Patterico's Pontifications

7/27/2015

Try As They Might: Planned Parenthood’s Ongoing Problem With Reason And Experience

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:04 am



[guest post by Dana]

Ross Douthat is very good:

And the problem these videos create for Planned Parenthood isn’t just a generalized queasiness at surgery and blood.

It’s a very specific disgust, informed by reason and experience — the reasoning that notes that it’s precisely a fetus’s humanity that makes its organs valuable, and the experience of recognizing one’s own children, on the ultrasound monitor and after, as something more than just “products of conception” or tissue for the knife.

That’s why Planned Parenthood’s apologists have fallen back on complaints about “deceptive editing” (though full videos were released in both cases), or else simply asked people to look away. And it’s why many of my colleagues in the press seem uncomfortable reporting on the actual content of the videos.

Because dwelling on that content gets you uncomfortably close to Selzer’s tipping point — that moment when you start pondering the possibility that an institution at the heart of respectable liberal society is dedicated to a practice that deserves to be called barbarism.

That’s a hard thing to accept. It’s part of why so many people hover in the conflicted borderlands of the pro-choice side. They don’t like abortion, they think its critics have a point … but to actively join our side would require passing too comprehensive a judgment on their coalition, their country, their friends, their very selves.

In the chop shop that is Planned Parenthood, Nucatola and Gattner did the unthinkable: they told the truth. And we all heard it. And we all saw it. And we all know it. And that is what Planned Parenthood and the left are so desperate to to undo. As is standard for the left, truth must be suppressed. So we live in a continual state of condemnation that the purest among us are worth more in death than in life, worth more in pieces than in whole.

In the house of humanity, we are watching a frantic effort to sweep away the devastating duo of reason and experience. The collective searing conscience must be stilled. With the promise of more videos to come, we can be assured of more mad scrambling: Cecile Richards will continue to spin and deflect, Democrats will cry foul, the MSM will give them support as they attack the Center for Medical progress, and movie stars and politicians will sanctimoniously demand governmental investigations into this grotesquerie of … editing. This as they studiously ignore the actual content of the videos because they cannot and must not look at truth. It cannot be allowed to touch them because it will cut them deep down beneath the bone. There is no room for reason and experience, let alone price negotiations for body parts. It’s almost as if they know that if they look, really look, they would see what we see. And then they would know. Just like the rest of us…

–Dana

71 Responses to “Try As They Might: Planned Parenthood’s Ongoing Problem With Reason And Experience”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (86e864)

  2. Why pussyfoot around Dana? Go ahead and tell us what you really think.

    ropelight (f9622d)

  3. cutting the funding of planned parenthood is not germane says mitch mcconnell

    it’s not germane

    brb gots to slop the Export Import Bank piggies

    happyfeet (831175)

  4. Scratch Planned Parenthood and you find the wannabe Josef Mengele beneath.

    Bill M (906260)

  5. Most of the support I’ve seen for Planned Parenthood in the video is because people support Stem Cell research so much. They say it is all justified completely for the advance of medical research. Even had one person claim Stem Cells could unlock the key of immortality…which I thought it was a little ironic that they’re willing to use baby blood to achieve that goal. (Sounds even more like a monster story)

    I thought stem cells could be constantly regrown. Why the need for such mass tissue harvesting anyways?

    Dejectedhead (152876)

  6. Kamala Harris is siding with the murderers. Unfortunately for her the local paper decided this was a good time to reopen news reports to public comment.
    Kamala Harris to review group behind Planned Parenthood abortion videos

    Hee haw.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  7. If the same was happening at a veterinarians office the same people who are so dismissive about PP would be apoplectic and foaming at the mouth in rage.

    MJN1957 (6f981a)

  8. I am a practising neonatologist. As you might imagine, I loathe Planned Parenthood.

    The level of deception to which the left stoops to justify the butchery in which Sanger’s ideological descendents engage knows no bounds. Anyone who actually looks at the outcomes of stem cell research knows that the ONLY stem cell research that is producing any benefits – hell, results of any positive outcome at all – are the stem cell projects using ADULT and cord blood stem cells. Every single fetal stem cell research project has resulted in harmful outcomes. It is an outrage, and a clear example of the lies and deception in which PP supporters engage. They are essentially saying, “Don’t think about what we are doing to the fetus as we crunch, slice and suction it to pieces, because we are committing this barbaric evil for the sake of SCIENCE!”

    We didn’t let the nazis or the Japanese use this excuse for their medical barbarism, and it is long past time that we end the evil of the eugenicism and profitteering off fetal slaughter that is the inherent nature of Planned Parenthood.

    Pete (ceb4bf)

  9. It’s not surprising that such evil exists, understanding as I do fully the banality of evil, but it’s monstrous that so many people still defend Planned Parenthood. To see the talking heads on TV defend these barbarians….unspeakable.

    Patricia (5fc097)

  10. i wouldn’t take my wee small baby-child to a “practising neonatologist” what has time to spew turgid propaganda on a monday morning

    i’d go to a professional one

    happyfeet (831175)

  11. happyfeet is special, Pete. Don’t take it personally.

    nk (dbc370)

  12. Pete is a big fat phony baloney picklehead

    happyfeet (831175)

  13. Perhaps if there was a way to profit from a felon’s body parts liberals would support capital punishment.

    jim (defd88)

  14. It’s a very specific disgust, informed by reason and experience — the reasoning that notes that it’s precisely a fetus’s humanity that makes its organs valuable, and the experience of recognizing one’s own children, on the ultrasound monitor and after, as something more than just “products of conception” or tissue for the knife.

    Exactly. I had a breast tumour removed when I was a teenager; that surgery was probably quite gross to look at, but I doubt that a dry description of it would cause anyone to feel sorry for the tumour. That is the difference between a “clump of cells” that needs to be removed for one’s own health (or life) and abortion.

    bridget (1deba5)

  15. Giant step toward new diabetes treatment

    Harvard stem cell researchers today announced that they have made a giant leap forward in the quest to find a truly effective treatment for type 1 diabetes, a condition that affects an estimated 3 million Americans at a cost of about $15 billion annually:

    With human embryonic stem cells as a starting point, the scientists are for the first time able to produce, in the kind of massive quantities needed for cell transplantation and pharmaceutical purposes, human insulin-producing beta cells equivalent in most every way to normally functioning beta cells.

    happyfeet (831175)

  16. So you dislike deception, do you, happyfeet? Do you gear that? It is irony calling.

    felipe (56556d)

  17. There is a lot going on in this field, happy. you should get out more often.

    felipe (56556d)

  18. Let’s see if we can find a distinction between embryonic stem cells and baby body parts. I”l link to the embryonic stem cells: http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/pages/basics3.aspx The PP lady at the videos can tell us about the body parts.

    nk (dbc370)

  19. happy – you should read the fine print.

    III. What are embryonic stem cells?
    A. What stages of early embryonic development are important for generating embryonic stem cells?
    Embryonic stem cells, as their name suggests, are derived from embryos. Most embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro—in an in vitro fertilization clinic—and then donated for research purposes with informed consent of the donors. They are not derived from eggs fertilized in a woman‘s body.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  20. I can see how special happyfeet is from the level of cognitive discourse.

    It is on par with the deflection and lies coming out of the defenders of Planned Parenthood. It is also typical of the inability of leftists to engage in anything resembling intelligent discussion of their political positions, as well as the complete inability to honestly defend the inherently selfish, emotive-based chaos that is the essence of leftist ideology.

    To further clarify my point:

    Happyfeet, would you care to present an actual refutation of my original post? Can you point out a single instance of fetal stem cell research which has produced anything beneficial? Would you like to compare the current scientific results of research utilizing adult stem cells versus cord blood stem cells (which are obtained after an infant is born, and do not require the infant be slaughtered for acquisition of the stem cells) versus fetal stem cells (that do require the death of the fetus for acquisition)?

    Care to provide discourse, once you have perused the current scientific outcomes of these 3 branches of stem cell research, on the validity of any justification for continued harvesting of post-abortion fetal stem cells for research when there has been no benefit – and in fact great harm – from attempted fetal stem cell therapies? Perhaps, after you juxtapose the results of adult and cord blood stem cell research versus the fetal stem cell research outcomes, you’d opine your vaunted opinion on the difference between Planned Parenthood slaughtering human fetuses ostensibly to obtain fetal stem cells (not to mention their fetal organs) for research, against the nazi hypothermia research using captured Allied POWs, or the barbarism of Josef Mengele on Jewish twins and children?

    Or, you could resort to typical leftist “debate”, and call someone who works daily to save infants from 23 weeks gestational age up to term as “a big fat phony baloney picklehead”.

    Oh, I meant to ask you…how many reruns of “Saved By the Bell” did you have to watch to come up with that epithet?

    Pete (ceb4bf)

  21. I wonder: just how many of the people who are just so upset with the covert investigation of Planned Parenthood were vocal in support of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and Julian Assange?

    The curious Dana (f6a568)

  22. Its difficult to claim it’s an undifferentiated tissue mass when you start using
    medical terms like “heart”, “liver”, “kidneys” to refer to what you want to pay
    for or be paid for.

    Time to put at least a limit on when an abortion may take place because after
    that whatever they want to call it, it can live outside the womb at that point.
    And in fact the Supreme Court acknowledged that the state COULD apply conditions
    on abortion.

    Time to end the barbarism and the lies.

    jakee308 (c37f85)

  23. Mr M wrote:

    Scratch Planned Parenthood and you find the wannabe Josef Mengele beneath.

    Are you kidding? Dr Mengele was an amateur compared to Planned Parenthood. They kill more people every single day than Dr Mengele did in his entire career.

    The historian Dana (f6a568)

  24. Dog-pile on happyfeet! Of course, you know why.

    felipe (56556d)

  25. the majority of leftists still deny what the attitudes of the founder of PP was,
    so no shock they defend the harvesting.

    seeRpea (65ab7f)

  26. mr. tiger c’mon now that’s a distinction without a difference like when you have this one pickle that’s really crunchy munchy and tasty and you have another pickle what is also crunchy munchy and tasty and you put them both into very similar bloody marys what you made

    except in one bloody mary you use hawkeye brand vodka (gack) and in the other bloody mary you use tasty titos brand vodka

    the titos one is the one you want to drink cause it’s 5 times distilled but if it were stem cell research it would still made from an embryo, which is like a lil fetus tadpole

    it has a soul already, and dreams – big dreams

    it dreamed a dream of time gone by

    that mitch mcconnell cut the funding

    it dreamt no fetuses would die

    but turns out mitchy mitch was lying

    happyfeet (831175)

  27. still *be* made from an embryo i mean

    happyfeet (831175)

  28. I didn’t anticipate a pile up. Pete’s the new guy. Courtesy demands he be allowed to wack the happyfoot pinata solo.

    The rest of you hold fire.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  29. Papertiger – Don’t hold back on my account. I can only pop in between patients, and Mondays are always busy.

    Pete (ceb4bf)

  30. Pete #20: Bravo and thank you.

    PatAZ (9d1bb3)

  31. The republican party will soon be a history lesson. Not defunding p.p. is despicable. I assume more than one layer of the big stupid tent people will be departing ways next election.

    mg (31009b)

  32. You may be right, mg. But it is my hope that certain republicans will be the ones departing, come the next election.

    felipe (56556d)

  33. Its difficult to claim it’s an undifferentiated tissue mass when you start using
    medical terms like “heart”, “liver”, “kidneys” to refer to what you want to pay
    for or be paid for.

    jakee308 (c37f85) — 7/27/2015 @ 9:04 am

    It’s always been a human being.

    The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother’s body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law—the same right we have.

    – Ronald Reagan

    Yep, don’t admit what you’re doing is amoral, accuse the messenger of wrongdoing.

    The most disgusting the part of this to me is these folks lied, lied to gain access to clinics,

    – Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards

    Revealing the most disgusting thing is that Planned Parenthood aborts babies then sells their body parts.

    Tanny O'Haley (c674c7)

  34. I like Rush’s comment, “These people think life starts when you leave the hospital.”

    AZ Bob (7d2a2c)

  35. When they can’t win on the merits, it’s time for the ad hominem attack. You’re playing politics!

    When McIntosh accused Fiorina of playing politics she said, “For heaven’s sake, the left side of the aisle politicians are involved all the time. EMILY’s list is involved in politics every single day and consistently EMILY’s list lobbies for pro-abortion candidates. There’s no justification anymore for federal funding of Planned Parenthood.”

    http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/07/26/fiorina-on-planned-parenthood-vids-you-never-cared-about-romneys-heavily-edited-video/

    Tanny O'Haley (c674c7)

  36. In Europe if you’re old, life ends at the hospital.

    Tanny O'Haley (c674c7)

  37. what do you call a geriatric european?

    happyfeet (831175)

  38. DOOMED!!

    happyfeet (831175)

  39. ha!

    happyfeet (831175)

  40. It’s all narrative folks.

    I’ll listen to what neonatologists have to say.

    But some folks just have to support abortion no matter what.

    Simon Jester (409d9a)

  41. I can’t believe White Overlords are selling Black Baby Body Parts and Rev Al has nothing to say.

    Rodney King's Spirit (9225a4)

  42. That’s cause the White Overlords in question are Democrats. They can do, and have done any damn thing they want to blacks.

    Hoagie (f4eb27)

  43. happyfascist, the new Dave Surls…

    Gazzer (f23e3c)

  44. Democrats should defend planned parenthood by demanding of president obama, if anything happens at a clinic that all right to lifers be given post natal abortions and their body parts sold off.

    post natal abortion (75598c)

  45. someday

    i’ll be

    livin’ in a big ole city Mr. Gazzer

    oh wait

    i already am!!

    haha in you face

    happyfeet (831175)

  46. The time is prime for conservatives to breakaway from the damaged republican brand, felipe. With republican trust at a all time low and sinking, it is time to abandon ship.

    mg (31009b)

  47. White overlords sell black baby body parts, Obola has no comment.

    Rodney King's Spirit (9225a4)

  48. Perry is demented.

    JD (3b5483)

  49. #49 The candidate or the poster?

    Rodney King's Spirit (9225a4)

  50. 48.White overlords sell black baby body parts, Obola has no comment.

    That’s correct Rodney King’s Spirit, but in the typical hate-filled style of leftist pigs, post natal abortion promotes genocide against people because they choose life. How compassionate. Must be one of those vile, disgusting, sickening, bigoted democrats that love Hillary! ,hate babies and love to see blacks aborted.

    Hoagie (f4eb27)

  51. There is definitely something wrong with Perry. He can’t post anything without hate and bigotry. His side is so bereft of logical argument all he can do is throw sh!t at everything and everyone. Pathetic.

    Hoagie (f4eb27)

  52. Because dwelling on that content gets you uncomfortably close to Selzer’s tipping point — that moment when you start pondering the possibility that an institution at the heart of respectable liberal society is dedicated to a practice that deserves to be called barbarism.

    Ah, but there are MANY institutions at the heart of Liberalism that deserve to be called barbarism. Heaps.

    C. S. P. Schofield (ab2cdc)

  53. @ bridget:

    I had a breast tumour removed when I was a teenager; that surgery was probably quite gross to look at, but I doubt that a dry description of it would cause anyone to feel sorry for the tumour. That is the difference between a “clump of cells” that needs to be removed for one’s own health (or life) and abortion.

    Exactly. That’s why the baby in the womb cannot be referred to in any way as “human” or a “baby”. To do so would bring down the whole house of cards and the gig would be up. Correct terminology is the glue that holds the whole operation together. Because words mean something.

    Fiorina pointed out that (loosely paraphrased): when a doctor reads an ultrasound to the pregnant woman excited to have her baby, he says, look, there’s your baby and there’s his hands and there’s his feet. But, when the same doctor is reading the ultrasound for the woman who wants to abort her baby, he refers to it as a mass of cells.

    Dana (86e864)

  54. Pete,

    If you’re still around, I wonder if you would weigh in on whether the videos have caused any stir in the medical community or with your colleagues? Is the medical community shocked, or is it business as usual. Or perhaps it goes straight down the line: if they believe in PP’s “values”, then they see it as a hit job, if they’re inclined toward pro-life, then they’re repelled.

    Dana (86e864)

  55. he must be between patients

    happyfeet (831175)

  56. oh gosh must *not* be i mean

    happyfeet (831175)

  57. Hi there, after reading this awesome paragraph i am also
    happy to share my know-how here with friends.

    girlgamespk.com (d5b606)

  58. I think this story is one of the things pushing the revolution. Codevilla is right that this is the ruling class fearing the peasants.

    Trump has hardly scratched the surface and may not be able to do more than that. Yet our rulers know the list of things divide them from the American people is long. They want to avoid like the plague any and all arguments on the substance of those things. They fear the rise of an un-intimidated leader more graceful and precise than Trump, someone whose vision is fuller but who is even more passionate in championing the many resentments the voicing of just a few channeled so much support to Trump.

    Here are some examples: Justice Kennedy’s majority opinions in Windsor and Obergefell preemptively accused anyone who opposed redefining marriage to include homosexuals of being “offensive,” “hateful.” Refusal to honor homosexual unions, he wrote, is not “explicable by anything except animus.” What if a statesman, speaking for the American people, were to ask what, precisely, is so honorable about anal intercourse that those who refuse to honor it should be so stigmatized? Before 1961, all 50 states criminalized anal intercourse, heterosexual as well as homosexual. Why precisely were they wrong in doing so? By what right does anyone place such questions “out of bounds”?

    I don’t really care about gay marriage as I think it is a fad that began with AIDS. However, I am very concerned with the war on “normal people” by the gay Nazis and think a big backlash is coming. This also applies to most of the left agenda that seems beyond our power to alter or stop.

    Maybe Carly ? She has nothing to lose.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  59. Funny thing about all the “Progressive Issues” is when you dig down to the foundation you find ….. Somebody making six figures who will lie like a rug to keep getting the six figures. See AGW billionaire Al Gore. And his Hollywood sweetie.

    f1guyus (9cbd15)

  60. It’s totally different. Not even remotely similar.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  61. Here. Have a pickle.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  62. you might could be right I’m not an expert like Pete the neotaonadologist

    happyfeet (831175)

  63. I’m not done with you yet.

    If your guys coaxed some pancreatic cells from an in vitro egg, and if they can develop a fully functioning pancreas from that, there still remains the problem that Doc’s little princess is type 1 diabetic. Her wee little body attacks pancreatic cells like they were the festering remains of a hairy pickle. New an improved pancreas will fall prey to the same auto immune rejection.

    Daddy Doc says he can shield the new pancreas in a few years. If that’s true, why didn’t he work on shielding the original? The shielding would be the cure for type 1 diabetes. Not the in vitro egg developed pancreas. The new pancreas goop is off point and in consequential to the cure.
    One wonders why it would even be mentioned or maybe the point is “After all these years still nothing to show for our insistence that we need dead baby stem cells for a cure. Any cure at all would do.”

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  64. Third video just hit. I would feel sorry for PP if they were involved in something more ethical, like drug dealing.

    Toastrider (4c0340)

  65. Mr. papertiger sometimes you just gotta let go and let God

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  66. Dana, re#55:

    There has been some discussion within the medical community (albeit informally), but honestly the vast majority of neonatologists are pro-life. You would imagine that people whose job is to save premature and term infants would find the slaughter of the premature for the convenience of those already born to be reprehensible. The fact that the pro-abortion lobbying groups have in the past tried to pressure OB/GYN residency programs to mandate abortion training in order to graduate from an OB/GYN program gives a clear indication that there isn’t a majority of OB/GYNs all that interested in killing humans in the womb.

    Now, I can’t say what physicians like Zeke Emmanuel are saying about these PP videos. I can only give you insight into what neonatologists and the OB/GYNs with whom I work are saying. What I can tell you is that PP is not happy with having to defend their evil practices. Their garbage propaganda about PP caring for the health of women has always been disingenuous (as their continued fight against having abortion mills meet the same outpatient surgery requirements as every other outpatient surgical clinic in Texas clearly shows) since growing evidence clearly indicates PP folks are really interested in obtaining Lamborghinis from the sale of aborted fetal remains.

    Frankly, the fact that pro-abortionists refuse to acknowledge the scientific fact that the fusion of spermatozoan with ovum results in a new, completely unique set of human DNA as the beginning of the life cycle that will continue until the individual dies, should call their science comprehension into question. The arbitrary assignation of the individual’s right to life as being valid only after the individual escapes the confines of the womb is nothing but a selfish artifice of convenience for those who have already escaped. It is beyond unethical and despicably horrific that anyone – let alone someone with the title of physician – would desire to make a profit off the sale of human body parts, particularly when the act of obtaining those body parts are falsely propagandized by the butchers as ‘not being human.’

    The hypocrisy…the evil…of such thinking is, frankly, demonic.

    Pete (ceb4bf)

  67. oh give it up

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  68. 67. …There has been some discussion within the medical community (albeit informally), but honestly the vast majority of neonatologists are pro-life. You would imagine that people whose job is to save premature and term infants would find the slaughter of the premature for the convenience of those already born to be reprehensible…

    Pete (ceb4bf) — 7/28/2015 @ 12:44 pm

    It’s funny how conservatives get called names like “anti-science” when in fact conservatives simply don’t buy into unscientific fictions.

    I recall reading about a French doctor, a guy who was on a team that shared a Nobel prize, who had helped discover the gene that determined retardation.

    He had been an atheist all his life. But his work in genetics forced him (I am not using those words lightly) into becoming a Christian and an ardent pro-lifer.

    A fetus is a human being. PP is making money on those body parts because of that fact.

    Steve57 (20f7d7)

  69. Excuse us, littlefeet, but the adults are having a discussion. I was answering Dana’s question. If you’d like to participate, please feel free to engage with adult level discourse. Otherwise, the RomperRoom level of debate is available for you over at the internet daycare centers known as ‘DailyKos’ and ‘FireDogLake’.

    Pete (ceb4bf)

  70. What’s it been – two weeks? The countdown has begun: 3…2…1

    The Planned Parenthood story is officially now old news that has already been discussed. Coverage of bashing Republican candidates shall resume full-time.

    in_awe (a4f8b5)


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