Planned Parenthood’s Odious Activities

Planned Parenthood’s Odious Activities
July 22, 2015
by Phyllis Schlafly

“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.” That’s how Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services explained to a potential customer (with a hidden camera) how unborn baby body parts are routinely harvested for profitable reuse.

Planned Parenthood’s president later apologized for the “tone” of Dr. Nucatola’s chilling remarks at a business lunch with wine, but could not deny that they accurately reflect PP’s business model. As somebody said 2,000 years ago in ancient Rome: in vino veritas (in wine there is truth).

Planned Parenthood’s practices appear to violate two federal laws, one of which prohibits trafficking in fetal organs and tissues for profit. The other law prohibits altering an abortion for the sole purpose of harvesting organs, and that’s what PP’s senior executive admitted doing.

In addition to aiming the forceps “under ultrasound guidance” to “crush below” or “crush above” the desired organ (such as heart, lung or liver) wanted by a medical supply company, Dr. Nucatola even admitted that “people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex” (head first). That means intentionally delivering the baby feet or bottom first in order to cause “dilation,” which makes it easier for the abortionist to “evacuate an intact calvarium [head] at the end.”

Aside from the apparent illegality of such activities, how did we reach the point in our country where an organization, led by persons with such lack of conscience, was able to attain such power, influence, and respectability that its president addressed the last Democratic National Convention? (That was the same convention whose delegates booed a motion to recognize God.)

Two generations ago, when a book called The Population Bomb was riding the best-seller list, President Richard Nixon asked Congress to create the first-ever federal program to promote “family planning” — the phrase coined by PP founder Margaret Sanger as a euphemism for “birth control.” Nixon’s bill was sponsored by then Congressman and future President George H.W. Bush, and it became law at the end of 1970.

The notion of a “population bomb” was quickly discredited and the book by Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich has taken its place among such false alarms as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. Contrary to Ehrlich’s prediction, the birth rate has collapsed in the United States and throughout the Western world to the point where most countries’ populations are shrinking except for immigration.

Planned Parenthood became the biggest recipient of the federal spending named in its honor, and the flow of money hasn’t stopped — over $500 million in the last fiscal year, comprising 41 percent of PP’s budget. It’s time to end all federal and state taxpayer support for an organization that serves no valid public purpose, does not promote the general welfare, and is run by people who lack the basic decency to respect the dignity of human life in the womb.

Several state legislatures have tried to cut the flow of state taxpayers’ money to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, which perform more abortions than anyone else, only to be rebuffed by liberal federal judges. A rare exception was a Kansas law upheld by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court last year.

Kansas had been handing out taxpayer dollars under the federal Title X program for many years to Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri despite its affiliation with abortion providers. In 2011, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed an appropriations bill that gave priority to taxpayer spending first to “public entities (state, county, local health departments and health clinics)” and then, if any taxpayer money remains available, “to non-public entities which are hospitals or federally qualified health centers that provide comprehensive primary and preventative care in addition to family planning services.”

Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri sued, because it was not given priority for the taxpayer funding. After its claims were rejected, Planned Parenthood closed one of its Kansas facilities and chose not to seek further review in the Supreme Court, perhaps fearing a loss there could set a nationwide precedent.

Congress could cut off most if not all of the $528 million given to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates in grants by government, in contracts and in reimbursements from taxpayer-funded Medicaid. Numerous billionaire liberals are supporters of Planned Parenthood, but rather than fully funding it themselves, which they could easily do, they insist on forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.

OpenSecrets.org reports that in the 2014 cycle, for example, Planned Parenthood received slightly more than $1 million from donors at Bloomberg L.P. and $500,000 from donors at Soros Fund Management. Those companies and their billionaire owners could easily keep Planned Parenthood afloat without burdening the taxpayers to support conduct which so many find offensive.