The videos, made clandestinely over a three-year period by an antiabortion group, are being released incrementally for sustained effect. It’s working. Planned Parenthood, faced with a renewed push for federal defunding (to the tune of a half-billion dollars), has begun a public relations campaign of its own. As of Friday, two ads had been released, each featuring a breast-cancer survivor who says she wouldn’t have survived without the health care she received from the organization.

It took three videos showing Planned Parenthood doctors and executives discussing the culling and retailing of aborted baby parts, but Hillary Clinton finally managed to say that she found the videos “disturbing.”

For a professional politician like Clinton, whose every word is vetted by the vast right lobe of her brain, “disturbing” in the vernacular of less-scripted folk would be something like “horrifying” or “vile.”

But Clinton, whose base includes supporters of Planned Parenthood, as well as the mega-fundraising, pro-choice Emily’s List, tiptoed out on a limb. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it brave, but I also wouldn’t underestimate its significance. Even a passionately pro-choice presidential candidate has to pause at this juncture.

A tipping point may have already been reached, however, as people recoil from that which cannot be denied. Where once many could avert our eyes from the details of abortion, the details are now all we see and, thanks to the videos, hear.

In this excerpt from a fourth video, released Thursday, Dr. Savita Ginde, medical director and vice president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains; Jess, a Planned Parenthood medical assistant; and two actors posing as fetal tissue buyers discuss a product of termination:

Jess: Head, arms, I don’t see any legs. Did you see the legs?

Ginde: I didn’t really look, but —

A buyer: Yeah, there it goes. Yup, you got all of them right there.

Jess: Another boy. Should I just put it . . .

Ginde: Yeah, just put it over here, I’ll wash it out. Yeah, so you guys staying the night or are you leaving?

Buyer: Leaving . . .

Ginde: Do you have a car?

Just another day in the baby parts biz. Just another boy.

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