As then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict, put in his “Salt of the Earth” interview, “in simple societies of the past… the blessing of children was regarded as the blessing, today children are conceived of almost as a threat” (201). The purpose of life today is pleasure and if a child interrupts that, he or she can be vanquished.
The Catholic Church has consistently taught against abortion, instructing that all humans are made in the image of God, and therefore have infinite worth from the moment of conception to natural death. Even in the Didache, a first century catechetical manual drafted by the first Christians of the early Church, there is instruction against contraception, abortion and the exposure of infants as it was practiced in Roman society. The text states, “you shall not murder a child, whether it be born or unborn” (2.2).
The Church has held its ground on contraception despite a generation of controversy because She knows that to approve of a sexuality divorced from its end of reproduction, or baby making, is to accept an idea that is false at its root: that babies and sex are unrelated and that we can have one without the other. Abortion is the logical fruit of contraception. After all, what is abortion but the fail-safe of contraception?
The sad truth is that in the modern definitions, only the location of the little human makes it an “infant” or a “fetus,” a semantic difference which can mean life or death. “Babies” delivered through the birth canal who survived were considered to have been “murdered” by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, but all the “fetuses” of the same age who, were crushed inside their mothers, were simply “expelled tissue.” A culture that makes such a false distinction has lost its way morally and philosophically. Words matter and philosophy matter. Flippant nihilists today may say they don’t believe in anything, but how we define “human” really does have life or death implications.
The media may be happy to swallow Planned Parenthood’s claim to legality, but Catholic or not, we shouldn’t. #PROTESTPP is organizing a nationwide protest at Planned Parenthoods across the country on August 22 from 9:00 am to 11:00 am in an effort to spotlight the reality of what goes on at these “health centers.” Find a protest near you at http://protestpp.com/ and stand up for the truth that medicine ought to contribute to human flourishing, not harm women, kill babies and make a killing off it.
Top Planned Parenthood vice presidents and doctors, most notably Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services, have been caught on-film discussing procedures and even branding for the buying and selling of tissue and parts from aborted humans. The selling of body parts is illegal under federal law, and the videos, which feature actors posing as buyers for biotech companies, reveal top representatives discussing products offered and prices of such “specimens.” Planned Parenthood claims this is all strictly legal, but their spin falls flat as they are paid for the tissue of discarded human babies. Few people, particularly on the left, seem interested in this gruesome reality, but it demonstrates clearly the rotten fruit of the abortion industry.
The media hardly bats an eyelash and allows President Cecile Richards to swear up and down that all this is law abiding activity. That’s one of the convenient talking points mentioned in the videos: the head doctors are not opposed to receiving payment, varied by organ and demand, but more concerned with “how to talk about” this correctly in case they were “called out” for foul play for the lucrative practice. One video of Dr. Savita Ginde, Vice President and head of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood, shows her concern with getting the talking points “right” then going into the lab to demonstrate the soundness of the available specimens; ie. tiny pieces of aborted babies. She explains that with proper training of providers, the specimens will be “less war-torn.” At the end of video, she that says giddily, “it’s another boy!” There is a sickening irony to her pseudo-excitement over the child’s sex, just as an expecting mother might have, while at the same time abortion advocates defend the procedure by denying the personhood and rights of the growing babies.
Planned Parenthood bills itself as an all-around women’s health provider, but the truth is, it is the number one abortion provider in the country. The sale of human body parts and tissue is prohibited under federal law, but Planned Parenthood hides under the mantle of legality, claiming that all the “specimens” are voluntarily donated by the mothers aborting them. But to be doing this business legally would also mean that that they could only accept fees for service from corporations and make no profits. Sadly, the video featuring Nucatola records her explaining that prices range from thirty to one hundred dollars per specimen depending on the demand. Livers, for instance, are highly sought after. She also explains that there is a special method for aborting “intact” specimens: “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.” The presence of market-based pricing and special procedures for specifically obtaining in-demand body parts makes it a hard sell that Planned Parenthood isn’t profiting from an available product. Add to this that it costs them virtually nothing to obtain the material as they are already in the business of expelling developing babies from their mothers’ wombs.
To defend themselves, Planned Parenthood claims that in providing human tissue, they act “just like every other high-quality health care provider does,” by which she means the hospitals and funeral homes that are paid for adult cadavers.
The truth is that while trafficking in human body parts is illegal, there are few regulations and that a great deal of money changes hands under the titles “reasonable fees.” NPR reports that “By industry estimates, the human tissue business makes at least $1 billion a year.” Human tissue research has resulted in advances that help millions of living Americans; a vein can be used in heart surgery; a bone can become a plate or screw for someone else’s broken bone. Tissue, unlike organs, can be harvested much longer after death and comes from morgues and funeral homes in addition to hospitals. In a famous 2012 case, Michael Mastromarino pleaded guilty to illegally harvesting and selling tissue from bodies at funeral homes without the families’ consent.
The trade of human parts is a shady business that can help people, but can easily drift into fraud because of its profitable nature and poor oversight. To combat these abuses, Senator Charles Schumer (D. – N.Y.) introduced legislation to require FDA inspection of tissue facilities and define more precisely those “reasonable fees,” but the bill was never passed.
The media does not seem particularly troubled by the use or misuse of adult cadavers or of aborted infants. After all, most people reason, these humans are already dead. Planned Parenthood wants to use the rhetoric of “research” and legality, even though the profit-generating nature of this practice is plainly evident.
Regardless of the reasons for public malaise, there is a significant difference between dead adults and aborted infants. Except in cases of malpractice, the hospitals and doctors did not kill the adults. In abortion, a growing, healthy or at least living, human being is intentionally killed by a doctor with the consent of his or her mother. This makes the question of profit or trafficking all the more troubling: death is being dealt for “research” at best or “profit” at worst.
To deny that this is human killing defies reason. An aborted mouse wouldn’t carry the same price tag. The gut-wrenching horror of killing humans and selling their parts is fruit of a rotten industry, of a rotten idea and the false promise of abortion.
Jesus taught that “You shall know a tree by its fruits.” While this applying this passage accurately can be difficult, there is no doubt about the follow up that “A bad tree cannot produce good fruits.” Such is the case with abortion.
When abortion was legalized, proponents promised to help make abortion “safe, legal and rare.” It was to “help women” and level the playing field of biological differences between men and women.
But abortion does nothing more than sweep regret under the rug and let men and society off the hook for unwanted, or worse –unplanned–children. Children demand effort and support, but they are also the most beautiful gifts that God can ever give us.
Stephanie Pacheco is a freelance writer and convert from Northern Virginia. She earned a M.A. in Theological Studies, summa cum laude, from Christendom College and holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia in Religious Studies with a minor in Government and Political Theory. Her work has been featured in America Magazine, Crisis Magazine, Soul Gardening Journal and syndicated by EWTN and Zenit. She blogs about making sense of the Catholic Faith in modern life at theoress.wordpress.com and lives with her husband and two young children.
