Patterico's Pontifications

7/28/2015

Third Planned Parenthood Video: Show Me The Money, Show Me The Parts

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:55 pm



[guest post by Dana]

The Center for Medical Progress has released a third video in which a Planned Parenthood vice president discusses per-organ pricing, a doctor admits to a long-standing relationship with a “middleman” company and a former “procurement technician” for Planned Parenthood explains how the organization profits from harvesting fetal parts:

The undercover footage catches the Vice President and Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Savita Ginde. PPRM is one of the largest and wealthiest Planned Parenthood affiliates and operates abortion clinics and abortion referral centers in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nevada.

Standing in the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic pathology laboratory, where the bodies of babies are brought after abortions, Ginde concludes that payment per organ removed from an aborted baby will be the most beneficial to Planned Parenthood: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”

The second part of the new video catches Dr. Katherine Sheehan, Medical Director emerita of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest in San Diego, who describes her affiliate’s long-time relationship with Advanced Bioscience Resources, a middleman company that has been providing aborted fetal organs since 1989.

She says: “We’ve been using them for over 10 years, really a long time, you know, just kind of renegotiated the contract. They’re doing the big government-level collections and things like that.”

And of course, it’s all about the money:

A technician who said she worked for a company that partnered with Planned Parenthood to harvest fetal tissue said there’s “incentive to try and get the hard stuff ‘cause you’re going to get more money,” in the latest undercover video targeting Planned Parenthood.

“For whatever we could procure, they would get a certain percentage,” said Holly O’Donnell, identified as an ex-procurement technician for StemExpress, a Placerville, Calif., company. “The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens. No one else really cared, but the main nurse did because she knew that Planned Parenthood was getting compensated.”

O’Donnell said she worked for six months identifying pregnant women at Planned Parenthood who met the standards for fetal tissue orders and then helped to harvest fetal body parts after abortions at Planned Parenthood facilities.

StemExpress “supplies human blood, tissue products, primary cells and other clinical specimens to biomedical researchers around the world,” according to its website.

O’Donnell describes the company a different way.

“StemExpress is a company that hires procurement techs to draw blood and dissect dead fetuses and sell the parts to researchers,” she said. “They’ve partnered with Planned Parenthood and they get part of the money because we pay them to use their facilities. And they get paid from it. They do get some kind of benefit.”

The graphic video once again shows how detached and calloused those involved with fetal organ harvesting become: two lab techs are shown picking through fetal tissue with tweezers in an effort to find the organs of an aborted baby. After one of the techs picks out a pair of intact kidneys someone off-camera laughs and says, “Five stars!”

Three videos released finds Planned Parenthood in crisis mode:

Planned Parenthood has enlisted high-profile Washington public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker as it scrambles to deal with the ongoing scandal and release of a third undercover video Tuesday showing a clinic’s staff handling fetal tissue after an abortion.

The additional PR firepower reflects the growing pressure on the women’s health organization amid building GOP calls to cut its $540 million in government funding.

SKDKnickerbocker is no newbie to working on Planned Parenthood issues. The Democratically aligned firm is run by well-connected operatives, including Anita Dunn and Hilary Rosen. It also worked with the group during the 2012 election cycle, according to SKDKnickerbocker’s website.

–Dana

71 Responses to “Third Planned Parenthood Video: Show Me The Money, Show Me The Parts”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (86e864)

  2. Anita Dunn and Hilary Rosen, both former Obamastration officials, each had a large, bloody hand in the character assassination of Medal of Freedom awardee Nancy Brinker, the woman who founded the Susan G. Komen foundation in the memory of her sister, a victim of breast cancer. Planned Parenthood and the Democrat Party employed SKDKnickerbocker to create a vilification campaign against Brinker and Komen official Karen Handel, a former Republican gubernatorial nominee in Georgia. You may remember how Brinker, in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding caused by a flash campaign against Komen unleashed on social media and the floors of Congress, was savaged by onetime Komen spokeswoman Andrea Mitchell – a breast cancer survivor herself – in a live interview.

    L.N. Smithee (f6d9e4)

  3. Only surprise is that they don’t have a drive-thru ala carte menu to order off of… yet.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  4. yeah, well don’t expect much from MSM or Dems.

    seeRpea (65ab7f)

  5. L.N.!!!!! The nexus of leftist politicos, advocacy groups, politicians, and federal dollars is disgusting.

    JD (34f761)

  6. The video is clearly a product of selective editing.

    AZ Bob (34bb80)

  7. Say, there’s damn good money in this body parts business. I wonder if there’s a market for geezer parts.

    ropelight (a1c201)

  8. Hot Air is reporting that a fourth video has surfaced, PP apparently does not know what is in the video, and it could be 8 hours long.

    Of course, PP may just be saying that so if it turns out to be shorter they can claim it’s edited.

    Oh, and the Center for Medical Progress handed the video over to the Texas AG, and it is scheduled to debut at a hearing on PP in the Texas Senate.

    Steve57 (20f7d7)

  9. The worst thing of all about the pro-Planned-Parenthood crowd, including the pathetic excuse for a president now occupying the White House, is their belief that goodness, humaneness and big-hearted sophistication are at the core of their politics and philosophy.

    Mark (e9ce45)

  10. My favorite thing about the left’s response is the “heavily edited” canard in every single report as if this is something that no one has ever done in the history of media.

    If you didn’t know before, the media and its enablers think you are too stupid to put a spoon in your mouth. Yet you live to thwart them. Maybe it’s science or something.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  11. And ask knickerbocker is back on the job

    narciso (ee1f88)

  12. I don’t think the full-length video has been posted yet. When it is, I’ll add it to this post.

    Dana (86e864)

  13. Fox News is tweeting:

    David Daleiden from the Center for Medical Progress says there are 100s of hours of video from #PlannedParenthood

    “Daleiden: Full interactions from inside #PlannedParenthood will be released in the coming days.

    Daleiden says around 12 videos on the #PlannedParenthood scandal will be released in total.

    Dana (86e864)

  14. Is the selling that PP is doing legal? Human body parts selling is illegal
    http://healthcare.findlaw.com/patient-rights/can-i-sell-an-organ.html
    I suppose that PP would argue that a fetus is not human. On the other hand, the organ is apparantly viable and i think it would be tough to argue in court that there should be a difference in selling the parts of fetus and that of someone who died of old age.

    seeRpea (65ab7f)

  15. What are they using the body parts for?

    Matt (ac7196)

  16. I believe that most people didn’t think about this topic very clearly. I suspect that they didn’t want to. The extremists, of course, had no problem with it. But most people?

    Well, the videos are telling the truth.

    F. Paul Wilson is a pretty fabulous science fiction and fantasy author (he wrote the “Repairman Jack” novels). Wilson is also an MD. Many years ago, he wrote a horror story called “Buckets,” which is relevant to this discussion.

    At the time, folks went nuts about how he was “playing into the hands of religious fanatics” with the story. He replied very politely that he knew more about it than they did, as an MD.

    I think that there are many things we take for granted every day that we don’t think deeply about. Most often because we don’t want to, because then we would need to deal with the reality of the situation.

    Like this horror story that the news sure doesn’t like to cover. But no worries. All PP has to say is that things were “edited” and that a “religious group” made the videos. Then most people will turn their backs on it.

    The part that gets me? The number of people ignoring or minimizing this mess whom I *know* would lose their marbles if this was being done to their dogs or cats.

    I just shake my head, and want the mother ship to come back to Earth and take me back to my home planet.

    Earth is a weird place.

    Thanks for posting this uncomfortable topic, Dana.

    Simon Jester (d199c7)

  17. Here’s my favorite column from my local rag.

    Yep, it’s hard to talk about it because it’s all “ick” and all. Another brave journalist apologizing for missing the point that fetal “tissue,” for some reason that is unknown to science, can be used to heal other, what is the word? Humans. Either that “tissue” is human or it is not.

    So, let’s venture into the tear-jerking anecdote to justify baby murder:

    “A Fort Worth family watched in agony as a beloved wife and daughter who was technically dead was forced to incubate a damaged fetus until a judge allowed them to disconnect a ventilator. Some politicians have already said they want to make it harder for judges to intervene in similar cases.”

    Well, holy crap what in the world? Someone tried to save a life but, by God, a judge said let the already dead woman die and the baby be damned.

    Here’s my favorite part, though: “Planned Parenthood and its supporters are willing to stand up to this overreach. Detractors call that pro-abortion. I call it pro-privacy, pro-liberty.”

    In other words, you stupid conservatives, abortion is liberty. That’s the most interesting part of the column. A judicial mandate equals liberty no matter what you think about the issue.

    I am not a woman, of course. Regardless, women may have many reasons to seek an abortion and I see no reason for the federal government to take a side one way or another. It is not a privacy issue nor a liberty issue. It is a personal issue. In a free society, a woman should be able to make this decision, whether I agree or not.

    Can we at least, though, stop talking about the issue with euphemisms about what abortion really entails? If indeed, abortion is about “non-viable tissue.” Why is it so difficult to talk about what it really is? A fetus is as human as you or me and any fetus has the DNA to prove it.

    Liberals like to talk about settled science except when it makes them uncomfortable. I will never force a woman to have an abortion nor deny her the choice to do so. I do not, though, think it is a right. I have no problem with it being a law.

    I am not uncomfortable talking about it, whether you agree with me or not. This may be my last post because I don’t need the drama.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  18. Ag80, this is the kind of thing Orwell wrote about: the name you give something creates its own reality, independent of fact.

    Add that to Teh Narrative that must be obeyed and…well, you know the rest.

    I enjoy your posts.

    Simon Jester (d199c7)

  19. Oops, contradicted myself. To clarify, I am not uncomfortable about talking about it, but I may not respond because I don’t need the drama. I am sure I will post again. Many times, much to the boredom of all.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  20. I have said it from the first video, one word.
    Barbaric

    mg (31009b)

  21. We all need to own the decisions we make. It’s a promise, a reward, and a punishment.

    Simon Jester (d199c7)

  22. This is worse than what the chicoms are up to.
    Since democrats and mconnell like killing babies for parts, perhaps beating this issue to death is the right thing to do.
    mcconnell is a barbarian and enjoys the profits that come from killing babies, otherwise he would have stopped this craziness.

    mg (31009b)

  23. Matt asked:

    What are they using the body parts for?

    Soylent Green.

    The snarky Dana (f6a568)

  24. Mr Jester wrote:

    The part that gets me? The number of people ignoring or minimizing this mess whom I *know* would lose their marbles if this was being done to their dogs or cats.

    Oh, absotively, posilutely! The left want to string up anyone accused of anything even remotely like abusing an animal, but slaughtering living human beings — other than the ones who have committed actual crimes, of course — doesn’t bother them in the slightest.

    The Dana shaking his head (f6a568)

  25. “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”

    Wait…. A liberal (i.e., socialist) strongly advocating for a capitalist model?

    Will the scandals never cease?

    😀

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  26. Another brave journalist apologizing for missing the point that fetal “tissue,” for some reason that is unknown to science, can be used to heal other, what is the word? Humans. Either that “tissue” is human or it is not.

    Not to suggest I condone this activity in ANY way, but the above comment shows the logical trap inherent in most anti-abortionist stance, pure circular reasoning. And shoddy reasoning at that.

    1) Just because it is human tissue doesn’t make it HUMAN. I can rip off your arm and then sew it onto someone else who is missing an arm. Were you two people, briefly, there? DUH, the fact that the tissue is human doesn’t make it A HUMAN. There’s a rational distinction there, and most anti-abortion claims derive entirely from ignoring this distinction utterly and completely.

    2) At the heart of pretty much all anti-abortion stances is a virtually religious, entirely Faith based argument that a four-cell blastocyst is inherently HUMAN. A four-cell blastocyst is no more human if it can grow INTO a human than a four-cell blastocyst from a dog. At that point, it is four largely undifferentiated cells with the potential to become a human. Potential is not actual. A dream is not reality, until time and effort make it so.

    3) Equally specious are the usual arguments
    a) “It has human DNA”. Yeah. So does a scab yanked from your arm after an injury. There will be skin cells attached to it with living, viable human DNA in them. Have you been cloned when this happens?
    b) “It will grow into a human adult, given time”. Yes, and that’s where the potential element comes in. It will grow into, it is not NOW a human
    c) “It looks like a human, shortly after conception”. So do the dummies at Madame Tussauds. Nope, still not human.

    There is a massive distinction between claiming something CAN BECOME a human life, with the special protections granted it, and claiming that something IS a human life, with the special protections granted to it.

    I concur, we should discourage abortions strongly. There should be social opprobrium and other social forces put into play to openly discourage it. Allowing these transactions to take place is a step in the opposite direction, and so they ought to be fully illegal (in any regard they are not already) and, where found in violation, enforced with severe penalties.

    But abortion itself, that should still be — needs to be — human choice. Given that we cannot even DEFINE “human life” in any rational, consistently and scientifically reliable way, we have no business defining it in The Law.

    I’m not overly worried about God’s Will. That’s going to happen regardless of anything you or I or anyone else on this or any other blog does or says about the matter.

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  27. Given that we cannot even DEFINE “human life” in any rational, consistently and scientifically reliable way, we have no business defining it in The Law.

    You cannot. The Law does a pretty good job of it, and so do most people.

    nk (dbc370)

  28. You know, ‘organlegging’ is a staple in certain dystopian sci-fi genres and settings.

    I didn’t think it would be a staple of reality.

    Toastrider (4c0340)

  29. They are all quite proud of their callousness, aren’t they? It’s all a big joke. I guess that’s what it takes to justify this carnage to themselves.

    And they do need more money, don’t they? I mean, Cecile Richards makes $400,000 per year. It’s hard to find top exec types with no soul and lots of administrative skill.

    Patricia (5fc097)

  30. @IGotBupkis

    A human fetus is a distinct, growing, living organism of species homo sapiens.

    1) A severed limb is not a distinct, complete, growing, living organism (where complete does not mean finished and unchanging, but “having all parts or elements; lacking nothing; whole; entire; full”

    2) The fact that the fetus is a distinct, complete, growing, living organism of species homo sapiens is not based on religion or faith or any moral code. It IS a human. Morality only enters into the picture when we decide whether society imputes to it moral standing equal to that of other humans. But that is a moral distinction made outside of science.

    3)
    a) A scab is not a distinct, complete, growing, living organism.
    b) Noting that it will grow into a human adult is typically used only to emphasize that the human fetus is HUMAN. A member of our species. It is not a standalone justification for the pro-life stance.
    c) “Looks like a human”… no, it IS a human. But many have been lied to, have been told it’s “just a clump of undifferentiated cells”. The opinion of many ordinary citizens is thus steered to the erroneous belief that the fetus is no different than a wart or some other growth.

    It is absurd to assert that it is impossible to define “human life” in any “rational, consistently and scientifically reliable way”. Quite the contrary, it is ridiculously easy, but greatly unpalatable for those who wish abortion to remain legal.

    cnh (521396)

  31. IGotBupkis, you know that every single mainstream embryology textbook in existence disagrees with you, right?

    Now, most of my science classes were in chemical kinetics and advanced quantum mechanics, but I’m pretty sure that “life begins at conception” is a very basic scientific fact. Your life didn’t begin when you were wanted or when you were born; it began when sperm met egg.

    If you really want to see this in action, look at foetal homicide laws. In many states, it’s a second crime when a woman miscarries as the result of violence done to her – and that second crime isn’t “interfering with potential human life;” it’s murder. See, Scott Peterson’s double homicide charge.

    bridget (1deba5)

  32. Dignity!

    seeRpea (65ab7f)

  33. “DUH, the fact that the tissue is human doesn’t make it A HUMAN.”

    DUH, nice false equivalence. I do not recall anybody saying a harvested liver from an aborted fetus was a HUMAN. Can you point out somebody advancing such an argument?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  34. Now that the Dem cleaners have been hired, I wouldn’t count on YouTube as a reliable vehicle.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  35. “Now that the Dem cleaners have been hired, I wouldn’t count on YouTube as a reliable vehicle.”

    papertiger – Well, we certainly cannot be permitted to describe the deceptive and ghoulish practices and attitudes of lawless organizations such as Planned Parenthood is actual factual terms. Minimization and rationalization are the watch words of the day.

    Don’t forget the EUPHEMISMs!!!!

    Products of conception.

    LOL!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  36. Lion > fetus, daley.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  37. 26 -IGB

    It is you who is suffering from false logic when you use this blatantly dishonest argument:

    Not to suggest I condone this activity in ANY way, but the above comment shows the logical trap inherent in most anti-abortionist stance, pure circular reasoning. And shoddy reasoning at that.

    1) Just because it is human tissue doesn’t make it HUMAN. I can rip off your arm and then sew it onto someone else who is missing an arm. Were you two people, briefly, there? DUH, the fact that the tissue is human doesn’t make it A HUMAN. There’s a rational distinction there, and most anti-abortion claims derive entirely from ignoring this distinction utterly and completely.

    Is an arm, by itself, biologically programmed to grow into a complete, distinct human being? Your argument is falsely premised, though absolutely used by the pro-abortion apologists to cloud the science of the issue, not to mention the basic morality. A fertilized human ovum is the very beginning of the life cycle, and if not prevented from following its biological programming via accidental or deliberate termination, it will continue along the human life cycle as a zygote, then embryo, fetus, neonate, infant, toddler, child, adolescent, young adult, middle aged adult, elderly adult, and progressing to death. Current law has an arbitrary definition of the point at which an individual becomes entitled to the right to being declared ‘alive’, which claims to be based on science, but is actually based on smokescreen convenience for those wanting to have a legally protected ability to terminate the pre-born. There is no case in human history of a normal fertilized ovum developing into a fern, or a pencil eraser, or a pop tart, or anything other than a human along the species-specific life cycle. There is no case in history of a human originating from anything other than a fertilized ovum. Once the pluripotent cells of the zygote have differentiated sufficiently to form kidneys, arms, hearts, brains or any other human organ, it seems horrifically unethical and intellectually twisted to claim that the fetal remains were not sufficiently human to be considered “life”, but are sufficiently human to use for human medical experimentation. The fact that the ghouls of Planned Parenthood are working so frenetically to hide what they do with the aborted fetal remains is a glowing neon sign that they know inherently what they are doing is gruesome, unethical and unacceptable. That they are seen now in three separate videos discussing how to make the most money off their diabolical fetal organ/tissue trafficking is an indication of their unfathomable lack of humanity. The contemptibly chilling “joke” about wanting a Lamborghini – to be paid for from the selling of aborted fetal organs and tissues – is exactly the mindset of nazis sifting through the remains of cremated Jews looking for gold fillings. It is monstrous. It is vile. It is absolutely evil.

    Planned Parenthood delenda est.

    Pete (ceb4bf)

  38. this is actually the FIFTH video if you count the raw footage ones plus the heavily edited ones where they cut the footage to make it look like Planned Parenthood is harvesting organs and stuff from babies and trading them for high performance sports cars

    this time so far you just get a heavily edited one, so ergo there are five videos so far

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  39. happyfeet, it is actually the twenty fifth video if you count the twenty more heavily edited ones where they cut even more footage to make it look like Planned Parenthood is harvesting organs and stuff from babies and trading them (you mean selling them) to pay their mortgages, go out to dinner in swank restaurants, buy 70″ flat screen TV’s and more. I think talking about chopping up babies over a glass of wine and using the “crunches” to buy the Lambo says enough though.

    Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27)

  40. You can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep…

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/29/satanic-cult-pledges-funds-to-support-abortion-rights/

    Portrait of Leftist Logic:

    The Confederate Flag and all monuments to Confederate leaders must be destroyed because they are all considered racist….but the organization founded by Margaret Sanger, whose writings are clearly racist towards blacks and asians, including instructions on how to pay off black ministers to get them to propagandize for abortion, is to be praised for working to give women of all races the choice to kill their unwanted progeny.

    Pete (ceb4bf)

  41. this is for sure the first video what doesn’t feature a light healthy salad Mr. Hoagie

    it’s very troubling

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  42. The $400 grand salary of the honcho gets me. Hell, that’s more than I make and I do honest work with no “parts” to sell. And a Lambo? They’re for thirty year old day-traders with small peckers. Tell her to get a Mrs. Hoagie car, a Bentley Mulsanne and save 200 grand too.

    Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27)

  43. 41.this is for sure the first video what doesn’t feature a light healthy salad Mr. Hoagie

    You got that right happyfeet. One must get their fiber if one’s engaged in the parts business. Funny, I used to picture Pep Boys when I thought of the parts business. No more of that!

    Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27)

  44. cecile reminders me of the hoochie in buffy what created Adam the killer robot

    she was so mean but mostly she just got all wrapped up in her own agenda

    it ended badly for her

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  45. The taxpayers did not get a thank you for buying those salads and wine. Entitled nazi baby butchers are parasites.

    mg (31009b)

  46. the Planned Parenthood has to be defunded now cause of everyone’s grossed out by the harvesting

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  47. they would be the perfect client for wolfram and heart, lila would probably be first chair,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  48. yes yes (hart you mean)

    lila was capable and smart but bless her heart she made bad choices

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  49. on second thought, even lila might pass, the other guy might take the case

    ,http://therightscoop.com/employees-received-bonuses-for-harvesting-organs-says-former-houston-planned-parenthood-director/

    narciso (ee1f88)

  50. Yesterday, the founder of the Center For Medical Progress, David Daleiden, told Sean Hannity CMP has 9 more videos.

    “We have close to 300 hours total of undercover video that was gathered during a 30 month long in depth investigative journalism study of how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of the babies they abort,”

    (each edited highlight video released will have the full unedited footage posted on CMP’s website)

    ropelight (8d78c6)

  51. That’s right narciso, yesterday the Los Angeles Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order preventing CMP from releasing any more videos

    ropelight (8d78c6)

  52. I’d make a thousand copies and circulate them all over the world. Screw the LA Superior Court and the horse….you know the rest. Hell, I’ll take a copy let’s see’em stop me.

    Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27)

  53. was it yesterday, that wasn’t the notion they suggested,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  54. CMP should obey the superior court’s edict as closely as Obama, Hillary! Clinton, Koskinen, Lois Lerner, Chucklehead Fatah (D-PA), Jesse Jackson Jr., and about a thousand other Democrat officeholder’s/appointees adhere to the law.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  55. narciso, the following is from your linked article:

    The Los Angeles Superior Court order issued Tuesday prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of three high-ranking StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May. It appears to be the first legal action prohibiting the release of a video from the organization.

    ropelight (8d78c6)

  56. “Secret Service Agents Claim Clinton Marriage ‘Total Fake’…
    Hillary ‘so abusive, being assigned to her detail is considered form of punishment’… ”

    hahahahahahahahahah…HA!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  57. I stand corrected, I thought it had happened today,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  58. My oldest is questioning living in the u.s.a.
    can’t say as I blame her. She can teach anywhere.

    mg (31009b)

  59. I’m with the Colonel. Tell the court when they get Hillary’s emails then they can talk to CMP about videos. Hers is national security the videos are just uncomfortable information. We are way past time to start defying these courts, their rulings and their judges and begin administering a little traditional American justice ourselves.

    Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27)

  60. I’m glad you said u.s.a. and not “America”, mg. You’d be up on charges.

    Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27)

  61. Given that we cannot even DEFINE “human life” in any rational, consistently and scientifically reliable way, we have no business defining it in The Law.

    You cannot. The Law does a pretty good job of it, and so do most people.

    For both it is entirely and completely ARBITRARY. Otherwise it would be impossible to make the distinction that a murderer deserves to be killed. There would be no argument of any kind about abortions.

    Yes, there is a big fat fuzzy dividing line about which one can say “this is, this is not”. A sperm cell? Not Human Life. A fully grown man or woman, Human Life.

    But there is a space in between which is ENTIRELY WHAT THIS MATTER IS ABOUT. If it was a clearly defined line, then there would not be any argument or question in the first place.

    Everyone would know and agree.

    This is self-evident Truth. All other claims are self-deluding folderol — on BOTH SIDES.

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  62. Where’s the Pope on the Planned Parenthood atrocity and the extermination of Christians in the Middle East? To busy highlighting Global Warmening?

    Shame on him.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  63. Presumably there would be Catholics among them.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  64. Is an arm, by itself, biologically programmed to grow into a complete, distinct human being?

    And you don’t see that you’re admitting, unintentionally, to a distinction, which you don’t like?

    “…into a complete, distinct, human being”

    Meaning it’s not yet a complete, distinct, human being.

    So, no, there is no logical flaw.

    The QUESTION — and I concur, it IS ONE, which is why I take issue with basing THE LAW on a matter of such substantial question — is, does it represent sufficiently much of a human being as to deserve the special protections we give humans above and beyond other life forms?

    I personally doubt if, short of referring to a Christian soul applied at the moment of conception, you can make a rational argument that a four-cell blastocyst IS a human life. Everything devolves back into “Looks human”, “human DNA”, and “can become a human”. None of those say it is HUMAN, only that it may become that.

    It is clearly not capable of reasoning, thinking, feeling, or having a sense of self on ANY LEVEL of scientific analysis at this point.

    So now we have a quandary — where does it develop these qualities? At what point? We probably also want to make sure we choose our dividing point on the proper side of this, i.e., the “not human life” side. I believe the closest one can come to actual, legitimate, scientific basis for arguing in favor of it being even possibly a reasoning, thinking, feeling being with a sense of self does not — cannot — occur before it has its own independent brain waves.

    Which is about the place where most state laws currently place it — at the end of the first trimester.

    I concur, it would be nice if science had a better, more effective definition to offer, but until it does, that’s where The Law should make its stand.

    And given the level of opposition to making it earlier than that, you’re going to do nothing but reverse the same error that Roe vs. Wade made (that is, make the exact same error, just in reverse) — it set FEDERAL law before there was any legitimate consensus from the people. The only result of forcing law down people’s throats when too many disagree with it outright is going to be to do the same thing as the drug war has done — f*** things up.

    It needs, at this point, to devolve down to the state level, where it can and should sit for now.

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  65. it seems horrifically unethical and intellectually twisted to claim that the fetal remains were not sufficiently human to be considered “life”, but are sufficiently human to use for human medical experimentation.

    And BTW, do note that I don’t advocate for this at all. I believe we DO, as Christians, have a social interest in discouraging abortions. I just don’t believe we can use our Faith as a reason to claim for Law. To do that is to open the door to Sharia Law, because it means that whatever religious faith can get enough backers behind it get to define laws based on it.

    So the discouragement should be, at this point, limited to social opprobrium, general education (preferably not depending on a massive “ick” factor) and counseling. Given that the primary cause of a reduction in drug use over the last two decades has been solely due to social opprobrium, and not Law, it seems awfully likely to be that one will have far more effect on the Abortion front using this mechanism, too. By all means, get Roe v. Wade reversed, it has no business defining Law at the Fed level. Just don’t try and get an inversion of RvW passed which eliminates abortion on the Fed level, either. Let the states define it.

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  66. Where’s the Pope on the Planned Parenthood atrocity and the extermination of Christians in the Middle East? To busy highlighting Global Warmening?

    The idiocy of liberals and liberalism has infiltrated every segment of modern society, including many or most of its various institutions.

    There is a prediction that the world of Western civilization — increasingly debased, decadent and effete — is going to eventually meet on a major battleground facing Islamic civilization on one hand, the dynamics of the Third World on the other hand.

    In such a scenario, I don’t know who to root for, who to root against.

    Mark (d3f102)

  67. what is the social good, that has come from abortion, when 1/5 of the current population has been eliminated, when a whole assemblyline of death, has arisen, that is far from the only sin in this country, but it emblematic of the void we find ourselves in,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  68. Good one Rev. BHH

    mg (31009b)

  69. Bupkiss, I will ask again the question that shows the flaw in your argument claiming a lack of humanity in the pre-born individual. And for the record, note I have not once argued from a religious point in stating my position, as doing so merely sets up a strawman distraction target for pro-aborts who disdain religious ideology. My reference to the Satanic Temple supporting abortion was posted to demonstrate the association of THEIR “religious” support for abortion, not to argue my religious beliefs vis a vis the subject.

    Has there ever been an adult human who came into existence without first going through the stage of the human life cycle starting at the point of a fertilized ovum?

    Furthermore, why is it unethical to take organs from prisoners on death row, but considered acceptable to harvest organs from aborted fetuses and implant them in rats for the express purpose of growing them large enough to transplant into other humans, as the despicable California company states it is trying to do? The idea that traversing the few centimeters of the birth canal and transitioning from the fetal stage of human development to the neonatal stage of human development is all that is required for having the right to life is completely arbitrary. To make the philosophical claim that the fetus is ineligible for the right to life because it is dependent on the mother in utero begs the question of how many neonates could survive outside the womb without another older human to feed, change, clothe, care for and protect them until they reached sufficient mobility and capability to care for themselves. It is known that Peter Singer, the so-called ethicist at Princeton, advocates for parents to have the right to kill their neonates ( defined as newborns up to 28 days post-birth) because said humans are not “self-aware”.

    Babies died at 32 weeks gestation if delivered at that age as recently as 1963 (Patrick Kennedy) but we are now saving these premature infants as early as 22-23 weeks gestational age – a full 4 months before nature intends for them to be born. Are these infants unworthy of the right to life simply because they were not born at term? Why is the mere fact they are outside the womb, when the natural human life cycle is for them to continue growing and developing in the womb, somehow magically differentiating them as worthy of being classified as human versus the same gestational age fetus not being considered human solely on their three dimensional location in reference to the uterus from whence the individual began its life cycle as a fertilized ovum?

    Finally, how is it any more ethical to harvest organs from aborted fetuses for payment per item than simply grind up the tissues from aborted fetuses to acquire as base proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and minerals for nutritional consumption for pay? If these the tissue from aborted fetuses aren’t “human”, then what is the difference between consuming that as nutrition, from eating a steak?

    Pete (6d94b7)


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