I was just waking up, still lying in bed, catching up on the new news, checking to see how The New York Times covered the story I was reading in The Washington Post last night. I read the first few screens of the NYT story:
Abortion opponents on Tuesday renewed their campaign against Planned Parenthood... after the release of a video that surreptitiously captured an official from the group explaining how it provides fetal parts to medical researchers...That's paragraph 1. Paragraph 4:
“This is not something with any revenue stream that affiliates are looking at,” the official, Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, says in the video. “This is a way to offer patients the services they want and do good for the medical community and still maintain access.”Paragraph 6:
“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,” a Planned Parenthood spokesman, Eric Ferrero, said in a statement. “There is no financial..."Here's where I do the scroll that gets to the screen that is my screen shot above:
"... benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.”Bright, smiley Hillary face!
This is the way advertising works these days, and I wonder, what comes first, the slanting of the article toward bolstering the morale of those who believe in abortion rights or the availability of money from a super-rich presidential campaign?
Ah, but there is no beginning. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? When does human life begin? It's in the mind of the beholder.
Pay no attention to that Planned Parenthood senior director behind the distorting reflections of that forest of wine glasses through which the sneaky camera shot the woman who explained that tissue is donated by willing patients who support science, and Planned Parenthood, covering its shipping and handling expenses, serves its patients and advances science, following the highest ethical and legal standards. How dare right-wingers take unflattering photographs of a woman who did not consent to appear in that movie! Don't look at that pornography! Look at this woman. Hillary! She's ready for her closeup. She's looking exactly the way she chooses to look, the way she needs you to see her look, the way that will help you continue to believe what you want to keep believing.
Don't stop believing!
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105 comments:
Crony capitalism.
When the media is making assumptions about Democrats and Progressives, it's always the best possible assumptions. In this case, the assumption is, permission received from the women having abortions and all tissue is going to scientific research. Even though this isn't demonstrated by the video. They'll assume the best here.
When the media is making assumption about Republicans and Conservatives, it's always the worst possible assumptions.
And they don't even realize how this is destroying them.
When does human life begin?
When organs become usable by or in research for humans. I doubt that studies of chicken livers would work as well.
It's in the mind of the beholder.
That sounds like something a sociopath would say to excuse his actions.
When does human life begin?
Anytime Ovulation or ejaculation occurs.
I would encourage commenters to look into what fetal tissue is used for — the nature of the underlying research — and to consider whether you are thinking about this issue through whatever you already think about abortion itself.
I would recommend the thought experiment — after you see what the research is — assume you have the opposite position on abortion from the one you have, and: What do you think of the use rather than the disposal of fetal tissue?
Is it possible to think about these subjects separately? Is it wrong to think about these subjects separately?
Would you let people facing the death penalty to chose to consent to execution by organ harvesting?
"Would you let people facing the death penalty to chose to consent to execution by organ harvesting?"
Is your answer dependent on what you think of the death penalty?
Do the thought experiment of imagining that you have the opposite opinion on the death penalty than the one you have and then answer the question.
No 'revenue stream'?
I'm speechless.............
When you start out trying to convince yourself and others that human life is not human life and thus not subject to the protections of human life under the constitution, you can pretty much justify anything. Which means you stand next to the most horrific mass murderers in history.
"That sounds like something a sociopath would say to excuse his actions."
No. Look it up. A sociopath doesn't care what's in other people's minds or even what humanity consists of.
Blogger PB said...
When you start out trying to convince yourself and others that human life is not human life and thus not subject to the protections of human life under the constitution, you can pretty much justify anything. Which means you stand next to the most horrific mass murderers in history.
And you consider this a good time for thought experiments. Examine yourself! Don't look at the video, let's have a thought experiment!
And a sociopath doesn't care about excusing his actions!
I know you enjoy right wing nuttery, but here is the truthhttp://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/07/14/lila_rose_and_live_action_have_another_planned_parenthood_sting_yet_again.html
"When you start out trying to convince yourself and others that human life is not human life and thus not subject to the protections of human life under the constitution..."
Outside of the prohibition on slavery, the Constitution doesn't protect born persons from harms done by private citizens.
Killings committed by private citizens don't violate the Constitution.
Well, if you don't eat the fetuses, then reusing them isn't cannibalism, is it.
Hitler's Germany used the hair of dead Jews for cloth, and the gold dental work went into the treasury. Never let a Jew go to waste.
Planned Parenthood is merely repurposing a tragedy into something useful. And it isn't even a tragedy, it's a choice.
Morality. Feh.
Hey, a strict reading of Constitutional language!
How quaint.
@Annette Why don't you try to engage with people and persuade? You couldn't even take the trouble to make the link hot... or even put a space where the URL begins. I doubt if anyone will bother, and most, I suspect, will regard you as a fly-by insulter who doesn't care about other people. How does that have any chance of helping people see the value of access to abortion?
Killings committed by private citizens don't violate the Constitution.
Then why was Roe V Wade necessary?
No. Look it up. A sociopath doesn't care what's in other people's minds or even what humanity consists of
Neither do people who support abortion.
Eric, I consider this a good time for thinking and reason and logic, not merely reacting or merely going along because it's easy.
Who determines whether the "research" is justified? Does PP provide these human organs and tissue to anyone who has the money? Does PP apply a filter and only work with researchers whose work and goals they support? Does PP hide this activity or do they openly disclose it on their website among all other services. Does the mother/father understand what is happening and are they able to give informed consent?
Once you tie an economic incentive to committing abortions, you can kiss your high-minded rhetoric in defense of the practice goodbye. That was the larger point of the hidden camera video.
Would you let people facing the death penalty to chose to consent to execution by organ harvesting?"
No. I would consent to them donating their organs after death.
assume you have the opposite position on abortion from the one you have, and: What do you think of the use rather than the disposal of fetal tissue?
If you have a signed consent form from the parents I would allow the donation of fetal tissue. I would never allow an abortionist to make a profit off of selling fetal tissue.
And the New York Time once again crosses the line from the merely tendentious to the sickeningly creepy.
"'Killings committed by private citizens don't violate the Constitution.' Then why was Roe V Wade necessary?"
It amazes me that after decades of talk about abortion, a question at that level needs to be asked. You really don't know?
Texas had a statute criminalizing abortion. It was state statutory law. It was challenged as violating the Constitution.
"No. I would consent to them donating their organs after death."
Is your position on fetal tissue research dependent on whether the fetus was killed by a method other than the harvesting of the organs?
Abortion is where being legal delaminates from being moral.
"Once you tie an economic incentive to committing abortions, you can kiss your high-minded rhetoric in defense of the practice goodbye. That was the larger point of the hidden camera video."
But the patient gets nothing, and PP gets $30 to $100, which they say covers shipping and handling. $30 to $100 isn't much. You really think that works as an incentive?
"I would encourage commenters to look into what fetal tissue is used for — the nature of the underlying research — and to consider whether you are thinking about this issue through whatever you already think about abortion itself."
Well, my own thoughts on abortion are somewhat complicated--not in the "abortions are all murder" camp nor the "nothing wrong with any abortion, ever" camp. But even to the extent that I think abortion can be wrong, I really have no problem with making medical use of discarded fetuses. If the question is "toss it all out" or "make some good out of it" I think the latter makes the most sense.
Of course I'm also in favor of letting people sell their own organs, so maybe I'm not speaking for the mainstream on this.
In 2011, according to its own literature, Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions.
That;'s $33,227,800 using their numbers.
Annette Cox
So the "truth" according to the article is that abortion is messy like heart surgery or other yukky medical stuff that almost makes the author faint.
Lean in, Annette, converse. Write out your smartness instead of linking to an article that is dubious in its smartness. Lean in, woman. Converse.
Is your position on fetal tissue research dependent on whether the fetus was killed by a method other than the harvesting of the organs?
No, it is based on my opposition to selling human organs for profit. Which is why I would allow donation with informed consent.
Texas had a statute criminalizing abortion. It was state statutory law. It was challenged as violating the Constitution.
The argument that was made is that a fetus is not a person and so has no Constitutional right to life that trump the right of a woman to the newly created right of privacy.
Ann, sorry for stopping at the constitution and not going into a detailed discussion of common law (quickening as viability) the unalienable rights (life, liberty) referenced in our founding document and other legal protection aimed at the innocent. Though I suspect any most points along that path you'll not agree with me.
My perspective is that life is a pretty clear concept and that it begins at conception. If you don't want to create life, you can take steps to avoid it, but once it is created, you must do what you can to preserve it. When you get "fuzzy" about this for personal needs, social aims or political aims you are on a slippery slope and you won't stay in one place for long and not likely to go uphill to higher better place.
If a society wants to justify killing, that's fine with me, but they need to be honest about it and not try to redefine words and scientific concepts because they are inconvenient to their goals. Once you start doing this you are on a slippery slope of accepting the redefinition of other words and scientific concepts for other goals. Pretty soon we're at a point where words are meaningless and scientific concepts don't matter. The ends justify the means.
Pretty soon we're at a point where words are meaningless and scientific concepts don't matter. The ends justify the means.
Isn't that the Democratic Party platform this time around?
Ann said: "But the patient gets nothing, and PP gets $30 to $100, which they say covers shipping and handling. $30 to $100 isn't much. You really think that works as an incentive?"
There are many aspects of the activity that can work as an incentive.
1. The money exchanged doesn't have to be significant, merely positive cash flow. An arbitrary even amount clearly doesn't just cover shipping. There's overhead and the thing about non-profits is that they sometimes have to go to great expense to stay non-profit.
2. There can be other things that reward the individuals involved for being involved in or overseeing the activity: recognition, conferences, trips, bonuses, future job opportunities.
(Bleah, I can't write today. Take 2.)
"But the patient gets nothing, and PP gets $30 to $100, which they say covers shipping and handling."
$30 to $100 seems like a pretty wide range. And is PP saying that if they didn't get that amount, they would tell medical researchers to take a hike? They are presumably a nonprofit chain of abortion clinics. (Its nonprofit status is debatable, but we'll go with it for the sake of argument.) If PP sees furthering medical research as part of their mission, then the economic incentive is non-monetary. (Any behavioral economists want to weigh in on this?)
McDonald's recycles their waste french fry oil and is paid for it by the recycler. The fee that the recycler pays is not going to add even a penny to MCD stock dividends, but it is just enough to provide them with a positive incentive. Same principle for the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic chain.
"PP gets $30 to $100, which they say covers shipping and handling. $30 to $100 isn't much. You really think that works as an incentive?"
-- That's per specimen, not per shipment. Two lungs, a liver and a heart is now $120-$400. It doesn't sound like a lot, but considering that the doctor also admitted to hiding the transactions, that's money that may not be being reported. Another quote that Hot Air found has the doctor saying that the affiliates want this to be a net gain in revenue if possible, which is why the price range is so wide.
People have mugged and killed people for $5, so I'd be willing to bet that someone would sell things that they think are just some useless clumps of cells that may contribute to life saving research for $30 to $100. I mean, remember, that these people ALREADY induced an illegal partial birth abortion to get these specimens, so there's no incentive to keep the stuff and every incentive to dispose of it quickly and quietly.
@PB: Precisely my point, only you stated it better. Incentives that are identified in economics are seldom monetary.
(Eye kant spel either.)
Also, we don't know if the price quoted is correct. Different affiliates charge different things; so the doctor in this video may have been guessing [she doesn't sound too sure, and says that eventually, she wants to move to a menu-system where prices are more well quantified], so it could be more or less.
"PP gets $30 to $100"
Is that per abortion or per specimen?
And how many specimens can be obtained from one abortion? 3? 5? 10?
Gahrie said...
"In 2011, according to its own literature, Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions.
That;'s $33,227,800 using their numbers."
Maybe these women should be getting a cut.
Bob Boyd,
Four limbs, one liver, one heart. That's six items per fetus. I do not know if they use the brain tissue, so could be seven. I imagine the liver and lungs are the more expensive organs since you have to open the body cavity to harvest them intact. I am sure that is a little more distasteful, especially to the "unreasonable" abortionist who doesn't cooperate with the PP affiliate definition of "organ donation."
PB said:
If a society wants to justify killing, that's fine with me, but they need to be honest about it and not try to redefine words and scientific concepts because they are inconvenient to their goals. Once you start doing this you are on a slippery slope of accepting the redefinition of other words and scientific concepts for other goals. Pretty soon we're at a point where words are meaningless and scientific concepts don't matter. The ends justify the means.
Seems like we are already there.
I would encourage commenters to look into what fetal tissue is used for
It's not relevant.
The outrage (and the illegality) is not based on giving organs to scientific researchers.
The outrage (and the illegality) is based on selling organs for profit.
And it's hard to separate out this outrage from pro-life outrage, because the two go hand in hand.
1) These babies have been defined as non-people. And yet, medical researchers desperately want their organs. Why? If they're not people, why are these human organs so valuable to medical researchers?
2) I believe that defining these babies as non-people is the legal equivalent of defining them as property. Selling these baby parts, for profit, and putting out a price list, is ghoulish and evil. It reminds us of slavery, which is the last time the Supreme Court defined people as non-people.
Even if they were providing the organs legally [not for profit], lying to the women that they are going to have a legal abortion and then making them undergo a partial birth abortion is wrong, and if it is not illegal to lie to a patient about the procedure you intend to perform, it should be.
Also, the argument that we should sell aborted baby parts to biotech firms and universities does not change the fact that it is a crime. It's rather like the argument that we should allow partial-birth abortion does not change the fact that it is a crime.
We have two very serious criminal allegations here. Will they be investigated by the FBI? By state police?
That's at least as important as any theoretical discussion on what our laws should be. What about enforcing actual crimes, and putting rich people who violate the law behind bars?
The problem is the federal law against partial birth abortion, which is what the ghoul from PP describes in detail. Wholly apart from the legal question(s) is the ethical quagmire of basing medical decisions (length of term, position of fetus being aborted, method of extraction) on how much "damage to the product" the aborter is doing and NOT on the health and welfare of the mother.
Now try to square this practice with the reasonable law TX passed about aborters having admitting privileges nearby and following standard outpatient operating procedures. Given PP's admission that their priority is having a good harvest as opposed to providing good service, I see more such laws in the future.
Here's a question for an investigative journalist: Have any of the abortions that were changed to help procure specimens lead to any harm to the women having them performed on them? Were they aware that the risk had been heightened?
Blogger Gahrie said...
Is your position on fetal tissue research dependent on whether the fetus was killed by a method other than the harvesting of the organs?
No, it is based on my opposition to selling human organs for profit. Which is why I would allow donation with informed consent.
Would you allow other people to donate your organs?
The child isn't giving consent. Or are you arguing it's the mothers heart, it's her liver, it's her limbs, that are being sold?
If you can give consent to sell anothers body parts, then why can't you profit from it? I mean, if PP is going to profit, then why not the woman? If that's the case, can the woman keep getting pregnant to harvest more hearts, and livers, and limbs, so she can make a truck load of cash, if possible?
The child isn't giving consent.
Under the law, the child can't consent, or enter into contracts etc. It is the role of the child's parents as guardians to do so. (Except of course unless the child wants to have an abortion, or have its genitals mutilated.)
You know what? I bet organs from third trimester babies are worth more than ones from the second trimester.
I wonder if that ever effects the scheduling of an abortion? We already know it effects the process of the abortion itself.
For leftists, only 1 real question looms large in this debate over Planned Parenthoods now irrefutable practice of carving up babies for profit: barbecue or honey mustard?
"Would you let people facing the death penalty to chose to consent to execution by organ harvesting?"
No, not if the state could profit from the sale of the body parts.
"Is your answer dependent on what you think of the death penalty?"
I don't think so. I favor the death penalty, but I wouldn't want the state to have a financial incentive to promote executions because perverse incentives are never a good idea. See, for example,
http://organharvestinvestigation.net/
(That and, umm, the state doesn't crush people in the process of executing them.)
I would encourage commenters to look into what fetal tissue is used for — the nature of the underlying research — and to consider whether you are thinking about this issue through whatever you already think about abortion itself.
Professor, that thought is, honestly, horrifying.
If Mengele made a massive breakthrough that cured cancer --- would it have been worth what he did?
If the Tuskegee experiments solved a wealth of problems, would that be OK?
What it is being used for is immaterial. What they did to get it is all that matters.
This is one of the most evil things I've seen in a blog in a long while. "sure, they committed infanticide --- but they did good things with the dead bodies" is a mentality that should make one SERIOUSLY question where the concept of right and wrong exists for them.
I know you enjoy right wing nuttery, but here is the truthhttp://www.slate.com
The last part made your post a failure.
lying to the women that they are going to have a legal abortion and then making them undergo a partial birth abortion is wrong
This is a very good point, Matt. Sometimes lost in the fight over whether we are killing babies is the risk and danger to women who are paying a doctor to induce a miscarriage.
One of the insane things about Roe v. Wade is that it actually said society has no interest in protecting a woman aborting in the first trimester. Health regulations can only start in the second trimester. This means we can’t protect a woman's ability to reproduce. We can’t guard her safety. We can’t license an abortion clinic, or an abortion doctor. We can’t regulate abortion at all in the first trimester. It is to be “an abortion free of interference by the state.”
At least three states, reading this opinion, felt like they could not make it a crime for non-doctors to perform abortions (at least in the first trimester). The opinion says specifically that no abortion clinic or doctor can be licensed until the 2nd trimester! No health regulations to protect women, at all. It was insane. But states tried to follow it. Other states refused to follow this stupid opinion, because it was too damn crazy.
So the very first case after Roe had to resolve this screw-up. It's a small, slight opinion called Connecticut v. Menillo. Can we punish a non-doctor for performing an abortion? This is a major and highly important issue. And yet somehow Roe created this conflict, as opposed to resolving it.
Imagine how many women died, or were injured, over this three-year period. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court said that a woman has a right to a first trimester abortion "free of interference by the state." Then, 2.6 million abortions later, the Supreme Court issues a clarification, allowing states to make it a crime for a non-doctor to do an abortion.
So we can protect a woman's health after all, apparently. Oops.
It's crazy cases like Menillo that caused Sandra Day O'Connor to dissent, and to push hard to overrule this part of Roe. And in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, she succeeded. So now we can protect women in abortion clinics (as long as it's not an "undue burden" on the right to have an abortion).
So everything's fine for women now, right?
No. Because there is still this huge fight over whether abortion kills a baby or not. And because of this fight, liberals and feminists reflexively take the side of abortion clinics. Even when serious allegations are made that abortion is dangerous for women.
Take, for instance, the case of Dr. Bryan Finkel. Many women were alleging that he was sexually assaulting them. Whose side do you think The New York Times was on?
A few years after that sympathetic article, a far better bit of journalism appears in a small newspaper called The Phoenix New Times. (I don't know what kind of newspaper that is, maybe a free one?) Anyway, this local reporter gives quite a different impression of Dr. Finkel.
Six years later, Dr. Finkel is convicted of 22 counts of sexually molesting 13 women while they were under anesthesia.
And it's not just that the New York Times screwed up the original story. They had no follow-up report, no retraction, no apologies to the attorneys (or the women) the newspaper had implicitly maligned.
"Well, if you don't eat the fetuses, then reusing them isn't cannibalism, is it."
That's why I used to order from Domino's. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be getting a fetus pizza. Placenta, on the other hand...
Soylent Roe is people!
What Mike said.
1. Partial-birth abortions are illegal, and this process comes close to incurring partial births.
2. The procedure becomes more complicated and more dangerous to the mother if trying to harvest organs, which is perhaps not in PP's best interests.
$30 to $100 isn't much.
It's per organ or body part. It adds up to a nice little revenue stream. Enough so they are willing to violate federal law and do partial-birth abortions. The financial motivation is what motivates the crime.
"Whose side do you think The New York Times was on?"
Bill Cosby's?
Bill Clinton's?
I just can't figure out their algorithm. [Pondering]
At 12:47 I say...
No health regulations to protect women, at all.
This sentence is sloppy, sorry. Abortion agitates me.
Corrected: "No health regulations to protect women, at all in the first trimester."
Roe does allow for health regulations to protect women in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. What's crazy is this idea that there was no need to protect women in the first trimester. Justice O'Connor makes that argument very strongly here, and she would prevail on this point.
Liver is the most requested organ...
Black Mass, anyone???
I'm going to have to actually watch the damned video, aren'tI? Considering the full-court-press defense the media is playing on this it has to be very bad. Question for anyone who has watched it: Am I going to need Pepto Bismal or a barf bag?
Question for anyone who has watched it: Am I going to need Pepto Bismal or a barf bag?
It's just a woman in a restaurant, talking. You should be okay.
Tell me, were they eating while they discussed the economics of fetus parts? Because really, that might be an appetite-killer.
They were. Had some wine too, if I recall.
In the video she mentions a company that has purchased from them. Stem(something).
The first thing an investigative journalist, or law enforcement, should do is, go and look at the financial records of this company, find out how much they have purchased and what those purchases were used for.
Don't just rely on Planned Parenthood. Go after those who paid them.
Get them to turn on each other. That's where you'll get the meat.
Someone (me) mentioned yesterday the Planned Parenthood story would yield a collective yawn from the MSM.
Although not a charter member of the MSM, Cosmopolitan writer Robin Marty checks in: "Now, frankly, I'm just going to yawn."
The sub-headline of the story is interesting: "It's mostly a matter of clever wording, unsubstantiated allegations, and a reliance on the fact that most people find medical practices kind of gross."
A video admission is unsubstantiated?
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a43326/center-for-medical-progress-planned-parenthood-abortion/
@Matt Sablan "Here's a question for an investigative journalist..."
There is no longer such a thing as an "investigative journalist;" there is only Democrat oppo research by hacks who are paid by MSM outlets, or the Democrat party (a tautology, I know).
Back in 2000, 20/20 did an undercover sting operation on "Opening Lines," a company that contracted with abortion clinics. They would pay the doctors for the tissue, and then sell the tissue to a variety of research labs. They were a middleman.
Their price list was substantially higher.
$325 for a spinal cord
$550 for a reproductive organ
$999 for a brain
"We had projections of $50,000 a week. And, you know, some weeks you can hit that and some weeks you can't. It's just a matter of being able to match supply and demand."
a fetus is not a person
So the question is not "when does life begin" but when does a human become "a person."
Well, obviously this has been debated to death over the 20th Century, and Americans have allowed the courts to answer the question for them.
Suppose the Congress finally did take charge of the country. Implement a functioning system that declared a "fetus is a person." A Constitutional Amendment, like the right to speech.
Could we build the prisons fast enough, and should this be a Capital Crime?
Could we afford to build a welfare program around it?
Thinking that people will fear the law, doesn't stop other laws from being violated, just as it won't stop unwanted conception. People will have sex, and don't forget rapists set on populating the world with their seed, after drugging their victims.
There will be exceptions to women having total control of their body. How should the Amendment be written. One sentence or five paragraphs?
The idea that feminism asserts that a woman can sacrifice her unborn child as empowerment, then the child's remains used as scrap makes me very angry.
For women it's pain & numbness. Some post abortive find grief in their lost, they mourn and forgive themselves. The others become cold & numb as a way to cope. They will defend an abortion at all cost, convincing themselves it isn't what it is.
So the question is not "when does life begin" but when does a human become "a person."
A person is a live human being. That's what a person has always been. It's not a legal term of art. It's an ordinary, two-syllable word that refers to humanity.
The Supreme Court defines corporations as people and unborn babies as property. They've been playing semantics with the word that is at the very heart of our equal protection clause.
Or, to think of it another way, 750,000 Americans died to put that clause in our Constitution. And then some Ivy League attorneys go into a room and say they can't read it and don't know what the word means.
Back on the subject of Hillary and Planned Parenthood, the Federalist has a pretty damning article linking Hillary to Margaret Sanger.
Since the majority of abortions performed in America, are requested by uneducated African women living in poverty, wouldn't it be called racist to deny them their legal rights?
Since the majority of abortions performed in America, are requested by uneducated African women living in poverty, wouldn't it be called racist to deny them their legal rights?
Only if #BlackLivesDon'tMatter
No. The Supreme Court defines corporations as PERSONS. Not "people."
Why? They have to. Because that's what Congress did in the first place.
Trying to conflate 'persons' and 'people' in this context is a libtard trope.
Renee, you are absolutely right. I have some old friends that fit your description of the "cold and numb" to a T. They ridicule anyone who doesn't praise the glory of PP and abortions. Sadly, they have no clue how transparent their demand that everyone agree with them is - I compare them to the cheating husband who reinvents history as an excuse for his behavior and a way to endure his guilt -
Coupe said...
Since the majority of abortions performed in America, are requested by uneducated African women living in poverty, wouldn't it be called racist to deny them their legal rights?
No. It's racist to make them believe that abortion is their only choice. And in that you've succeeded wildly.
Trying to conflate 'persons' and 'people' in this context is a libtard trope.
So what? Why would any pro-lifer accept the Supreme Court's dishonest and fascist non-reading of our equal protection clause? Why would any pro-lifer argue that our equal protection clause protects corporations, but not babies?
Killings committed by private citizens don't violate the Constitution.
Althouse is right on the money with this. The Constitution doesn't say anything about murder, or rape, or any of the other crimes that have to be defined by state law. The Constitution doesn't say anything about abortion. This is absolutely right.
But what the Constitution does say, quite clearly, is that nobody is to be denied the equal protection of the laws. Nobody is to be defined as sub-human, as property, as outside the law.
Yes, the Supreme Court is responsible for all of this violence. But the real problem is in the dehumanization. We have stripped these babies of their humanity. We refuse to recognize them as part of our human family. That is what makes all this violence possible.
It's not that the people on the other side are monsters or bad people. They just don't see the humanity of the victims. I compare pro-choice people to slave-owners like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. Good people, nice people, heroic people. But also people living in a culture with a moral blind spot, who do not see a class of people as people.
Make no mistake, defining these babies as "non-people" is the very root of this evil.
Gahrie at 12:03, yes. In the full 3-hour tape you can hear the Sales Director of Parts from PP talk about delaying procedures until the harvest is prime. She also talks about how the more mature the parts are the better the price, thus the incentive to keep the mother incubating their goods longer than "necessary."
EMD at 12:34, you should check out the whole tape or read the long-form article at NRO. The PP Ghoul talks in great detail about positioning the fetus just right for breech extraction and then they keep just the head in the birth canal so they can crush the unneeded organs and or skull and then harvest the desired parts quickly. She describes partial birth abortion. Just like Gosnell was known to "abort" babies post-birth.
Who cares? Only the crazy right-to-life people, apparently. Does fealty to Roe really require one to shed all humanity and compassion to the extent we tolerate, even defend, the monsters that kill babies for profit and sell their tiny parts?
..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.
Anyone who talks like that is already herself dehumanized. Ditto for those who can read it and not turn away in horror.
The woman who could say straightforwardly that she'd decide which bits to "crush" based on what the buyer wanted is, um, evil. I have no other word.
I am curious, btw, whether it's known that all these fetal, er, fragments are going to medical research facilities. I remember an item maybe a decade back suggesting that a clinic in the Caribbean was offering infusions of (there's no other phrase for it) fetal slurry. Your way to fuller health!
I would think a Sr. director of Medical Services, Ms. Nucatola, would be a little more circumspect in her discussions. One doesn't advance in an organization by putting one's foot in one's mouth like this. I (like) that in the wake of her film, she's vanished from social media. How very 2015.
Having googled her picture, I'll confess that she doesn't look like what I expected (I did not watch the video).
Sorry. Dr. Nucatola. I'm sure she worked very hard for that honorific.
No. It's racist to make them believe that abortion is their only choice. And in that you've succeeded wildly.
7/15/15, 3:32 PM
In the meantime, infertile couples spend many thousands and fly all over the globe to adopt babies from Third World countries. In the hospital down the street, neonatalogists and their assistants valiantly work to save 1 pound babies while a mile away, PP is selling the parts of babies who are only different in 1 crucial way from the NICU babies - their mothers don't want them, so they are taken to the local branch of the national chop shop instead of the nursery.
We live in a country where "harvesting" tiny human parts is considered far less heinous than refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple or flying a Confederate flag. Priorities, people.
Tell me, if conservatives are so racist, why are they concerned about black babies being butchered? Logic would dictate that they'd be happy to see the members of an "inferior" race kill their offspring. Instead, it's progs who run the inner city abortion mills...but no, let's not put 2 + 2 together.
"I am curious, btw, whether it's known that all these fetal, er, fragments are going to medical research facilities. I remember an item maybe a decade back suggesting that a clinic in the Caribbean was offering infusions of (there's no other phrase for it) fetal slurry. Your way to fuller health!"
I recall reading the same. Primitive cannibals believe that if you devour the heart of a brave warrior, you somehow absorb his courage or strength. These clinics are selling the same idea to the wealthy, callous and stupid: stay young by consuming the very youngest!
I'm amazed anybody could be surprised that fetal parts from abortions are used in scientific research.
It's been going on for years!
Here's a scientific article from 1992, discussing the ethics of it:
"Are There Really Alternatives to the Use of Fetal Tissue from Elective Abortions in Transplantation Research?"
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199211263272211
sinz52: "I'm amazed anybody could be surprised that fetal parts from abortions are used in scientific research."
I see that sinz52 is furiously attempting to shift focus away from the actual story here.
Color me....unsurprised.
In discussions with prochoicers I've encountered the talking point that references organ donation: "forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term is like forcing another person to donate an organ."
Offered without further commentary since the ghoulish irony is self evident.
Agree with Renee and others- the dehumanizing is worse than I'd even realized. And I'm sorry, Professor. But giving any truck to the utilitarian justifications is to participate in evil.
From David Harsanyi:
If this was a video of some product researchers talking about the same process, but describing the vivisection of a monkey or a cat for organ harvesting instead, most Americans would be justly repulsed. Yet, because this is Planned Parenthood, an organization fulfilling its eugenicist founder’s goal of population control, it will be treated as just another dispute in the culture wars, completely devoid of scientific and moral context.
-and-
How many Americans are okay with this practice? We should find out. Liberals never have a problem making expansive arguments on emotional grounds—the single woman without health care tells all we need to know about Obamacare; the lone shooter tells us all we need to know about guns laws, etc. There is simply no reason that Nucatola should not be on television ads everywhere, sipping her wine and intimately describing how abortionists squash the life out of unborn babies for money. How many Americans would accept this policy as normal?
To be honest, I’m sort of nervous to find out.
Me, too.
assume you have the opposite position on abortion from the one you have
What is helpful to me is to assume that somebody I love has had an abortion. There have been 57 million abortions since 1973. Millions and millions of people. These are our mothers, our daughters, our sisters, our wives, our girlfriends, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers. We all know somebody who has had an abortion. We just don't know who they are, because we are so secretive about our abortions.
And it's not just women. There are millions of fathers who aborted their children, and who really do not want to talk about it.
My heart goes out to these moms and dads. That could have been me. I had a fair amount of sex when I was immature, and callous. For all I know, I did impregnate somebody and she had an abortion and never told me.
The internet is awesome for finding out information, for learning things, and for communicating ideas. But it's a bad place to make emotional connections. It's way too easy to get mad on the internet. We're all anonymous or semi-anonymous, and there is no cost associated with it.
We should all try to have some of these conversations at church or temple, or in our neighborhood, with people face to face. It's a completely different experience. Much harder, I think.
It's worse than you can imagine.
That's a rule in the history of humans. It's worse than you thought, and worse than you can imagine.
We're born thinking maybe it'll be OK, and it takes decades to learn how bad it can be.
So I assume that medical doctors like this woman are indeed harvesting organs from babies for profit. You must challenge yourself to think how bad it could be. It's worse.
Althouse: "Ah, but there is no beginning. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? When does human life begin? It's in the mind of the beholder."
Unless you are familiar with human embryology in which case it begins at the moment of fertilization.
In any event, if PP peddles a heart, it is a human heart. If they peddle a liver, it is a human liver.
Professor, that thought is, honestly, horrifying.
If Mengele made a massive breakthrough that cured cancer --- would it have been worth what he did?
If the Tuskegee experiments solved a wealth of problems, would that be OK?
What it is being used for is immaterial. What they did to get it is all that matters.
Nailed it. The unedited video makes it clear the ethics of this harvesting is in very, very murky waters.
Remember when trans-vaginal ultrasounds were simply "rape" by another name?
Good times, good times.
I did not subject myself to the video, but my understanding from what I've read is that the tissue and organs don't go directly to research facilities, but to biotech companies that prepare them for use in research. Those companies are for profit. I don't know if they're allowed by law to charge for fetal parts, but surely they're permitted to recoup their costs. There apparently is often a tech on site when abortions are being performed to collect the tissue and let the abortionist know which parts in particular the facility is interested in on any given day so that appropriate care will be taken during the extraction. If it sounds perfectly ghastly and ghoulish, well, that's because it is.
But finding cures for horrifying diseases, developing organs for transplant, what could be more important than that? And research facilities have to get their human parts from somewhere, right? I mean, let's not have any pretense about that. But gathering tissue and parts from aborted fetuses seems haphazard and inefficient to me, so why not cut out the middle man altogether and go full Kevorkian.
The good doctor was an eminently practical man who believed prisoners should pay their debts to society by offering themselves up for medical experimentation and wanted to harvest usable parts following executions. He proposed draining the blood of fallen soldiers for use on the battlefield by soldiers still living. He believed that transplant organs would become readily available if people were permitted to buy them (one caveat: the person doing the buying would also have to buy one for someone who couldn't afford it). Dr. Kevorkian was all about saving lives and as many lives as possible (except, of course, when he was assisting a suicide). I don't know that anyone ever broached the subject with him, but I feel sure that he would favor the creation and development of fetuses in the laboratory specifically for use in research. Create a living thing, let it gestate until the point of maximum utility and then harvest its parts. If that sounds perfectly ghastly and ghoulish (forget immoral), well, that's because it is. But it's for an excellent cause, one of the best, so why not? I mean, it's not as if we're talking about an actual person here, right??
Yeah..the abortion bus goes round n round.
But c'mon Ann: "You couldn't even take the trouble to make the link hot"
Blogger dumbs down the response format that so this doesn't happen automatically..unlike most comments sections. You want to go html snob on a commenter? Ridiculous.
But this...
"I would encourage commenters to look into what fetal tissue is used for — the nature of the underlying research — and to consider whether you are thinking about this issue through whatever you already think about abortion itself."
really does seem to be an excercise of ends justifying the means.
Here's a better thought experiment...one that intersects with law.
Two pregnant women in crosswalk, hit and killed by car. One was heading to OB/Gyn for ultrasound checkup, the other to abortion appointment. Is it a double, triple or quadruple manslaughter?
And..a relevant "hotlink"
And..another
Eye of the beholder indeed.
Let's not forget...
hamiyam said...Liver is the most requested organ...
Black Mass, anyone???
Well no, but baby livers from previously-in utero predominantly black children to feed the demand for the production of Humanized Mice: “surgical implantation of human fetal thymus and liver sections under the mouse renal capsule and IV injection of autologous human hematopoietic stem cells.”
But unlike the (predominantly black) in-utero children prior to being vacuumed to the cervix and then selectively twisted to preserve the money-maker parts, at least PETA should be happy the mice are anaesthetized:
“NOG mice …are generated via sublethal irradiation, surgical implantation of human fetal thymus and liver sections under the mouse renal capsule and IV injection of autologous human hematopoietic stem cells. …Unit production colonies and moved to a semi-rigid isolator at the humanization facility. …The human tissues are provided to Taconic as dissected tissue. Approximately 24 hours following HSC injections, liver and thymus are transplanted under the renal capsule. Anaesthetized and surgically prepared NOG mouse the animal is laid on its side and a skin incision of about 2 cm is made above the dorsal midline. An incision is made in the body wall slightly shorter than the long axis of the kidney. The kidney is exteriorized by applying pressure to the underside of the organ using forceps or finger and thumb. … Blunt dissection is used to create a pocket between the kidney and parenchyma. A ~ 1-2 mm piece of tissue is placed under the capsule. …. Analgesics are provided post-operatively for at least two days…”
And gee, this doesn’t sound too risky for potential species cross-contamination should some of these frankensteined mice escape: “Humanization at Work” “Today’s advanced humanized mouse strains are seeing a great deal of utility, particularly in overcoming inherent differences between mice and humans. For example, some human pathogens – including HIV-1 and hepatitis C – can’t infect other species because those species lack certain host factors. By reconstituting mice with a humanized immune system or the transgenic expression of human specific factors, those models can be infected with the desired pathogen.”
Disgusting and revolting. And it is Tuskegee on steroids.
#black fetal parts should matter
Sources: taconic dot com (if it's still up)
http://www.livescience.com/49503-human-kidneys-grown-in-rats.html?cmpid=558958
https://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/
And yeah, I'll bet this consent happens all the time, after all, it's 1/2 his DNA in that liver that's going into the mice:
“In all research in which human fetuses are the subjects of research, the consent of the mother on behalf of the fetus is required. As a general rule, the consent of the father on behalf of the fetus is also required before a fetus may be enrolled in research. Exceptions to the requirement that the father provide consent are permitted if: (1) the father’s identity or whereabouts cannot reasonably be ascertained;[hey, he's in the parking lot!] (2) the father is not reasonably available [aka she didn't tell him she was getting an abortion]; or (3) the pregnancy resulted from rape,” IRB states.
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