By LAWRENCE P. GRAYSON
Videos, recently released by the Center for Medical Progress, show officials of Planned Parenthood discussing the harvesting and sale of organs from aborted children. With their ghoulish business exposed, spinmeisters quickly went to work. The president of Planned Parenthood stated that what the organization is doing is legal, humane, and scientifically useful, although, she said, their representative in the video did not display the organization’s deep compassion for women.
Most of the broadcast TV networks and cable news programs, sympathetic to abortion, initially ignored this exposé. It would have been their lead story, no doubt, if the harvesting were done on baby seals rather than on unborn children. Generalized language such as fetal tissue is used to describe what is being sold, rather than specific terms such as liver, heart, and lungs.
The Associated Press characterized a taped conversation in which a doctor in the organization describes how the desired organs can be preserved during an abortion as a discussion about “the disposition of parts from aborted fetuses,” while the anchors at ABC, CBS and NBC used only the term fetus to describe the aborted children.
But with the release of additional videos, coverage by more conservative media, and calls for investigations by Congress and state governments, public awareness and outrage are growing.
In order to minimize the damage to its reputation, Planned Parenthood has been attacking the Center for Medical Progress, characterizing it as an anti-abortion group engaged in unethical and deceptive activities. If you can’t refute the message, denigrate the messenger.
Those supportive of the abortion giant are using euphemisms to blur its activities and minimize the evil that is being done, while choosing words with negative connotations to depict the organization that brought their practices to light. The abortion-friendly media are trying to frame the videos as an unscrupulous effort by a fanatical opponent, rather than as exposing a morbid, morally deprived approach to generating profits.
No matter how much Planned Parenthood and its functionaries try to spin the news, they cannot change reality. In one video, as a laboratory assistant sorts through bits of an aborted child, another cries out, “It’s a boy!” In another, a person identifies various limbs and organs awash in a petri dish as coming from a twin. Even these workers realize that the lumps of tissue are elements of a disassembled infant. No amount of dicing or chopping or abstruse language can change the truth.
Unfortunately, many people act like Pilate, who, when our Lord said to him, “I have come to give testimony to the truth,” responded, “What is truth?” and would not recognize it. The truth that life begins at conception is an unwelcome fact to a large segment of society. So a myth is created that the development in the womb is not a child, but only uterine material growing like a tumor which can be excised for the health or convenience of the mother.
As a result, millions upon millions of unborn children have been killed in the most brutal ways. The continuation of this atrocity is due to ignoring truth as an objective reality. The myth is accepted because it is convenient and soothes a person’s conscience. It is easier to go along with the crowd than to challenge the lie.
Reality is external and definitive. People, however, do not act on reality, but on the perception of reality. Since perception exists in the human mind, people can transform their image of reality into something that fits their interests and desires. This allows them to ignore unpleasant truths and to rationalize their actions so that they are not troubled by what they do. In like fashion, well-funded groups, such as Planned Parenthood, are trying to reshape the public’s perception of humanity, and thus override the truth of when life begins.
The reality of abortion is hidden when a child in the womb is referred to as “a product of conception,” the tearing apart of an unborn baby as a “dilation and evacuation” procedure, and the skull-crushing in a partial-birth abortion as “intrauterine cranial decompression.” People disregard the most obvious facts in their desire not to know, exercising a willful ignorance that certain actions denigrate humanity.
That same willful blindness is what allowed the Holocaust to occur, gulags to exist, and mass genocide to take place in China, Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Bosnia.
In order to sustain the myth, people must not be allowed to see reality. The abortion industry and its sympathizers must continue to create false impressions and block out the real world because if a woman recognizes that the “blob of flesh” developing within her is actually her child, the myth will be destroyed.
That is why the exposé videos are so important. That is why ultrasound images are so important. That is why graphic images displayed outside of abortion clinics are so important. One of these presents the beauty of the first stages of life, with a child in the womb alive and stirring. The others show preborn children after an abortion, now disassembled like butchered sheep. These images are emotionally upsetting. They are troubling because they jar the conscience and make it difficult to deny reality.
Reverence for human life and its protection at all stages is the key societal issue of the day. Catholics, allied with like-minded Christians, can be a potent force to help raise the public conscience, reverse the trends in society, and once again establish a reverence for life. Certainly, leadership from the bishops and their organizations is important. Laymen, however, working with their priests and pastors, can serve a meaningful role in their parishes and communities by providing leadership to deal with these issues locally.
Participating in a march for life, being a prayerful witness at an abortion clinic, helping to erect a cemetery of the innocents, supporting pro-life legislation, and sponsoring pro-life talks are a few of the ways that individuals and parishes can become involved.
To be successful, however, prayer is needed to bolster the efforts. The struggle to establish a culture of life is a spiritual battle being waged in a secular world. It cannot be won on a solely material level. That is why pro-life Masses, eucharistic adoration, prayer vigils, and the frequent recitation of the rosary are integral to any effort to improve the moral culture of the community and nation.
Will you be a leader for pro-life?
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(The author is a visiting scholar in The School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America.)
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