Keep Whistling, Cecile!
Last week was one to remember.
The Washington Post, defender of the left and of abortion in every case and circumstance, said it best: “Planned Parenthood, for being flip about aborted fetuses, you had the worst week in Washington.”
It has long been known in the pro-life universe that aborted babies are carved up and delivered to labs, but last week the penny dropped for the rest of the world.
On Tuesday, a media storm was unleashed after the Center for Medical Progress released undercover videos of Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Research, negotiating with people she believed were purchasing agents for Stem Express, a real company.
Major non-conservative media had to cover it. By the end of the week, six governors had launched investigations in their states; three congressional committees had launched investigations; and a whole lot of presidential candidates had denounced the selling of baby parts.
By Sunday evening, there had been 182,353 views of Cecile Richards’ YouTube statement. Meanwhile, there had been 2,406,136 views of the originally-released abbreviated Center for Medical Progress videos.
This news story still has a lot more life in it.
On Wednesday, President of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards personally apologized that “one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect . . . compassion.” As if the issue were no more than a receptionist having been rude to a nervous patient. (Wonder if Dr. Nucatola will still have her job a week from now?)
Richards reaffirmed that Planned Parenthood “stands behind our work to help women and families donate tissue for medical research when they wish to.” Another PP statement said women who donate tissue “should be honored.”
There’s the new euphemism for abortion: donating tissue.
To nobody’s surprise the White House also followed PP’s talking points. On Friday, Obama spokesman Josh Ernest confirmed that Planned Parenthood “follows the highest ethical guidelines.” Like a well-trained Alinskyite, however, Ernest did leave himself a bit of wiggle room: He referred further questions to Planned Parenthood.
The Center for Medical Progress video (which uncut is three hours long) is enough to give planned Parenthood nightmares. Dr. Nucatola is seen blithely chomping a salad and sipping red wine while discussing how much money a clinic could receive for each harvested organ, and how the abortionist could position an unborn baby to salvage organs without damaging them.
No wonder Planned Parenthood is so committed to protecting access to late-term abortions: the later the abortion, the more fully-developed the organs, the higher the cash, um, the “expense” reimbursement.
And there’s the rub. It is a federal crime to sell human tissue, though reasonable reimbursement is allowed. But not if the reimbursement exceeds the cost of storing, transporting, processing, and so on.
If the PP clinic performs the abortion, and the company rep is standing by with a cooler to take away the organs, what cost has PP incurred? To a casual observer it might seem that the price paid for the abortion has already more than covered any expenses Planned Parenthood has in “procuring” the “tissue” it is ”donating” for medical research.
A figure of $30 to $100 for each organ is mentioned in the video. Suppose that PP’s ideal abortion produces a heart, a liver, one or two kidneys, a brain, a lung . . . there’s $600 right there. And how many abortions does PP do a year? In 2013, it was 333,964. Let’s see, $600 multiplied by 333,964 . . . my calculator says $20,037,840. That’s a lot of reimbursement.
Of course, not every abortion produces organs. But even half that sounds like a lot of profit. And that sounds like a violation of 42 U.S.C., 289g-2(a).
There are a lot of things to investigate.
Richards knows everybody hates politics. So she figures if she can apologize and blow off the new revelations about PP as “politics,” she’ll be able to sail away from the latest revelations. On Wednesday, she quoted Jane Austen in her Twitter feed: “My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”
The Center for Medical Progress has a dozen more videos to release.
Keep whistling past the graveyard, Cecile, if it makes you feel better.
* * * * *
Connie Marshner is a commentator and researcher on life and family issues in the Washington, D.C., area.
Terrific article on the business the PP is really in!
Keep us all posted as these videos are released
The information is devastating for them
It is critical for the women they “serve” to receive this information
Charlie Kenny
Thanks, Dr. Kenny. I promise I’ll write more about this topic as events develop!
This is barbaric savagery.
Could there be anything worse than abortion? Yes, the evil can be compounded further than most of us would ever have imagined.
We know that the aborting of these most vulnerable innocents has no regard for their pain and, demonstrably, not the slightest for their humanity.
You are so right, Barbara. For too long, the humanity of the pre-born has simply been a non-topic.
What does it say about the keepers of our public conscience (the major media) that the big networks and the newspapers of record are scarcely paying any attention to this? Or when they do, they try to attack the messengers (those who made the videos) and ignore the message?
As foul and disgusting as this “revelation” was, I’m not sure how broad it’s impact is. The so-called Millennial generation only seems to care about things that directly touch on their pop-culture based lives. I’d love to see more outrage…
Michael,
That’s what’s so powerful about this story. It cuts through the pop-culture fog. Next week there will be demonstrations across the country to call attention to it. Go to: www.womenbetrayed.com and see if there’s a demonstration in your city or state!
This is one of the worst things that can happen. They laugh! My only consolation is that there is a Judgment Day for these people and I do believe in Divine Justice. Great article.
Dear Pat,
Thank you for the compliment to my writing — how I wish I didn’t have to write about grisly stuff like this.
However hard as it may be, the more we can all talk about this, the more attention we can draw to this horror — and the more attention is drawn to the evils that Planned Parenthood perpetrates, the greater the likelihood that our tax dollars will stop filling PP’s coffers.
Bring up the topic to your next cab driver, or to somebody standing next to you in line. Most people who have never thought about abortion are horrified by these revelations.
There aren’t words to describe the reality of what we think to be the worst of evil (abortion) to see it take on an even greater evil then that of itself. Praise be to God that this Truth is finally being released to the general public !
Amen and amen to that, Barbara.
The fact is Planned Parenthood’s baby parts business has been part of the fabric of their existence for at least the last 20 year. As equally aspect of it is that for that many years and more the United States government has subsidized the grizzly business and literally pandered to their practices. We hope that as Marshner points out, this is a turning point and the nation finally wakes up! Since when is killing of any kind a socially acceptable practice?
Judie, you are right about the facts. How many decades ago was it we tried to get HEW (at the time) to restrict research like that for which these babies are “harvested”?
Cecile Richards says 1 in 5 American women have visited Planned Parenthood. She may be right.
Yet very few people ever thought (or dared?) to ask the obvious question: “what happens to the bodies?”.
I’m grateful to the people who asked that question and did the work that produced these videos. These revelations might cause some people to think twice before visiting Planned Butcherhood in the future.
Marshner is spot on. As a pastor just recently stated we are the united apostates of America. Every American, no matter what political persuasion, must stand up for the babies crying to God “Save Me”. We must come together and save the babies from being TORN APART ORGAN BY ORGAN. The time is NOW. THERE IS NO OTHER LINE TO BE DRAWN. IT IS HERE.
It is even worse than you think. Those harvested fetal cells are not all used to further medical research. Some are used in cosmetics and have even been used in taste testing (kidney cells) for the food industry!
What have we come to?