A Tipping Point for Life
Will the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) video campaign depicting wholesale trafficking in fetal body parts be the tipping point for the Planned Parenthood brand in America?
Merriam-Webster defines tipping point as “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place.”
Google makes it simpler: “the point at which a series of small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change.”
The pro-life movement has been telling the country about the iniquity of the abortion industry for almost half a century. Pro-life media, including the Human Life Review, have reported widely on federally funded Planned Parenthood’s dubious distinction as the country’s largest abortion provider.
For decades pro-life feminists have been arguing that women are ill-served by unrestricted access to abortion. For decades pro-lifers have been standing and praying outside of abortion clinics. Many babies have been saved—and many minds have been changed. Some abortion-clinic workers and abortionists have changed sides. A series of small changes or incidents. . .
For nearly a decade, LiveAction’s sting videos caught Planned Parenthood employees in incriminating actions such as accepting money for racist purposes; performing abortions for reasons of gender selection; harboring statutory rapists and helping customers avoid mandatory reporting requirements. But the Planned Parenthood brand remained untarnished.
Until now.
Since the CMP videos began appearing online in July (six more came out this week) Planned Parenthood has been in a defensive crouch.
Hundreds of demonstrations all around the country have taken place. Crisis pregnancy centers report a new type of client: abortion-minded women who have had second thoughts about going to Planned Parenthood. New pro-lifers can be found everywhere.
Three Congressional committees and fourteen states are investigating Planned Parenthood (some are also investigating CMP’s leader, David Daleiden). Next week, the annual Forty Days for Life fast and prayer vigils will begin—at 307 locations around the country, the largest ever.
A series of small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change . . .
Other things are changing too. The commentariat on both sides of the ideological spectrum deplore the rise of “Outsider Candidates.” But the public wants nobody else.
Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina demonstrate that the way to prevail as potential presidential candidates this election season is never to have held public office. The ultimate insiders, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, are falling like rocks in the polls.
Voters are no longer following the dynasties or the political establishment. And if the political establishment can be challenged, so can other ones . . . such as the Planned Parenthood establishment.
The abortion industry is very afraid. The National Abortion Federation (NAF)—the abortionists’ trade association—has thrown the legal kitchen sink at Daleiden: two lawsuits, one with 13 charges, including a RICO claim. Their goal is to gag him and to get his videos off the internet.
A Legal Defense Fund established for Daleiden has a $105,000 matching grant in play right now. Pro-life efforts rarely have the resources to do things on that scale. Practically every known pro-life organization is on board defending Daleiden. Such unity in the movement is rare. Something is changing.
On Tuesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed all of CMP’s unedited footage relating to fetal tissue. No matter what Planned Parenthood’s favorite appeals court decides, this pro-active move will ensure the videos remain accessible to Congress, which therefore can continue to conduct effective oversight. It shows that at least some Members are willing to engage this battle. Again, something is changing.
Every one of us should add with all our might to the series of small changes or incidents.
We can all talk to someone new every day about Planned Parenthood’s flagrantly illegal and inhumane practices and how these are sanctioned with millions of taxpayer dollars. We can all share the videos via our social media. Many of us can join local Forty Days vigils. For sure, there will be a wave of local news coverage of the prayer protests—and more people will learn the disturbing truth about Planned Parenthood.
Let no one fail to add personal effort now to help the country reach the point at which a series of small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change.
* * * *
Connie Marshner is a commentator and researcher on life and family issues in the Washington, D.C., area.
The only mistake anyone can make is to think they can do nothing. To communicate the outrage brought on Planned Parenthood by these explicit actions caught on film, each of us has a role to play.
We are our own media, as the main stream media has long protected Planned Parenthood. On facebook, in letters to the editor of local papers, in our conversations and in our churches we can share the irrefutable truth about Planned Parenthood. They have revealed themselves.
“Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak, is to speak. Not to act, is to act.” Bonhoeffer
Amen to that, Barbara! Indeed each and every one of us must. I heard from a friend the other day that she had opened the subject with her manicurist. The woman said nothing…but my friend planted the seed. We’ll never know, when that other woman got back to her immigrant family, what further conversations they may have had!
This is a spot-on assessment of the seismic shift that is happening in America right now—as people’s eyes are being opened to the human atrocities happening inside the abortion industry every day. The good news, articulated so powerfully by Connie Marshner in this article, is that each of us can do something about this crisis … to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.” Do everything YOU can to truly make this a tipping point!
Yes, peoples’ eyes are being opened….but it needs to be more and more eyes. I just heard a news broadcast talking about the PP vote with the tagline “PP, a health care provider”. How do I reach the network at tell them the correct tagline should be “PP, the nation’s largest abortion provider”? At least, I can tweet and facebook my complaint.
We should all us any and every method of communication that is at our disposal!
Pingback: Our Issue and Their Future - The Human Life Review - The Human Life Review