Hillary Clinton defends Planned Parenthood amid video controversy

Hillary Clinton defended Planned Parenthood on Thursday amid fallout over a pair of videos showing top officials discussing the transfer of aborted organs and fetal tissue. 

“For more than a century, Planned Parenthood has provided essential services for women,” Clinton said in South Carolina.

“I think it is unfortunate that Planned Parenthood has been the object of such a concerted attack for so many years,” she added, according to multiple reports.

{mosads}“And it’s really an attack against a woman’s right to choose, to make the most personal, difficult decisions that any woman would face, based on her faith and the medical advice that she’s given.”

A secretly recorded video released early last week shows a top Planned Parenthood medical doctor discussing, between bites of salad and sips of wine, methods to preserve livers, lungs and “intact” hearts.

A second video released Tuesday shows another Planned Parenthood official apparently negotiating the price of fetal tissue for medical research, joking, “I want a Lamborghini.”

Clinton’s chief rival for the 2016 Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has called the “tone” of the first video “terribly wrong” while several Republican presidential candidates have called for investigations into the organization.

The Center for Medical Progress, the group that produced the videos, says the conversations recorded by those posing as biotech employees show Planned Parenthood illegally profiting off tissue donation.

Planned Parenthood has pushed back strongly, saying the videos were deceptively edited and that they instead show officials with the group discussing compensation for expenses, not for making a profit.

Democrats have called for a Justice Department investigation into the videos, and Republicans have called for the department to investigate whether laws were broken after the first video surfaced. 

Meanwhile, two GOP-led House committees have launched investigations into the organization.

“I don’t have all the facts, but Planned Parenthood has apologized for the insensitivity of the employee who was taped, and they will continue to answer questions from Congress and others,” Clinton said Thursday.