How awful are the revelations contained on a series of undercover videos starring Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of baby body parts? So awful that this week even Hillary Clinton called them “disturbing.”
That puts Hillary well to the right of the liberal advocacy group known as the national press corps, whose response to the videos has been to downplay them, indeed barely acknowledge their existence, while hinting that they’re misleading.
They’re not, or Hillary would have said so.
On the sting videos, released by an anti-abortion group called Center for Medical Progress, high-ranking executives from Planned Parenthood discuss how abortions are conducted in a way that allows them to save organs from fetuses, which are then sold for research.
There has been debate about whether Planned Parenthood broke the law. Selling tiny livers and brains is legal, but not if it is for profit.
A price tag of $300 to cover shipping and handling? Sounds more like a dodgy infomercial than a nonprofit group.
What isn’t debatable is that the videos have caused widespread revulsion over the cavalier style of Planned Parenthood, and the grisly details of what it does.
Would Hillary Clinton have spoken out against her own friends (she and Planned Parenthood have been supporting each other for many years) if she didn’t have extremely persuasive polling data showing that Americans are outraged?
This week a former Planned Parenthood employee testified before a Texas Senate committee. She said that at her Houston clinic, the preferred euphemism for the ripped-up remains of human fetuses was P.O.C., for “products of conception.”
Employees thought it was wittier, however, to say that what P.O.C. really stood for was “pieces of children.”
Ha.
Our betters in the pundit class often bemoan the lack of “common ground.” Where, they ask, are the centrists? Can’t we find some areas of compromise?
Warning: Video is graphic
These same pundits fall silent when it comes to the obvious common ground on abortion: a large majority of Americans want to tighten restrictions on abortions.
Only 29% of Americans (according to the most recent Gallup poll) think abortion should be “legal in all circumstances,” which in effect is the position of the Democratic Party and the cultural and media elites.
Two years ago an obscure Texas state senator named Wendy Davis became a nationwide liberal media celebrity for no reason other than her vehement opposition to a bill (since passed) that would forbid abortions more than 20 weeks after conception — eight weeks longer than is permitted in that Bible-thumping land of rednecks and snake handlers known as France.
Some 70% of Americans think abortion should either be illegal or legal “only in certain circumstances,” which sounds much more restrictionist than what we have. A Marist poll released this January showed 84% support for significant restrictions.
Similarly, ending public subsidies for the Pieces of Children folks should be an easy choice. Many things that are unquestionably good receive no public subsidy.
Many things that are morally neutral receive no public subsidy. Yet according to a recent Pew survey, 49% of Americans think abortion is morally wrong, against 15% who think it morally acceptable.
Planned Parenthood this week touted a worthless poll it paid for to make it appear public funding enjoys widespread support.
The media played along by failing to point out the ridiculously biased wording of the polling question — which did not mention abortion.
The organization’s euphemistic title has proved highly effective: a 2013 poll showed that most Americans are unaware PP conducts any abortions whatsoever.
A more honest question would be, “Planned Parenthood, which performs more than 300,000 abortions a year and is the leading provider of abortions in the United States, receives federal subsidies totalling $500 million worth of taxpayer funding. Would you support withdrawing that subsidy so that Planned Parenthood became entirely privately funded?”
Planned Parenthood would hardly be harmed: The resulting outcry would be a publicity bonanza.
PP would claim, “They’re trying to take away your right to an abortion,” the media would once again prove to have no interest in explaining the difference between banning something and declining to pay for it, and we’d be treated to lots of photos of scary-looking old white dudes as the supposed face of defunding, even though abortion is one of the few political issues where there is virtually no gender gap (historically, only about 1.5 percentage points, according to the General Social Survey).
A large majority of Americans want to tighten restrictions on abortions.
Oh, and that gender gap actually goes the way feminists insist is impossible: Fewer women than men back abortion on demand.
Yanking federal funding for Planned Parenthood would mean everybody wins. The half of Americans who consider abortion immoral would be relieved to know they don’t have to pay for it, while PP would find itself awash in a flood of private donations that would cover the lost subsidy and then some.
Planned Parenthood could give every employee a nice raise. And maybe even buy them all a copy of “1,001 Dead Baby Jokes.”