I am unabashedly pro-choice. I have no moral qualms about women having the legal right to abort an unwanted pregnancy.
But, as with every right, this one is not absolute; nor should it be. Because, just as the right to free speech does not entitle one to shout fire in a crowded theater, the right to an abortion should not entitle one to have late-term abortions (i.e., after the 24th week) – except to protect the health of the mother.
This sensibility explains why I am so shocked and appalled by the secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood doctors talking shop over lunch, which have just gone viral. For they show these doctors discussing “less-crunchy techniques” for aborting fetuses to better harvest their “body parts” for sale. Even worse, they are doing so with such blithe spirit, they might just as well be discussing less-destructive techniques for salvaging planks of wood from an abandoned property.
Here, for example, is what Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola can be seen and heard saying … in between bites of crisp salad and sips of red wine:
A lot of people want intact hearts these days, because they’re looking for specific nodes…
We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part.
(FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier, July 14, 2015)
Yet I hasten to disassociate myself from the right-wing nutjobs who are accusing Planned Parenthood of abusing its charitable status to profit from abortions. Not least because:
The full, unedited video they cite as evidence shows a Planned Parenthood executive repeatedly saying its clinics want to cover their costs, not make money, when donating fetal tissue from abortions for scientific research.
(FactCheck.org, July 21, 2015)
In fact, I fully support the kind of embryonic stem cell research President Obama authorized by executive order just months into his presidency. But the operative word here is “embryonic.” What’s more, my understanding is that stem cells are now far more preferable than fetal tissue for biomedical research.
Notwithstanding my sensibilities or provocative headlines, however, it cannot be overstated that there is nothing illegal or even unethical about Planned Parenthood donating fetal tissue for research purposes – even for costs.
At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards. There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood. In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.
(Planned Parenthood.org, July 14, 2015)
Still, the macabre nature of the videos at issue compels me to assert that, if a woman wants to have an abortion, she should be required to have it well before the third trimester. More to the point, fetuses aborted long before viability would draw a red line between discussions about donating fetal tissue and those about donating body parts. Not to mention that twenty weeks should provide more than enough time for a woman to weigh the pros and cons of terminating her pregnancy.
Incidentally, this is why it is as incomprehensible as it is unconscionable that the District of Columbia and seven states, including Colorado, New Jersey, and Vermont, have no restrictions whatsoever on when a woman can have an abortion. I mean, forget the ignorant and irresponsible practice of using abortions as contraception, how does one reconcile women who take the morning after pill (aka Plan B One-Step) with those who get late-term abortions for non-emergency reasons…?
That said, I feel obliged to share just a little of my abiding disgust with anti-abortion crusaders like the ones who entrapped these Planned Parenthood doctors:
If their right-to-life protestations had any moral consistency, conservatives would be every bit as zealous about abolishing the death penalty as they are about abolishing abortions. Not to mention the hypocrisy inherent in the juxtaposition of their moral crusade on behalf of fetuses of every type with their political aversion to the welfare of crack babies and other disadvantaged children.
(“Obama Lifts Restrictions on Funding for Stem Cell Research…,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 10, 2009)
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