Planned Parenthood: An American Horror Story
As scales fall from the eyes of Americans, the demand to defund Planned Parenthood escalates. This modern horror story may be the birth pangs of a moral apocalypse.Post-apocalyptic television shows are very popular in the place where I have spent the last two decades. They appeared in rapid succession. First came the zombie apocalypse. AMC’s The Walking Dead, and its prequel, Fear the Walking Dead, explore in gruesome scenes the collapse of civilization after an inexplicable virus spreads quickly, transforming the dead into mindless, ravenous cannibals. An ominous line from a recent episode warns, “When civilization falls, it falls fast.”Then came the alien apocalypse. TNT’s Falling Skies brought the collapse of civilization after an alien invasion colonized Earth. The Espheni (the aliens) began to harvest Earth’s children who were mutilated and enslaved. The hopelessness given birth by aliens who enslave and exploit children to feed their biotechnology was the center of the horror story Falling Skies set out to tell. For those who see beneath the surface the wavering values of this age, it was told in hauntingly familiar tones. The five season run of Falling Skies ended last month with the series finale. The Second Massachusetts militia organized the remnant humans into a resistance force. The humans prevailed, but just barely, and at great cost.What’s clear in these popular shows, however, is that the remnant humans eventually learn that humanity cannot be so easily shed for the purpose of someone else’s enterprise, nor can it be taken for granted. Humanity itself becomes a more defined and protected asset struggling for survival. The interests of individuals submit to the good of humanity. Glenn, a character in The Walking Dead, for example, insisted that his group return to a scene of battle they barely escaped in order to rescue strangers. “This is still who we are,” said Glenn. “It has to be still who we are!”THE SELF-DELUSION OF THE CULTURE OF DEATHNext in this TV genre came the biological apocalypse, less visually gruesome than the others, but still riveting and popular because it vaguely strikes at a raw cultural nerve. The TNT series, The Last Ship chronicles the mission of the naval battle cruiser, USS Nathan James. After two months of radio silence during a scientific mission in the Arctic, the captain and crew of the Nathan James return to discover the collapse of civilization and the horror that 90% of the human race has been extinguished by a weaponized virus.A scientist aboard the ship develops a cure while the captain and crew battle inhumane special interest groups working other agendas against the salvaging of humanity. In one stand-out episode, Nathan James’ Captain Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) makes radio contact with a remnant of the American government holed up in Baltimore with a small but potent fighting force. An anti-government resistance movement operating underground is thought to be the enemy until the government remnant’s true agenda is uncovered. Those who claimed to represent the interests of the nation and the human race are exposed as furthering their own interests at the expense of the poor.In a scene with undercurrents of real events, Captain Chandler and his crew discover a power plant that powers the city enabling the government and its chosen followers to thrive and prosper. The “fuel” turned out to be the bodies of the poor, men, women and children who under the guise of being treated were actually poisoned and left to die in the streets so the chosen may live longer, prosper, and remain in control. Reversing that corruption involved far more than exposing it. It required confronting its proponents, and their masses of blind and silent followers, with the full moral force of this corruption that was finally exposed by patriots working undercover to make known the truth.NOW COMES THE MORAL APOCALYPSE
The writers and producers of these shows leave little doubt that the horror they portray is but a thinly veiled reference to something all informed Americans know instinctively, but live under great political pressure to deny and obscure. It is the fourth apocalyptic horror, but it hasn’t yet found its way into any television production because our politics will not permit this topic in open, and openly nuanced view.It is the moral apocalypse, the seeds of which were sown in 1973 America when the United States Supreme Court invented a Constitutional right that knowingly, and with self-serving aplomb, gave rule of law to the sacrifice of innocent life in the name of furthering the interests of the already living.Thus, even some who grimaced at public revelations of videos depicting Planned Parenthood personnel casually discussing the sale of human infant body parts succumb to a politically correct cleansing of the operable language. It becomes “fetal tissue,” a term much less likely to offend the sensitivities of those who insist on remaining sheltered from the full moral force of this revelation. “Fetal tissue” is a compromise term used in the media. It’s a term that desensitizes many to the full force of the moral collapse to which we are witnesses. As one woman chanted in one of the “pro choice” demonstrations for Planned Parenthood, “Fetal tissue is just tissue!”The videos quote Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, between bites at lunch as she dipped into a crunchy salad while discussing her careful, lucrative harvesting of body parts during a late term abortion:
“I’d say a lot of people want liver, [and] a lot of people want intact hearts these days... We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Though some might grimace at Dr. Nucatola’s “clumsy language” in the videos, the defenders of Planned Parenthood insist that the medical research using such “fetal tissue” is necessary because it “saves many lives.”Think about this for a moment, please, because those who are saying it obviously are not thinking about it at all. Is this not the same plot uncovered and condemned in some of the most popular, and perhaps conscience-driven, TV shows described above? Why is it that this horror story becomes so clear on fictional TV, yet remains so clouded in sanitized rhetoric in real life? “Fetal Tissue?” Where’s Captain Chandler when we need him?Writing in The Wall Street Journal (“Closing the Planned Parenthood Loophole,” August 26, 2015), Dr. Scott Gottlieb clarified well that the popular defense of Planned Parenthood in this practice distorts the facts. Dr. Gottlieb is a former Deputy Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He debunked the claim that Planned Parenthood’s horrific practice is saving lives. He presented a well-documented truth that “research directly using fetal tissue is uncommon,” with facts to back that up:
- At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, only 10 out of 8,000 active research protocols involve fetal tissue.
- Out of 10,000 annual grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between 1993 and 2014, only a total of 30 involved fetal tissue transplant research.
- Researchers generally use fetal tissue as a source of stem cells... “but even work with fetal stem cells comprises a tiny subset of research”... Most such studies “involve either embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells” and not “fetal tissue.”
Dr. Gottlieb further argued that the Planned Parenthood videos provide substantial evidence that current “laws governing the fetal tissue trade” are not working. These laws passed in the 1990s were meant to “ensure clear separation between the act of abortion and the procurement of tissue for research.”
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!A growing and grassroots movement to defund Planned Parenthood gained new traction after the revelations of these horrific videos, but then it stalled in the political arena. In mid-August a 53-46 Senate vote in favor of defunding fell seven votes short of the sixty votes required to move forward.Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), sponsor of the Senate bill to defund Planned Parenthood, said the videos had “shaken the moral compass of our society.” She vowed to resume this effort when Congress reconvenes in September. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) vowed to use “any and every procedural means we have available” to defund Planned Parenthood, including, if necessary, a government shutdown.Some (but not all) Democrats denounced these efforts. “Do you have any idea what year it is?” asked Senator Elizabeth Warren. Meanwhile, according to USA Today Columnist Kirsten Powers) (“Planned Parenthood’s Apology is Gruesome,” July 22, 2015) some of Planned Parenthood’s usual political defenders have been mum - including Hilary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, both recipients of the Planned Parenthood “Margaret Sanger Award.” Kirsten Powers wrote powerfully of the moral apocalypse Planned Parenthood has exposed us to:
”[T]he problem here is not one of tone. It’s the crushing. It’s the organ harvesting of fetuses that abortion rights activists want us to believe have no more moral value than a fingernail. It’s the lie that these are not human beings worthy of protection... When abortion doctors are elevated to gods who may not be questioned or held accountable, society has officially gone off the rails.” (Kirsten Powers, USA Today, July 22, 2015)
Two weeks ago in my post, “Are We Alone?” I wrote of Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s $100 million dollar investment into a SETI effort to detect another technological civilization somewhere else in the Cosmos. My post gathered a number of excellent comments, but one in particular, by TSW reader, Dorothy Stein, needs repeating here:
“Count me among those who love your posts on science and faith... I have a question, however. If life is unique in the Cosmos, or extremely rare as you suggest, and if some intelligent race goes to all the trouble of finding us among the vast ocean of stars, how will we ever explain Planned Parenthood? How will we ever explain their traffic in human infant body parts? How could we reconcile our quest for life ‘out there’ when life here is so selfishly squandered? Do we really want our treatment of life to be spread out there among the stars? I think you said it best in a past science post: ‘We squander life to our Cosmic shame, and spiritual peril.’” (Dorothy Stein, Aug. 31, 2015)
A recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the Senate bill to defund Planned Parenthood would not deprive any woman of “reproductive services.” Instead, it would redistribute these tax dollars to health centers, hospitals, and other women’s health organizations that do not specialize in “the harvesting of fetal body parts.” In the irony of ironies, abortion doctor Willie Parker told Cosmopolitan magazine,
“I’m thinking about a strong parallel between what’s happening to my colleague [Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Deborah Nucatola] and the trial week of Jesus before he was crucified.”
Such hubris and moral blindness are a monument to Parenthood’s duping of America, but it got caught in the act thanks to the work of humanitarian patriots at the Center for Medical Progress and their clandestine videos. If Planned Parenthood is not now defunded in the light of this American horror story now uncovered, then we indeed are witnessing the birth of a moral apocalypse.That kid’s dismal foreboding in “Fear the Walking Dead” should be kept in mind. “When civilization falls, it falls fast.”