The Ugly Trade

Tipping Point?

By Casey Mattox
Alliance Defending Freedom

A second video released by the Center for Medical Progress shows Dr. Mary Gatter, President of the Planned Parenthood Medical Directors’ Council haggling over prices for baby parts. She suggests that she can use a “less crunchy technique” to preserve organs of babies killed during an abortion. Inviting the person posing as a harvester to name his price she says, “I want a Lamborghini!”


This follows on last week’s video of Planned Parenthood’s Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing what sounds like an illegal partial birth abortion to obtain intact baby organs for buyers.

Planned Parenthood grosses well over $1 billion annually, half of that from taxpayers. Will these videos change things?
I understand why long-suffering pro-lifers might be dubious. After all, the real “crime” here is the brutal destruction of an unborn child. And Planned Parenthood has been openly doing a brisk business for years in abortion, increasing their “market share” to 40% as Dr. Nucatola gleefully notes. Why should these videos about how Planned Parenthood treats (and profits from) the remains of the unborn child be a tipping point?

Illegality.
First, while America is a haven for abortion – we have among the most permissive abortion laws in the world – selling baby parts is still illegal.

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.

While the law permits “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue,” the videos depict senior Planned Parenthood officials gauging prices based on market forces not calculations of actual costs to be reimbursed. That’s illegal. As abortion industry friend Henry Waxman said when sponsored the law, “It would be abhorrent to allow for the sale of fetal tissue and a market created for that sale. … Any price is unreasonable and illegal.”

Federal law also prohibits “alteration of the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy ... made solely for the purposes of obtaining the tissue.” Dr. Nucatola describes what appears to be an illegal partial birth abortion procedure and acknowledges “crushing” other parts of the baby to kill it while keeping the desired organs intact. Dr. Gatter is even more explicit, acknowledging this federal law but calling it “a specious argument.” No wonder Congress and several states are launching investigations into this apparently illegal harvesting and sale of baby parts.

The destruction of abortion euphemisms.
But the dubious legality of its baby part business may be the least of Planned Parenthood’s problems. In the last week many Americans have woken up to a reality that “terminating a pregnancy,” “reproductive health,” “women’s health,” and the host of euphemisms used to describe abortion don’t fit the brutal reality. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry has carefully crafted an image of itself as caring, compassionate, and defending women. It works hard to hide from women and the public the reality of abortion, calling their unborn children “the products of conception,” and opposing informed consent laws that require abortionists to offer women the truth about the development of the unborn child before they destroy it.

These videos, depicting senior Planned Parenthood officials describing “crushing” unborn babies and using “less crunchy” methods in order to obtain not “products of conception” but livers, hearts, and other organs are devastating to Planned Parenthood’s euphemisms.

It has fudged its financials to claim that abortion is only “3% of its services” (although it’s unclear whether baby part sales were included in this “3%”). Those of us who know better, already knew that over half of the income for “services” at Planned Parenthoods are generated from more than 300,000 abortions, which bring in over $150 million annually. It is difficult to believe that over half the population has bought the lie that Planned Parenthood doesn’t even perform abortions at all. And judging by the reaction, even most of those who knew Planned Parenthood performed abortions didn’t know it harvested and sold baby parts. Planned Parenthood’s only response to the first video was to acknowledge the abortions and the organ harvesting but to quibble over the number of dollars involved. It is losing.

Illegality aside, many Americans are being forced to acknowledge a brutal, bloody reality about abortion they – and the abortion industry – would prefer to ignore.
 
PP may be losing value to its main customer base, politicians.
The effect of all this is to reduce Planned Parenthood’s value to its key customer, elected politicians. As Planned Parenthood is exposed as more interested in its own bottom line (and Lamborghinis!) and more deeply involved in abortion, not your friendly neighborhood birth control pill distributor and mammographer (they don’t do mammograms), they become toxic to their political benefactors.

Planned Parenthood currently has a good thing going. Its well crafted image as champion of “women’s health” permits politicians to keep the half billion taxpayer dollars flowing, much of which Planned Parenthood turns into millions in election spending to keep in office those who keep the spout open. But its value to politicians is reliant upon its false image. If it is the leader of a campaign against a fake #WarOnWomen and is the defender of birth control “access” it’s an attractive partner for certain congressmen. So much so that one party’s apparatus fully embraced Planned Parenthood and abortion at its convention.

Planned Parenthood is the ultimate example of crony capitalism. But if Planned Parenthood is, as the videos show, an uncaring abortionist with a terrible bedside manner looking to squeeze out the last few dollars in profit from the unborn child it is killing, while thinking little of the woman on the table, that image may be less valuable to its political friends.

As Americans see Planned Parenthood for what it is, they are rightly repulsed. And that might just be the tipping point