Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste when it’s an opportunity to do things you had never considered or you didn’t think were possible.” There’s no better advice for Republicans when it comes to the recent scandal involving Planned Parenthood’s selling of aborted baby parts.
Since the release of several videos from the Center for Medical Progress showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing how they crush babies and harvest their parts, the abortion provider is definitely in crisis. It should be. It takes a lot of public-relations savvy to manage comments as horrific as, “Here’s the heart. My fingers will smoosh it if I try to pick it up. The heart is right there… A lot of times I’ll get a full torso, spine, kidneys. You could send the whole thing or pick that apart… It’s a baby,” or “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver… so I’m not going to crush that part. I’m basically going to crush below, I’m going to crush above and I’m going to see if I can get it all intact.”
In the latest video, an abortionist discusses harvesting organs from babies older than 16 weeks and coldly says, “If we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this. It’s all just a matter of line items.”
In response to the videos, Planned Parenthood hired a crisis management firm, the Democratic-aligned SKDKnickerbocker. But even they want to keep their distance from the abortion provider despite their business arrangement.
Planned Parenthood is definitely in crisis and, as Emanuel said, Republicans need to see this as an opportunity to make real change, to bring about lasting reform. That reform plan needs to have three parts: defund, develop, and de-legalize. Unless all three are accomplished, the Republican Party will have let this serious crisis go to waste.
Defund Planned Parenthood
Despite the Senate’s vote against the GOP bill to halt federal aid to Planned Parenthood, Republican leaders need to keep the effort going. Pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List clearly outlines why Planned Parenthood must be defunded: It’s an independently wealthy entity, it’s the largest abortion provider in America, its business model is centered on abortion, and it’s not safe for women and young girls.
More taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood equals more abortions and fewer adoption referrals, and women have other options for seeking primary care, contraception, sexually transmitted infection testing, and cancer screening. Contrary to their repeated claims, Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms and is not a significant primary-care provider to women.
Unlike other health centers, the Planned Parenthood makes enough money from butchering babies to pay its bills. Planned Parenthood of Houston alone brings in $120,000 a month from abortions and baby harvesting. Despite that, the abortion giant gets millions of dollars from the federal government every year. Why do we need to subsidize a ghoulish organization that can make it on its own?
Develop Local Health Centers
Just because Republicans don’t want to fund Planned Parenthood’s practices of chopping up babies and selling them doesn’t mean they don’t care about women. They do, and women can be better served in the many health centers across the nation that need the money being wasted on Planned Parenthood.
To begin with, community health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics ten to one. These are local organizations designed to meet local needs—birth control, cancer screenings, treatments for sexually transmitted diseases, etc. This is true for urban and rural communities. Community health centers operate in more than 8,000 locations and serve 23 million patients, “making up a substantial share of the nation’s primary care infrastructure. They provide one-quarter of all primary care visits for the nation’s low-income population and generate $24 billion in annual savings.”
If health centers are allowed to expand—and given the funds to do so—they will service even more patients with complex health problems. According to the National Association of Community Health Centers Inc., “Health center patients actually report better access to care than those served by other providers.” In addition, the Health Centers Program was rated one of the most effective federal programs by the Office of Management and Budget.
Money that is taken away from Planned Parenthood should be given to develop local community health centers where women—as well as men and children—can receive the quality care they need.
De-Legalize Abortion
A reform plan would not be complete unless we get to the root of the problem. Planned Parenthood wouldn’t be able to rip babies apart and sell their parts if abortion weren’t legal in the first place. We have videos of doctors talking about crushing, crunching, and chopping up living babies because of the simple fact that abortion is legal.
This is the primary horror. If you are shocked by the recent videos, by the declaration of “It’s a baby!” or “We have another boy!” as technicians separate hearts, kidneys, spines, and lungs, and you don’t consider the fact that the causal agent here is legal abortion, then you’re missing the point entirely. While it is offensive and illegal that Planned Parenthood might be making money off the sale of baby parts, this is nothing compared to the alarming fact that they’re killing babies in the first place. If all we do is defund Planned Parenthood, babies will still be butchered, and their legs, arms, brains, and livers will still be sold.
“BUT IT ISN’T A BABY!” Yes, we’ve heard it over and over again. Just the other day, while on Fox’s “The Five,” Greg Gutfeld was describing the horrors of combing through the parts of a baby’s body, when one of his co-hosts said, “Well, I don’t think it’s even a body.” Really? My challenge to deniers like her is, “If legs, arms, a head, heart, lungs, kidneys, genitalia, and a spine don’t make up a body, what the hell is it?” Don’t just say, “It’s not a body.” Tell us what it is. Just a mass? Just products of conception? That fact is, they can’t, because they can only deny the truth. They can assert no facts. They can only deflect. They can only dehumanize. They don’t want to accept the truth because to do so would make them monsters.
Abortion kills a human life—at all times in the development process. When a human egg and a human sperm unite, a zygote is created. The fertilized egg is the beginning of prenatal development. Cell division begins. Life, by its very definition, begins.
All living organisms have chemical uniqueness, complexity, reproduction, a genetic program, metabolism, development, and environmental reaction. This is the definition of life. The fertilized egg has each of these characteristics with its unique DNA, cell structure, cell reproduction, genetic code (with all the genetic information it will ever need), chemical reactions, changes in development, and environmental response.
The fertilized egg is life. To deny this would be to say it is non-life (there is no other choice). You can’t end non-life. It can’t be both. To assert this would be to embrace a logical contradiction.
But is it human life? A fertilized egg in a woman is formed by a human egg and a human sperm. The parts, the genetic material, that make up the zygote and the embryo, the fetus—the baby, from conception to birth—are human. All the genetic material of a person is there from the beginning, although that individual is not fully developed.
The fertilized egg, therefore, is human life. To deny this would be to say that the whole is somehow altogether different from the sum of its parts. This is illogical. This human life is also distinct from the mother, although it is dependent on her. They do not have the same DNA. The baby is not simply an appendage of the woman’s body but is a separate entity—another human being. And a human being—a human life—is a person. Humanity and personhood cannot be separated, because what does it mean to be human if not to be a person? To say a life is human but to deny personhood is nonsensical.
A Human’s Right to Life
In America, we believe human beings have rights. Their fundamental and primary right is their right to life. This is a point pro-abortionists who actually believe the baby is a human being need to remember. No matter how dependent they are on others, how weak, how vulnerable, they have the right not to be killed. Babies, before and after they are born, are completely dependent on an older person to care for them so they can thrive. They are unable to survive without care. Their dependence, however, does not make them less human. Our level of dependency does not determine our humanity or diminish our value. Neither does it negate our rights.
Legalized abortion denies the humanity of our children when they are most vulnerable. Most pro-abortionists consider the embryo in the womb to be something “other” than human life, yet they cannot tell us what it is. To all of you who champion abortion at any stage, what is it you’re ending in the act of abortion? Tell us. All you can say is “not human,” “not life,” “not a baby.” Or you rename it into something that has no real meaning: fetus, mass, blob, products of conception. These are just dehumanizing terms that still do not tell us what it is.
The only two questions that need to be answered to determine whether our laws should be changed are: “Is it life?” and “Is it human?” The answer to both is, clearly, yes. We have no right to take an innocent human life, not in the name of choice or in the name of privacy.
If you are not convinced by logic, then maybe your own eyes will convince you—if your heart is not hardened by prejudice and habitual denial. Here is a video of an abortion at 23 weeks. Watch it. I dare you. Here’s what happens at 10 to 12 weeks. At eight weeks, when most abortions are performed, the little babies have toes, fingers with fingerprints, a beating heart. Here’s a video showing these “products of conception” after they’ve been aborted. Watch if you still think this isn’t a human life. Tell us what it is. The hands look just like yours, only smaller. So do the little feet. The genetic makeup is human. It’s a human life. Abortion ends it.
The dirty little secret of the abortion industry is that most doctors know this to be true. Judith Arcana, a British abortionist, honestly said, “We should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend this is not happening.” In “Why I Am an Abortion Provider,” Dr. William F. Harrison says, “No one, neither the patient receiving the abortion, nor the person doing the abortion, is ever, at any time, unaware that they are ending a life.”
It’s time to end abortion once and for all. It’s time for our political leaders to make a stand instead of being bullied into silence. This isn’t just a woman’s issue, it’s not a mere social issue—this is a human rights issue. If we have no regard for human life, our own lives have no worth. Abortion has devalued us all.
Defund. Develop. De-Legalize. We can’t let this crisis go to waste.