Many of the
current GOP presidential candidates are falling all over themselves while
pandering to their ultra-right-wing evangelical Christian bases who insist that
no woman has a right to liberty as concerns of her own reproduction and
parenthood choices. Their committed agenda is to ban all abortions no matter
what the circumstances.
They think
that agenda is the responsibility of the President of the United States. So the
anti-abortion forces sent out a goon squad of imposters seeking to gather as
much dirt as possible on women’s reproductive rights advocates, specifically the
not-for-profit organization, Planned Parenthood, in an effort to persuade the
general public to agree with their antiabortion agenda.
Officials
and employees of Planned Parenthood were secretly videotaped by anti-abortion
operatives pretending to represent scientific entities that perform research
with human embryonic and fetal tissue specimens.
In the course of these secretly taped interviews
the imposters captured some of the Planned Parenthood representatives talking
rather casually about the use of certain surgical techniques available to
better preserve intact the fetal specimens so as to make them more useful for
scientific research purposes.
They also
talked casually about the monetary value of such specimens. Taken out of context,
these snippets of discussion about the use of human embryonic and fetal
specimens was designed to seem like a gruesome conspiracy of vicious body
snatching criminals to murder little babies and then sell their body parts on
the open meat market for fun and profit.
Presidential
candidates, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and several others have since been
screaming in outrage, demanding that the federal government immediately defund
Planned Parenthood. Candidate Carly Fiorina started babbling exaggerated antiabortion
nonsense about how this is just more evidence that women’s reproductive rights
advocates believe that any baby is fair game for murder right up until the time
it leaves the hospital.
Make no
mistake about it; these candidates think that it’s their solemn job as
President of the United States to end abortion as we know it in America, and
they’re more than willing to employ any means possible to accomplish that
agenda. Its pure presidential parenthood politics founded upon their
evangelical religious beliefs, and one of the big reasons why the average
American is afraid to vote for any GOP presidential candidate.
The reality
of the matter is that in the United States of America women enjoy a
constitutional right to seek and undergo an abortion. The abortion procedures
that Planned Parenthood provide to women are legal. The disposition of
embryonic and fetal tissue from such procedures to scientific entities on a not
for profit basis is entirely legal.
The tissue
can be either discarded entirely in a waste bin or provided legally to
accredited scientific entities for medical research purposes. There is no meat
market for the sale of human body parts for fun and profit provided by Planned
Parenthood.
In short, while
the secretly taped Planned Parenthood representatives in these instances may
have been speaking distastefully or disrespectfully or both about such
activities from the perspective of a lay person, they were committing no crime;
they are guilty of no wrongdoing. Yes, such discussions sound gruesome to me too,
but so would a discussion about proctology examinations and surgery.
All of the
outrage manifested on the part of the GOP presidential candidates is
manufactured for the sole purpose of advancing their antiabortion agenda and
pandering to the religious right voters in their political base.
It’s pure
presidential parenthood politics.
So, your position is that a fetus is solely the property of the mother and can be disposed of in any manner she deems adequate, as long as some accountant can show there was no "profit"?
ReplyDeleteWhy does terminating a pregnancy automatically require the destruction of the fetus?
"Non-profit" and "not for profit" are terms of art. All they mean is that instead of profits being distributed to owners, they are "re-invested in the enterprise."
ReplyDeleteIt's highly unlikely that Planned Parenthood is delivering fetal tissue for less than the costs of procuring and delivering it. Their "reasonable handling fees" will be padded out to account for rejected shipments, unsatisfactory tissue rejections, etc. In other words, they will in fact make a "profit."
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but hiding it behind "not for profit" language in this context is just a way of trying to portray themselves as some kind of charity.
What they actually are is a billion dollar per year business, with half of that billion per year coming in the form of corporate welfare from the state. While it's true that no "profits" get distributed to stockholders, the CEO of planned parenthood knocks down $500k per year, and a number of others in the organization's executive structure and in its clinics make six figures.