Planned Parenthood videos uncover the darkness of abortion
Scandal reveals a 'repulsive display of voluntary dehumanization'
TORONTO, ON—Investigative videos have recently surfaced capturing senior officials at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America negotiating the selling of aborted fetal parts to undercover actors posing as representatives from a fetal tissue procurement company.
The videos are part of an investigative journalism study by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), “a group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances,” according to their website.
The nearly three-year-long study is called “The Human Capital Project,” and its aim is to document and uncover the illegal trafficking of aborted fetal parts by Planned Parenthood.
There has been outrage in the United States since these videos emerged, causing seven state governments and three congressional committees to open investigations into Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue harvesting.
In a stinging article featured in First Things, an influential journal of religion and public life in America, Dominic Bouck summarizes the cold and barbaric nature of this tragedy:
“The dehumanization of unborn children leads to the dehumanization of those who perform abortions, leading from killing living human beings to treating them explicitly as commodities.”
The ethics of abortion are in the spotlight once again. This time the light has uncovered a form of darkness that can only be described as a repulsive display of voluntary dehumanization.
“Abortion in Canada and around the world has created a conscience gap in humankind which kills compassion for the defenseless victims and an incredible callousness even towards their remains,” notes Mary Ellen Douglas, national organizer of Campaign Life Coalition. “I remind you that this has happened before in history.”
The history of abortion is a grisly one, perhaps the reason why evangelicals have generally responded with firm support for the pro-life position. It’s true, there are differences among us as to how firm one should stand on the issue. Whether you believe in moral absolutism (abortion is wrong in every situation) or situational ethics (abortion is generally wrong, but acceptable in rare situations if governed by the law of love) we can all agree that fostering and protecting human life is at the heart of God’s Kingdom plan.
In the Old Testament, God is revealed as one who is deeply intimate and connected to human beings in their prenatal existence (Psalm 139:13). In the New Testament, Jesus makes it clear that He came to give life, not to destroy it (Luke 9:56).
The first century treatise, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (or the Didache), equates abortion with murder. The pro-life tradition (although the name “pro-life” didn’t come into usage until modern times) continued up through the Church Fathers (Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea, and others), influencing the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, and now finding many adherents within evangelicalism today.
The position affirms that the fetus (and early stage embryo) is a “living thing” created by God, to quote Clement of Alexandria. According to Scripture, it is completely unethical to kill an unborn child (or any human life), and by extension, it would be morally repugnant to commodify the fetus for the sake of economic profit.
Perhaps it was the heroic German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said it best---a man who passionately believed it was the church's responsibility to suffer with the oppressed and to speak (and act) against injustice:
“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life" (Ethics, 174).
In the wake of the Planned Parenthood scandal, pro-life leaders in Canada are alarmed, calling for investigations into abortion practices here in Canada.
“If the trafficking of aborted baby parts is a common practice inside Planned Parenthood facilities across America, the question Canadians should be asking is, ‘does this happen in abortuaries across Canada as well?’” says Jim Hughes, Campaign Life Coalition president. “Not only are babies killed in their mothers’ wombs but their bodies become fodder for scientific experiments and potential profit. This is complete dehumanization.”
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