By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, August 05, 2015
The GOP-controlled Congress is taking up the cause, once
again, of defunding Planned Parenthood. This latest effort comes in response to
macabre hidden-camera videos shot by the Center for Medical Progress of staff
at Planned Parenthood talking about the grisly practice of chopping up fetuses
for parts. There’s a debate over whether the videos prove the center’s claim
that Planned Parenthood is ghoulishly trying to make a profit selling baby
lungs, livers, and hearts.
There’s less of a debate that the videos speak directly
to the ugly nature of second-trimester abortions. Granted, a few extremists see
nothing wrong in the talk of cleverly “crushing” babies to preserve the quality
of the organs for sale — or “compensation” — to medical researchers. A writer
for Slate says: “The graphic images of aborted fetuses are meant to disgust me,
to convince me that abortion is a barbaric act of killing. But I don’t see
death in these videos. I see hope.”
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus had a much more
human — and, I think, common — response. Marcus, who is pro-abortion rights,
says of the abattoir shoptalk recorded by the Center for Medical Progress, “If
you hear this and fail to squirm, there is something wrong with you.”
Acknowledging that the reality of what happens at Planned
Parenthood makes us squirm is a useful place to start.
That’s because the abortion lobby, abetted by many in the
media, employs the rhetorical camouflage of medical euphemisms so that people
are insulated from the deeply disturbing realities of late-term abortion. When
a pregnant woman wants to keep her baby, it’s a baby; when she doesn’t, it
becomes mere “uterine contents.” Media reports on the video controversy
routinely refer to “tissue” instead of “organs,” even though medically these
are different things. Why? Because when we hear about organs — hearts, lungs,
brains — we know these are features of human bodies, not abstract “uterine
contents.”
Applying different words does not change a womb’s
contents. To suggest otherwise confuses science with magic.
There’s a second point to be made about the squirming.
Perhaps it offers a different way to think about abortion.
So much political discourse these days is driven by a
desire — even a right — to be protected from ideas and images that offend. The
examples — from campus “trigger warnings” to the purging of the Confederate
flag from public life — are too lengthy to list here. We live in an era in
which feelings come first.
And though I think this often goes too far, it’s worth
remembering that feelings really do matter in a democracy. It was Thomas
Jefferson who wrote, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the
propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and
tyrannical.”
It was at least partly on these Jeffersonian grounds that
proponents of removing the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s statehouse
grounds won their argument. The statehouse belongs to everyone, and forcing
those who abhor that flag to pay for it, even symbolically and even if many of
its supporters meant no offense, is still sinful.
Well, if you don’t believe that a fetus with arms, legs,
a face and a brain is an actual human life worthy of protecting, or at least
deserving of a level of respect greater than a hangnail, it’s doubtful anyone
will ever persuade you otherwise.
But maybe you can still accept that other people disagree
with you. Abortion is not simply a symbolic act, but perhaps it would help to
see it as one. And, if you can muster that much imagination, maybe you can also
understand why those truly offended by the practice don’t want their tax
dollars subsidizing it.
Yes, yes, we’ve all heard that no federal dollars go to
Planned Parenthood for abortions. But this is an accounting fiction drafted to
do the work of a moral distinction. If the federal government were funding churches
or businesses that opposed gay marriage — or sold Confederate flags — it’s
doubtful liberal critics would credit such defenses.
Defunding Planned Parenthood is not the same as repealing
the right to abortion. Indeed, the point here isn’t to say that all abortions
are indefensible. Rather, it’s that people who think they are indefensible
shouldn’t be compelled to pay for them.
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