(An unborn baby at 20 weeks / Photo Credit: WebMD)
By Brittany M. Hughes
Dr. Matthew Reeves, medical director for the National Abortion Federation (NAF), told a panel only a few months ago that he often encouraged obstetricians to wait to refer women for abortions until they were closer to 20 weeks into their pregnancy, because “you can see the fetal heart so much better.”
“Part of my job there was to read ultrasounds -- the other side of my career -- and we used to regularly encourage our referring obstetricians to send the patients closer to 20 weeks, because we could see the fetal heart so much better,” Reeves said during a Q&A segment at an April panel discussion by George Washington University Hospital called, “On the Offensive: Protecting Reproductive Choice against State and Federal Attacks.”
At the time, Reeves was responding to a question as to why women wait until 20 weeks into a pregnancy to have an abortion.
Given statements like these, perhaps it’s no wonder Reeves was part of NAF’s recent effort to slap a gag order on the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) to keep the pro-life advocacy group from releasing undercover videos taken at NAF’s secret annual meetings over the past couple of years.
According to the restraining order request (which has been temporarily granted by a U.S. District Court in California), Reeves is “convinced he was taped” by CMP founder David Daleiden via a hidden camera during NAF’s annual closed-door meeting – the dates and locations of which NAF “does not release publicly, NAF added.
The restraining order request states Reeves is “terribly concerned that he, too will be smeared and vilified by [CMP], and that his professional reputation will be trashed, and even he and his family’s safety will be placed in jeopardy.”
The videos from the NAF meetings have yet to be released pending a final decision by the court. However, videos and data collected by CMP in their undercover video sting have been subpoenaed by Congress, which has launched an official investigation into allegations that Planned Parenthood and its counterparts have been illegally selling aborted baby parts.