Kristina Karamo, the Trump-backed GOP candidate for Michigan secretary of state, once expressed support in 2020 for one of QAnon’s most outlandish conspiracies: that elites drink the blood of children and ‘sell baby body parts’ after abortions.Yes, the bit about harvesting the blood of children for their adrenochrome is a conspiracy theory that arose after the election of Donald Trump. But the idea that evil abortionists make a killing off "baby body parts"? That goes back to era just before Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, as does the phrase "baby body parts."
VICE News obtained an audio recording of Karamo’s appearance on a QAnon podcast called Redpill News just weeks after the 2020 election ...
“If you go to the Satanic temple website, they have an entire five-minute video explaining why abortion is a religious ritual,” Karamo said in the interview.... “They literally say that it is a sacrifice, it is a religious ritual for them to have an abortion, it is sick. And as you mentioned, the baby body parts... they sell the organs. There’s a ton of money involved in freshly harvested organs. There’s so much evidence out there.”
This is one of QAnon’s most extreme beliefs, that members of the global elite traffic children in order to harvest a chemical from their blood that they use to live longer.
In the summer of 2015, a group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress began releasing hidden camera videos purporting to demonstrate that the organs of aborted fetuses were being sold at a fat profit. As The New York Times reported at the time, the key video
shows a doctor from Planned Parenthood, over a lunch with red wine, answering questions from two people off-camera posing as potential purchasers of tissue from aborted fetuses. The doctor discusses with them, sometimes flippantly, the body parts most in demand.This is legal:
While the video ... alleges that Planned Parenthood is guilty of the crime of selling fetal remains, the official tells her questioners more than once that the cost, $30 to $100, is reimbursement for clinics’ expenses.
“This is not something with any revenue stream that affiliates are looking at,” the official, Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, says in the video. “This is a way to offer patients the services they want and do good for the medical community and still maintain access.”
Federal law prohibits the sale of human organs and tissue for transplantation. The law is widely considered a total ban on the sale of all body parts, although it does not specifically address the conveyance of parts for medical education and research.This is tissue used in research. No one's getting rich off it (or getting off on it).
When these videos were released, much of the right began memeifying the Center for Medical Progress propaganda campaign by repeating the phrase "baby body parts."
#PlannedParenthood knows they're wrong to profit from the sale of baby body parts. We must continue to push to defund the organization.
— Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) October 13, 2015
O'Reilly on the shooting at PPFA: Planned Parenthood "is in the baby body parts business" https://t.co/ysxSqnC3TB pic.twitter.com/Myc5TOKr6a
— Media Matters (@mmfa) December 1, 2015
We're in the United States of America & THIS is what we're protecting? An abortion business that harvests baby body parts? #JayLive #ProLife
— Jay Sekulow (@JaySekulow) October 27, 2015
Pres Obama now bears moral responsibility for sending tax $ to a group that has engaged in selling baby body parts. https://t.co/HOczmDADeM
— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) December 4, 2015
Will you JOIN ME in praying that the truth comes out at 10AM when Cecile Richards testifies about the #PP baby body parts for sale scandal?
— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) September 29, 2015
Should Planned Parenthood return the taxpayer money is used for the sale of baby body parts? One lawsuit says yes. https://t.co/aa3waf5Xu8
— Heritage Action (@Heritage_Action) November 27, 2015
The phrase and variations on it were frequently heard early in the campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination:
On the presidential campaign trail, ... Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas ... was among the first last summer to demand an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s “sale and transfer of aborted body parts.” Of his rivals, Carly Fiorina has assailed the “harvesting of baby parts,” including — falsely — a live fetus’ brain, while Mike Huckabee has said Planned Parenthood is “selling baby’s body parts like the parts of a Buick.”Then in November 2015, a gunman shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, killing three and injuring nine. Baby body parts were on his mind:
Robert Lewis Dear, a North Carolina native who was living in a trailer in Colorado, made statements to police Friday at the scene of the Colorado Springs clinic and in interviews that law enforcement sources described as rantings.So the use of the phrase isn't QAnon crackpottery -- it's garden-variety Republicanism.
In one statement, made after the suspect was taken in for questioning, Dear said "no more baby parts" in reference to Planned Parenthood, two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case told NBC News.
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