Fox News' Shannon Bream falsely suggested that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of fetal tissue, based on a misrepresented figure sourced from the website of a separate, for-profit middleman that occasionally interacts with some Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Following the release of the latest undercover video by the anti-abortion Center for Medical Process -- which again falsely accuses Planned Parenthood of illegally profiting from the sale of fetal tissue for medical research -- Bream reported on the July 28 edition of America's Newsroom that while Planned Parenthood "says it has never made a profit" on the legal tissue donations, "there are things that raise questions."

As evidence, she pointed to the website of a company called StemExpress, which "does business with Planned Parenthood affiliates," where "you will see pricing for a fetal liver, in some cases, at over $24,000 for a single item":

BREAM: The undercover video show Planned Parenthood affiliated doctors quoting potential pricing at $30-$100 perspecimen. But you go online to the ordering system here for StemExpress, one of the companies that reportedly does business with Planned Parenthood affiliates. You will see pricing for a fetal liver, in some cases, at over $24,000 for a single item.

But The New York Times explained that while for-profit companies like StemExpress often act as middlemen between the non-profit Planned Parenthood and medical researchers, Planned Parenthood itself only receives "small fees" to cover expenses:

Those companies pay small fees, usually $100 or less a specimen, to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, who say they charge only what they need to cover their expenses. The companies then process the tissue and sell it to researchers for higher prices that reflect the processing.

 [...]

"These cells are hard to isolate," Ms. Dyer said. "These are hard processes, expensive processes that take millions of dollars of equipment. Just to attempt to do some of these isolations can cost us thousands of dollars, and it may not even work."

The figure cited by Bream -- "$24,000 for one item" -- is actually the cost to medical researchers, according to the StemExpress website, of "a vial containing five million frozen fetal liver CD133+ stem cells." Planned Parenthood isn't paying, or receiving, that amount of money.

The Center for Medical Progress has previously released two other heavily and deceptively edited videos targeting Planned Parenthood. The group is affiliated with discredited and violent anti-abortion activists.

Back in 2006, Rush Limbaugh responded to an ad that actor Michael J. Fox had made, in which he endorsed Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill over her support for embryonic stem cell research, by accusing him of "exaggerating the effects of [Parkinson's] disease." Limbaugh also claimed "either he didn't take his medication or he's acting," mimicked Fox's tremors, and falsely accused the actor of doing ads only for Democrats. Limbaugh later apologized -- then suggested Fox had deliberately taken too much medication to induce the tremors displayed in the ad.

Limbaugh waded back into that controversy again on his May 24 radio show -- this time by getting Fox's latest remarks wrong and minimizing his own role in attacking Fox in 2006.

Limbaugh cited an article at the anti-abortion website LifeNews to claim that Fox, in Limbaugh's words, "is admitting that stem cells -- nothing to him. Right here, I have it, LifeNews.com, Michael J. Fox admits embryonic stem cells likely will not cure him." Limbaugh insisted that this proves his earlier claim that embryonic stem cell research "was not even about curing Parkinson's or Alzheimers" but "a way to promote abortion."

In fact, not only did Fox not specifically reference embryonic stem cell research in his recent comments -- adult stem cells are a different avenue of research -- but he didn't say that there was "nothing" to it. Fox said that stem cell research is "part of a broad portfolio of things that we look at," other avenues of research have become "as much or more promising," and that he's "glad" to have promoted stem cell research in the face of those who tried to shut it down for "ideological reasons."

From Charles Krauthammer's March 13 Washington Post column, titled "Obama's 'Science' Fiction":

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

From Cal Thomas' March 13 Washington Times column, titled "Journey to Destruction":

What will constrain science? The president says it will be up to the National Institutes of Health to come up with "guidelines" for the use of embryonic stem cells. He specifically came out against creating embryos for the purpose of human cloning. But the question is this, if there are to be no moral, ethical or religious restraints on the initial experiments, why should anyone expect them to be invoked later? One can only be a virgin once. After a moral or ethical line has been erased, it is nearly impossible to redraw it.

At the extreme, unrestrained science has the capacity to produce a Josef Mengele. The Third Reich "scientist" and doctor was given the green light to do whatever he wished with Jews, twins, the physically deformed, the mentally challenged - all in the name of "science" and progress. We are repulsed by the horrors he created in his "scientific" laboratory, to which many of the German people turned a blind eye, mostly because they had been conditioned to do so by nonstop propaganda, which convinced them that some lives were less valuable than others.

We have been warned by history, in novels like Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and on TV news, of what can happen when government operates outside a moral code established to protect us from its penchant to be excessive. Unfortunately, government in recent years has sometimes engaged in a type of moral freelancing, embracing a mushy morality in order to serve purposes that are sometimes immoral.

Removing restraints on stem cell research is another step on a journey leading us to a distant somewhere. Does anyone know the destination? Do enough people care that it might just be leading us not only to the destruction of more pre-born human life, but also ultimately to our own end?