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The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) could face a host of legal problems from states with laws around the surreptitious recording of conversations, BuzzFeed News reports. The CMP first made headlines in July after it released secretly-recorded footage of employees of Planned Parenthood and StemExpress, a biomedical tissue firm, casually discussing the costs of transferring fetal tissue to a (fake) third party.
The upcoming court battles are the latest development in the saga, which has in the last eight weeks spawned legal, ethical, and political debates over the practice of undercover investigations, the sale and donation of fetal tissue for research, and the federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Above all, the issue has reignited the nationwide debate over abortion – though what it has actually contributed remains unclear.
Many have commented on the casual tone used by Planned Parenthood employees to discuss fetus parts. “Some number of persuadable people who haven’t thought deeply about the subject will realize that doctors are sometimes killing something with a liver, and perhaps start to think of the unborn as possessing livers rather than just clumps of cells,” writes The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf.
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At the same time, abortion rights supporters are using the controversy to reiterate how shutting down abortion providers also keeps women from accessing health services, and sometimes forces them down dangerous paths.
Read full, original post: How the Planned Parenthood controversy affects the abortion debate
