Where does abortion go from here?

Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 7/17/15

Download

With respect to politics, public policy and societal attitudes, the thing about which always to be concerned is not so much, “Where are we?,” but rather, “Where are we headed? If we continue down this path, where will it lead?”

As an example, conservative opposition in the 1960s to the expansion of welfare didn’t spring from a lack of compassion for the poor. It sprang from a concern that expanding welfare would have the perverse effect of entrenching poverty. With one in five Americans now receiving government assistance, that concern has proved well-founded.

With respect to abortion, among the concerns expressed in 1973 in the wake of Roe v. Wade was the question, “If we reduce abortion to just another elective medical procedure, where will it lead?”

This week, we got an answer to that question in the form of a video. The video was secretly recorded at an ostensible business lunch by individuals posing as buyers for a biologics company. In the video, Planned Parenthood’s Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, talks candidly and graphically about the harvesting and selling of fetal body parts while she munches on salad and sips a glass of wine.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of abortions. Dr. Nucatolo supervises the physicians that perform abortions and she herself performs abortions.

Giving every possible benefit of every possible doubt to Dr. Nucatolo and Planned Parenthood, I find the video damning. It is hard to come to any conclusion other than Planned Parenthood is engaged in the trafficking of fetal body parts in violation of federal law. Besides that, it’s just awful to listen to. The callousness is appalling. It’s sad but true that if Dr. Nucatolo were talking about dogs or cats or pigs or monkeys – instead of unborn babies – the national outrage would be deafening.

(A link to the excerpted video is here. The full video may be seen here.)

This story tells us that Roe v. Wade did indeed lead somewhere. It led to abortion on an industrial scale. In a generation, abortion has gone from something discussed in whispers to something discussed for monetary gain over a routine business lunch.

Strong, principled and widespread belief to the contrary notwithstanding, a reasonable person might argue that a small cluster of undifferentiated cells that appear shortly after fertilization are of no more significance than a mole or a lesion that one wouldn’t hesitate to have removed. But if you believe at all that human life is a Divine gift, by the time those cells have differentiated to the point of producing harvestable human organs, has not the Divine spark been struck?

No matter upon which side of the pro-choice – pro-life divide one stands, in light of this video, and in light of the fact that no one in 1973 could have imagined the conversation that takes place in it, it’s now appropriate to ask, “Where will this path we’ve gone down lead us next?”