Planned Parenthood . . . A Matter Of “Line Items”
By REY FLORES
Now that a fifth video has been released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), again showing the cold callousness of Planned Parenthood doctors and staffers joking about their “product” as they pull body part after body part out of a glass pan, I wonder if this will be enough.
Apparently it is going to take the hand of God Himself to defund Planned Parenthood because otherwise it may never happen. Congress probably won’t get it done and President Obama will certainly never let that happen as long as he’s in the White House.
At one point in this new video there’s a reference to one of the dismembered babies being a twin when we hear someone say “It’s a twin!” Last week we heard “It’s a boy!”
These people seem to have no conscience. I guess they can’t afford to have one in an environment that deals in such a gruesome trade.
Speaking of gruesome, this latest video was filmed at the huge Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast; it is a monstrous building which resembles a modern-day mirrored glass pyramid which features multiple abortion units where up to 12 abortions can be performed simultaneously on the third floor.
I recall my visit there in 2012 as part of my pro-life outreach work and I can assure you that I could feel the evil surrounding that place. As I prayed with the sidewalk counselors from the Houston Coalition for Life (HCL), we saw car after car driving up, as if PP were giving money away. Thankfully I did witness one young woman turn away and instead visit with the HCL’s pregnancy mobile unit.
In this latest video, we meet yet another Planned Parenthood staffer who is just as compassionate and endearing as the ones we’ve already met.
Meet Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. Farrell is a middle-aged woman, who, like her colleagues, speaks about the human beings lying in pieces in front of her as if they were radio components or car parts. I understand that no matter what trade we may be in, we eventually learn to “talk shop” in a very matter-of-fact manner; but do these women ever stop, look at whom they are killing, and ask themselves what on Earth they are doing there?
I know former Planned Parenthood employees Abby Johnson and Ramona Trevino, who both now have written books about their experiences. Johnson runs her own organization that works towards helping current abortion industry workers find new work. Therefore, there absolutely exists hope that we can change the hearts of these women “starring” in these videos.
Farrell at another point in the video refers to baby parts as “line items” – again, as if she were talking about anything other than a human. These are human persons, made in His image, children of mothers and fathers, not line items.
In my opinion, this video was unfortunately released a day after the U.S. Senate voted 53 to 46 to defund Planned Parenthood (the vote required a 60-vote majority). Had it been released on Monday, August 3, the day of the vote, I believe that we would have succeeded and gotten the necessary votes to finally defund this absolute horror show.
I’ll say this: A friend of mine back from my days of writing for the Herald News in Joliet, Ill., has come around. He and I were known as the fighting duo, he a liberal and me the in-house conservative. Each column we wrote was usually a rebuttal to the other and while we hated each other at first, we became good friends because we respected each other.
His name is Adam and the other day he contacted me to let me know how disgusted he was with Planned Parenthood. I recall his ongoing position, defending “a woman’s right to choose” and all that nonsense, and my constant reminding him of the thousands of human lives which were sacrificed every day in the name of “choice.”
I know that God works miracles in every one of us, but if even a stalwart longstanding liberal like my friend Adam can have a change of heart because of these videos, imagine just how many more people are joining him. I don’t care how much some people can try to defend Planned Parenthood after the release of these videos, especially that last one, but deep down inside of them, there has to be a bit of disgust in them as well; how could there not be any?
Like I’ve said before, David Daleiden is, in a sense, a sort of Upton Sinclair of our times. While the socialist Sinclair sought to expose the evil capitalist owners of Chicago’s notorious meatpacking plants and the abusive working conditions at those plants in his 1905 book The Jungle, he at least got Congress to pass some laws to protect the consumer from unsanitary meat-processing practices.
If Daleiden finally succeeds in having Congress defund Planned Parenthood, he will have out-Sinclaired Sinclair himself.
As a final note, reflect on this quotation from Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood: “It would be exciting too if you needed it [the baby] dissected, because LaShonda and I are the most Curious George of the group. I know it’s sickening on some level, but it’s fun.”
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey Flores at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
