Why we need to defund Planned Parenthood...now

It says something very positive about our culture that tens of thousands of people in at least 300 cities across 49 states (and six foreign countries) protested on August 22 at Planned Parenthood clinics in light of recent undercover videos that show staff and officials admitting to committing late-term abortions and then selling the babies for profit.

But it says something very different about our culture that, despite the horrifying revelations, plenty of people still defend Planned Parenthood and instead condemn the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) -- the medical ethics group responsible for exposing Planned Parenthood -- and others who seek to defund it. But on what grounds are supporters defending it?

Thanks to its catchy PR campaigns, Planned Parenthood has convinced many that without it, women would have severely reduced access to healthcare.

But it should be noted that Planned Parenthood’s “healthcare” primarily focuses on sexual/reproductive health only, like birth control, abortion and treatment of STD’s. In fact, none of Planned Parenthood’s approximately 700 US clinics even offers mammograms.

In contrast, there are about 9,000 taxpayer-funded community health center locations that do provide more comprehensive healthcare services, regardless of one’s ability to pay (Planned Parenthood charges for its services). In other words, without Planned Parenthood, women would still have accessible, completely affordable, and more complete healthcare than what Planned Parenthood offers.

But what supporters don’t want to admit is that Planned Parenthood, according to its own annual report, is the nation’s largest abortion provider, having performed 516,000 “averted unintended pregnancies” through abortifacients and 327,653 direct abortions in FY-2014. The latter is more than 30% of the reported 1.1 million abortions performed annually in the US, the most by any one organization.

Supporters also like to downplay the fact that we taxpayers annually fund Planned Parenthood, paying over $528 million to it in FY-2014 -- all while the organization regularly opposes any compassionate or common-sense law that would restrict or make abortion safer (such as the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act after 20 weeks in the womb, or requirements that minors seeking abortions get parental consent).

Planned Parenthood also vehemently opposed Texas’ attempts to require that doctors committing abortions have privileges at nearby hospitals – a law that would actually protect a woman if an abortion goes wrong and she needs emergency medical treatment -- and it celebrated California’s new law that allows non-physicians to do abortions. (Yet pro-lifers are the ones accused of wanting to return women to the back-alley.)

But, as many of us know, it gets incredibly worse.

The videos released so far by the Center for Medical Progress -- which have been edited for length but not for context as some try to claim (the full videos are available on CMP’s website) -- show not only the brutal reality of what Planned Parenthood is doing, but the callous indifference of those doing it.

From video confessions that intact babies fetch higher fees and joking about buying a Lamborghini with the profits, to harvesting one baby’s organs while his heart was still beating, the videos are as extremely difficult to watch as the descriptions of them are to read.

But as Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life says, “America won’t reject abortion until America sees abortion.” It’s time that everyone see it. The innocents caught in the crosshairs of today’s culture of death have suffered long enough.

As ghastly as these videos are, though, there is perhaps one small silver lining that could change hearts: The abortionists themselves reveal the humanity of the unborn child. After all, when describing the market demand for their organs, it’s difficult to push Planned Parenthood’s claim that the pre-born child is “just a clump of cells.”

Maybe this is why President Barack Obama admitted he refuses to watch the videos, though he wasted no time attacking states that voted to defund Planned Parenthood while warning all other states not to follow suit.

Other defenders say the medical research being done with these babies outweighs any moral implication. But unlike adults who can consent to donating their body for future research, these voiceless human beings cannot.

Also, let’s not forget that no scientific discovery, no matter how great, in fact no desired good whatsoever, justifies one act of evil. Yet for Planned Parenthood -- with almost 45% of its annual revenue from taxpayers and $90 million in profit according to its latest annual report – moral issues don’t seem to be the concern.

Despite what the videos plainly show, however, supporters continue to claim that Planned Parenthood is all about helping women, and that the entire scandal is merely an attack on women.

Rabid Planned Parenthood supporter, Hillary Clinton, for example, admitted she found the videos “disturbing”, but who did she condemn? The “three men” in New Hampshire who voted to defund Planned Parenthood. “It’s appalling that three men…of the Executive Council would deny women the healthcare they need and deserve,” Hillary declared.

Knowing what we know about Planned Parenthood “healthcare”, apparently Hillary and other supporters are willing to overlook the human trafficking of babies as long as women can still get the birth control and abortions that Planned Parenthood depends on (in addition to taxpayer support) to stay in business – despite the documented physical and emotional harm these practices are causing women.

Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Boxer blasted not Planned Parenthood, but the Center for Medical Progress as an “extremist group”, and Nancy Pelosi called for an investigation of CMP, which she said was “trying to ensnare Planned Parenthood in a controversy that doesn’t exist.”

Doesn’t exist? Watch the videos. It’s time the blinders come off.

Isn’t it amazing and so very sad that when Cecil the Lion was killed by a trophy hunter in July, major news broadcasters spent more airtime covering it in one day than they did the Planned Parenthood monstrosity over the course of three weeks that same month (or since)?

It says something very pitiful about our culture that a hunted animal evokes more publicized outrage than does the selling of deceased babies. But as English writer G.K. Chesterton noted, in these modern times we have weakened major morals in favor of strengthening minor morals. Hence we see the elevation of animals over humans, and evil presented as good, while those exposing the evil are the ones publicly condemned.

As for Planned Parenthood, it’s not about compassion for women. It’s certainly not about compassion for innocent human life. It’s about passion for money. When it comes down to it, in fact, the question isn’t what would women do without Planned Parenthood. It’s what would Planned Parenthood do without women?

When the innocent offspring of used women are sold like inanimate commodities to the highest bidder, there simply is no defending it. If we want to reclaim our culture for good over evil, not only must Planned Parenthood be criminally investigated, but at the very least, not one more dime of our taxpayer money should be used to fund this grisly house of horror.

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