The undercover videos about Planned Parenthood (PP) are generating a lot of angst for the average American. Many are unsettled and some are downright outraged. And why shouldn’t they be? It is unnerving to think that women’s ‘reproductive freedom’ has grown to the scale of industrialized trafficking in baby body parts. It is disturbing to realize that slick political slogans are really a cover for an Orwellian callousness that allows a PP doctor to not just hold down her lunch but actually discuss best practices for handling and selling ‘fetal remains,’ over salad and a glass of wine (see reverse).
The question that we are facing as a nation is not whether PP ought to be defunded, even as bandwagon politicians are now trumpeting this in their pursuit for reelection. The question with which the population is truly wrestling is this: “Is a preborn baby a person?” If the answer to that question is ‘no,’ then what’s the big deal? These bio-med companies apparently would be doing society a favor in their noble back-alley research. However, PP’s big biz fetal parts revenue stream would still beg the question as to why they need tax-payer money in the first place.
But, back to society’s question at hand: If the answer to the question about the personhood of the preborn baby is ‘yes,’ then talking about defunding PP borders on the ridiculous. In fact we should be talking about closing all abortion clinics (not just PP) and sending all abortionists to jail.
But thankfully PP’s benevolent pilfering actually serves to answer society’s question for us. If that baby boy is not valuable as a whole, what makes him valuable in his parts? He is only valuable in his parts because of what all of his parts signify-a human person. Even PP has dropped the ‘blob-of-tissue’ rhetoric. It’s just not specific enough when the research firms are looking to buy that not-so-proverbial pound of flesh at PP’s bio-med baby deli. The baby’s body parts are valuable for medical research specifically for the benefit of other humans who are, conveniently for them, categorized as persons under the law…for now anyway. And why? Precisely because these body parts are human. And since only humans are persons we must ask, “When did I become a person?” Was it when my mom decided that she was happy about being pregnant? Was it the mystical moment of my birth as the biologically superstitious Supreme Court seems to think? What is it exactly that qualifies me as a person protected under law? And who gets to decide anyway?
If a preborn baby complete with human liver, human heart, human hands, and a brain-filled human head is not a person what makes you or me one? And if a small group of power brokers called the Supreme Court can dictate who gets dignified with membership into this elite club of human personhood, can’t they also dictate who gets ‘undignified?’ Isn’t it true that the only difference between a newly fertilized zygote and us is maturity? A preborn boy or girl is just as fully human as we are. All that baby needs is food, water, and shelter – just like us. Our DNA does the rest. Take any one of those three things away and no one is ‘viable.’
These PP videos reveal America’s crisis of conscience. Either we are all equally human or equality is a sham. Either we all have inherent worth derived from God, not government, or we are all slaves to that government. What America does with abortion will be a lasting monument to what we believe about human meaning. Either we are all equally valuable (without qualification) or no one is. The first option leads up to life and liberty; the other, straight to tyranny and the killing of the lawfully dehumanized, compliments of our tax dollars. If it were up to me I’d choose the first option but then I am just a humble citizen of a “government…for the people and by the people”…for now.