Fiorina clashes with Planned Parenthood supporters at Hawkeye tailgate

IOWA CITY - Planned Parenthood supporters interrupted Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina's tailgating event Saturday outside Kinnick Stadium, arguing that the candidate doesn't support women's rights and access to health care.

While Fiorina was spending a few hours before the University of Iowa football game greeting Hawkeye fans, she found herself surrounded by Planned Parenthood supporters in pink, blowing horns and chanting slogans such as 'fight, fight, fight for Iowa women's rights.”

'I think we're making a difference - that's my reaction,” Fiorina told reporters Saturday while greeting and taking photos with Hawkeye fans. 'I think (the protesters) are scared that the people of America are starting to look at what's really going on in Planned Parenthood clinics, and they can't deny what's going on, so they shout slogans instead.”

The protest follows comments Fiorina made in this month's GOP debate about videos recently released by an anti-abortion group. In the videos, Planned Parenthood officials appear to talk about selling the tissue and organs of aborted fetuses.

In response to the videos, Republican members of Congress have called for defunding Planned Parenthood. But the organization disputes the content of the videos, and the White House has called the footage 'fraudulent.”

Supporters of the organization also point out that Planned Parenthood provides vital services such as birth control, health exams and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

Fiorina has said she would support a government shutdown as a means to defund Planned Parenthood. In the Sept. 16 debate, Fiorina described the videos as showing 'a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

It was that statement that prompted Planned Parenthood supporters to rally against the former businesswoman Saturday.

Cindy Shireman, of Burlington, was one of about 50 protesting at Kinnick Stadium. A 40-year patient of a Planned Parenthood clinic, she said she's disappointed that Fiorina would make those statements.

'I think it's sad that as a woman, she has to resort to lies like the abortion agenda and the video in order to win a nomination,” she said. 'I feel that, as a woman, she should support women's health care rights. I felt disappointed.”

But Fiorina had a response for Shireman.

'I said, ‘You ought to do a little fact checking before you come out here and shout propaganda,' ” Fiorina said.