The Center for Medical Progress has now released two shocking videos exposing the ghoulish personalities that haunt the halls of America’s primary abortion provider. More disturbing footage is apparently on the way. As Planned Parenthood gears up for a colossal fight, we’re likely to hear some plaintive whimpering from the Left about “harassment” and the mean, low-down tactics of “anti-choice” zealots.
‘Heavy Editing’ and Other Spurious Charges
Expect to see a lot of complaints these next few weeks about “heavy editing,” as though every news agency in the world doesn’t engage in “heavy editing” every time they cover a story. (Ever watched “Sports Center”? Talk about heavy editing!) We’ll likely see more complaints about the various ways in which the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) misrepresented itself, possibly even to the Internal Revenue Service. (Because clearly, the IRS is 100 percent trustworthy and politically unbiased. It would be totally safe to reveal to them that you are a pro-life organization running an undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood.) If CMP reporter David Daleiden ever mistreated a classmate or ran a stop sign, you’re sure to hear about it.
I start giggling whenever I see words like “ethics” or “dignity” in a Planned Parenthood Federation of America statement. It’s like watching Miley Cyrus give a lecture on sartorial propriety. Still, let’s not pretend otherwise: this is trench warfare. Planned Parenthood obviously knows that, because they’ve been fighting dirty for a long time. But pro-lifers aren’t pulling their punches, either, and CMP’s tactics do raise certain moral questions (although not because their videos are edited). It is a kind of domestic espionage, and while spies can sometimes do great things, there are moral hazards attendant on that kind of large-scale deception.
Also, the liberal critics are right. We are celebrating. The kind of celebrating you do when you’re on the trail of a serial killer, and you discover where the bodies are buried.
Is that metaphor overdrawn? Not by much. Planned Parenthood is an evil organization. Its founder was racist and sympathetic to eugenics. It has a history of lawlessness and concealing evidence of sexual abuse and exploitation. Most importantly, it specializes in snuffing out human lives. Its (considerable) profit margins depend on women availing themselves of its child-killing services. Its business, quite literally, is death. Those are the facts.
Pro-lifers know these things, so we aren’t surprised to find nasty people within its walls. An industry that feeds on suffering and death will inevitably attract some sociopaths. Nice, normal people don’t typically choose to make a living by crushing babies and haggling over their organs.
Butchering Babies Is Worse than ‘Gross’
Of course, we should not celebrate the existence of horrible people. But it is permissible to celebrate their exposure, because bad people often need to be exposed before they can be stopped. Planned Parenthood will go on crying about mood and tactics, but hopefully Americans will recognize these diversionary tactics for what they are. The indignant charge, “Wait, you read my email?” doesn’t buy much sympathy when your inbox was full of steamy messages from your mistress. It’s the same here. They’re busted, and they know it.
What’s most important is the way in which they’re busted. Liberal outlets will try to focus exclusively on legal and financial details, and there will be more bickering on these fronts. But you don’t need an accountant to confirm the most significant discovery. These people are monsters. Planned Parenthood is a refuge for the sort of people who chat about the “crunchiest” way to kill a baby while they enjoy their lunch. Worse, this isn’t just some nasty, private fetish. Your tax dollars are paying them to do this! Everyone cool with that?
The most introspective pro-choice response I have seen to this whole affair is in this curious essay by Ana Marie Cox, in which she acknowledges that the footage of the Nucatola interview is unsettling, and not just (as Amanda Marcotte has suggested) because the procedure itself is “gross.” Nucatola, Cox agrees, shows a callousness that is genuinely bothersome, but…
Wait, was there a “but”? She seemed to imply that there would be, but I read Cox’s essay twice and couldn’t find a rejoinder to her near-admission that Nucatola is morally depraved. Her “but,” apparently, is just that abortion is a necessary evil. If the industry ends up providing a comfortable existence to vampiric figures like Nucatola and Gatter, that is simply the price we must pay.
Planned Parenthood’s Unnecessary Evils
That may make sense to a committed pro-choicer like Cox. How many Americans agree? Might this be a good time to address the fact that taxpayers are helping to fund practices (like late-term abortion) that a majority don’t even think should be legal?
In fact, many questions concerning abortion deserve to be re-examined. Does a permissive abortion regime actually help to protect women’s health? Does abortion really diminish instances of child abuse and neglect? Is any group of people better off for these kinds of practices, apart from the ones who would like to swap baby organs for luxury cars?
We now have decades’ worth of data to consider in answering these questions, and younger generations (who missed the pre-Roe abortion debate) may want to hear the truth. But the first truth is that taxpayers shouldn’t be funding this kind of depravity. Planned Parenthood is deeply corrupt, and morally repugnant. It’s time to cut that cord.
