“I lied through my teeth,” Ron Fitzsimmons said, describing his November, 1995, appearance on Nightline. This man, who served as the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, now admits that he knew his remarks were not true when he said that partial-birth abortions were performed only when the mother or baby were in serious danger.
Fitzsimmons’ confession evoked a media convulsion.
Speaking for journalists, columnist Ellen Goodman predicted the howl that quickly rose as a chorus from a host of irate reporters. “Boy,” she chafed on behalf of her colleagues, “we do hate being lied to!”
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen got stung by the misinformation Fitzsimmons spread for his abortionist employers. Accepting their lies as facts, Cohen wrote a column strongly defending partial-birth abortion. Now, realizing he was duped, he has recanted.
After Fitzsimmons ’fessed up that he lied, U.S. News called his bombshell admissions “the first crack in the wall.” Columnist John Leo catalogued a litany of lies shamelessly affirmed by pro-abortion activists during hot congressional hearings on the issue.
Leo quoted Kate Michelman of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. When two doctors told Congress that many late-term abortions were done on healthy mothers with healthy fetuses with minor defects such as cleft palates, Michelman insisted, “It’s not only a myth, it’s a lie.”
Now we know who was lying.
Planned Parenthood’s national leaders parroted the lies, Leo says, testifying that partial birth abortion “is extremely rare and done only in cases when the woman’s life is in danger or in cases of extreme fetal abnormality.”
Then Ron Fitzsimmons spilled the beans, telling the misused media and the shocked world that he and his associates knew from Day #1 that they were lying when they said late-term abortions were rare and restricted to cases of severe abnormality.
Tell a lie often enough loudly enough and people will begin to believe it and repeat it as truth. Even good people. So it was that across our nation men and women with good hearts (including many reporters with proven ability) were duped into spreading and defending “facts” the abortionist leaders knew all along to be untrue.