But this I cannot abide

By Scott St. Clair | The Save Jersey Blog

Social conservatives have waged a losing battle for years. In what’s supposed to be their home – the Republican Party – they’re treated like step-children whose presence is taken for granted but then barely tolerated. It’s a classic example of “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me” borderline personality pathology.

I’m willing to concede the fight over same-sex marriage. On every conceivable front, traditional-values combatants have lost the battle. Legally, electorally, culturally and from a public-opinion perspective it’s a settled issue.

But abortion I cannot abide, especially when confronted with revelations about Planned Parenthood’s wholesaling of late-term aborted children’s body parts and customizing the procedure to get the best ones. I don’t care how potentially life-saving the purpose, taking an innocent life has never struck me as socially beneficial, let alone moral.

The traditional marriage folks have nobody to blame but themselves since most of them sat on the sidelines and let it happen. When was the last time you saw anyone chain themselves to a courthouse door in an act of civil disobedience to protest marriage equality, or willingly go to jail in defense of traditional marriage? The fight was lost because it was never really waged.

When a same-sex couple is married, nobody dies, so there’s that, too.

Polling data reveals the American public is ambivalent about abortion, with a slight majority calling themselves, “pro-choice.” A more solid majority is willing to place some restrictions on the procedure or ban it outright, while a small minority wants no restrictions on it at all. The opinion tug-of-war has been going on for decades, ever since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that swept aside existing restrictions on it, which explains why it’s still an issue after 42 years.

That ambivalence may fade in light of what you’re about to read and see.

The Center for Medical Progress, an avowedly pro-life organization, recently released an undercover video documenting how Planned Parenthood traffics in aborted human body parts. In it, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood Federation of America is seen luncheoning on salad – were fava beans unavailable? – and red wine, perhaps a nice Chianti (nobody knows for certain) while discussing the going rate for an aborted infant’s liver and how well she plans her daily procedures – read, “abortions” – to harvest the day’s demand for body parts.

You can view the entire, unedited video here and read a complete transcript of it here, but please don’t eat beforehand since it will make you sick to your stomach.

Here’s an eight-minute excerpt:

You’ll notice that Dr. Nucatola denies that Planned Parenthood “sells” harvested body parts, but immediately quotes a price range for specimens – “$30 to $100.” She even describes how an abortion is conducted so as not to damage a pre-sold organ.

When queried about national affiliates partnering in the process, she says that’s off the table for the moment for legal reasons then adds, “But I will tell you that behind closed doors these conversations are happening with affiliates.”

Caught with its forceps down, PP CEO, Cecile Richards quickly produced a video defending their practices, but apologizing for Dr. Nucatola’s cavalier attitude:  “One of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect…compassion,” she said.

Planned Parenthood apologists have either parsed what’s being done as “a legal issue,” explained it away in an academic and dismissive tone, justified it as beneficial for medical research, attacked  the Center for Medical Progress for allegedly lying to the IRS or slammed it for ruining the reputation of Dr. Nucatola by accusing her of selling body parts when she stands condemned out of her own mouth by admitting she did, which is why undercover videos are so effective.

For the most part, television news usual suspects have ignored the story, with Fox News and especially CNN being notable exceptions.

Whether Dr. Nucatola violates federal laws prohibiting trafficking in body parts will be up to the courts to sort out.  The law prohibits an exchange of them for any “valuable consideration” – lawyer talk for a payment in money or money’s worth that seals the deal – that exceeds the cost of obtaining, processing and storing them. So, it’s dueling accountants and competing ideas of what constitutes a “sale” when items are deliberately sold at a loss. In other words, just like commercial litigation over the value of goods under the Uniform Commercial Code.

Baby in WombIt looks like a sale to me. How long before ads proliferate for organs raised for the purpose of sale like we see them for farm-raised salmon in the supermarket?

“Call right now, and we’ll send a second kidney at no additional charge – separate shipping and handling charges apply.”

Dr. Nucatola has been summoned to appear before a U.S. House of Representatives committee before the end of July to explain her medical and commercial practices.

Frankly, I can’t see much difference between the ghoulish practices of Planned Parenthood – “I’d say a lot of people want liver. I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” said Dr. Nucatola on the video – and the partial-birth butchery that was practiced by the now-imprisoned Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia at his chamber-of-horrors abortion mill.

One report on Gosnell quoted grand jury findings detailing his procedures:

Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it “ensuring fetal demise.” The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that “snipping.” 

Whether it’s “crush below…crush above” or “snipping,” the net, net is a dead child.

The typical push back from pro-abortionists is that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is to be made by a woman and her doctor. After watching the “Let them eat salad!” Dr. Nucatola, however, I’m not moved by plaintive laments about a woman’s privacy, unwanted teen pregnancies or whatever. In this context if you are, then more’s the pity for you.

Usually, these same people also plaintively wring their hands over the death penalty, complaining that there is no circumstance under which the state should ever take a life, while ignoring the over half-billion dollars baby-parts-trafficker Planned Parenthood received in government grants in fiscal year 2013. I’ve always thought that the law should protect the innocent and most vulnerable members of our society while severely punishing the worst of the worst. Hand-wringers have it backwards.

When Solomon sought to split the baby between two who claimed to be its mother, one opted for the child’s life over her own rights, while the other was content, like Dr. Nucatola and Gosnell, to let the kid be dismembered. Solomon respected the humility and sacrifice of the first mother while seeing through the cynical mendacity of the second and spared the child. Sadly, our government today has that backwards, too, which pretty much sums up the pro-abortion left’s thinking on the subject. After all, one less mouth to feed benefits society, no?

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Scott St Clair
About Scott St Clair 127 Articles
SCOTT ST. CLAIR: Earning a J.D. from the University of Puget Sound in 1975, Scott is a communications professional who has worked as a freelance journalist/writer as well as a political operative.

1 Comment

  1. We fiscal conservatives look at social conservatives as pompous, mouth breeders with a big stick up their butt. If you don’t get your way, you pick up your balls and your bat and go home in the middle of the game. Hell, you’re no different in attitude than the far left progressives. Go already, you’re boring!

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