetal tissue donations have not contributed to medical research. Limbaugh said, “We have a procedure called abortion and now people have found another way to make money off of it and to cover it up it's being called scientific research. Medicine. It's insulting because that's not at all what is going on.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 7/15/15]

RedState Compared Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards To Dr. Josef Mengele. In a post illustrated with twin images of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, RedState's Steve Berman wrote “abortion is as evil as genocide. Planned Parenthood is as evil as the Nazis in the way they defend it”:

Abortion is as evil as genocide. Planned Parenthood is as evil as the Nazis in the way they defend it. And the picture at the top of this post features Dr. Josef Mengele, who experimented on Jewish twins, dwarfs and other children “in the name of science” along with Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who donates body parts of aborted babies “for medical research.”

The experiments Mengele did were perfectly legal under German law, because the Jews he used were subhuman. The babies Richards uses for her medical research are perfectly legal as long as Planned Parenthood makes no profit, because the unborn are subhuman. [RedState, 7/21/15]

Fox's Erick Erickson: “Cecile Richards Is The Closest We Have Come In America To Josef Mengele.” On July 21, Fox News contributor Erick Erickson compared Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards to Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele:

Resolved: Cecile Richards is the closest we have come in America to Josef Mengele.

-- Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 22, 2015

[Twitter.com, 7/21/15]

Media Have Called Out Misleading CMP Videos And Multiple State Investigations Have Cleared Planned Parenthood Of Any Illegal Activity

Media Outlets Have Criticized CMP's Videos For Showing “Nothing Illegal” And Taking Planned Parenthood Staff “Grossly Out Of Context.” Multiple media outlets, including The New York Times¸ The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and The Daily Beast, have condemned the release by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress (CMP) of deceptively-edited videos purporting to show illegal organ harvesting and trafficking by Planned Parenthood affiliates. After the first video appeared, FactCheck.org debunked CMP's claim that Planned Parenthood was “selling aborted baby parts,” and detailed the ways in which the allegation was inaccurate and unfounded. The videos have been condemned for taking Planned Parenthood personnel's words “grossly out of context” and for showing “nothing illegal.” The New York Times' editorial board wrote the videos were part of a “campaign of deception” and said those who use the videos for political purposes care “nothing about the truth.” [Media Matters,7/15/15; 7/21/15; 7/22/15]

Growing List Of Planned Parenthood Investigations Clear Organization Of Any Wrongdoing. The deceptively-edited and secretly-recorded videos released by CMP have spurred at least 11 states to launch investigations into Planned Parenthood's operations. Seven states -- Massachusetts, Indiana, South Dakota, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Washington -- and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have all announced that they found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood or known violations of federal fetal tissue laws. [Media Matters, 8/24/15]