Editor's note: Discretion is advised when watching the videos linked from this article.
The controversy over Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of human organs deserves our attention. As many as 70 percent of Americans have heard little to nothing about the undercover videos at the heart of the controversy. While harvesting organs from aborted fetuses is an unsettling topic, some matters command consideration.
Commerce in human flesh can be ignored only at our moral peril. When a member of the English Parliament suggested in 1796 that a bill to end the slave trade should be “suspended” until a later date, William Wilberforce would not tolerate the moral indifference:
“There is something not a little provoking in the dry, calm way in which gentlemen are apt to speak of the sufferings of others. The question suspended! Is the desolation of wretched Africa suspended? Are all the complicated miseries of this atrocious Trade — is the work of death suspended? No, sir, I will not delay this motion, and I call upon the house not to insult the forbearance of heaven by delaying this tardy act of justice.”
Selling aborted fetuses for research is not the same as selling slaves for labor. But it is the awareness of shared humanity that stirs our collective conscience about both. Abolitionists published the engraved image of a prayerful slave pleading, “Am I not a man and a brother?” In our era, ultrasound imagery and photographic books like “A Child Is Born” have engraved upon hearts the pleading of the unborn, “Am I not a life and a child?”
Fetal tissue research is not new, but the Planned Parenthood videos have revealed to the public what “fetal tissue” actually means. In obstetrician clinics, fetuses seen with ultrasound are called “babies,” but in abortion clinics, the same are called “products of conception.” And these so-called “products,” we now know from the videos, are not amorphous “tissue,” but the little bodies of growing babies whose hearts, eyes, lungs, stomachs, livers and other organs are valuable commodities for medical experimentation precisely because they are human.
Planned Parenthood adamantly denies that it profits from the harvested organs, a federal crime. But if Planned Parenthood only seeks to recover costs, like shipping, why do its officials want to “do a little better than break even,” worry about making “lowball” offers during “negotiations” over fetal organs, compare whether other clinics are “getting substantially more,” discuss organ harvesting in the context of “diversification of the revenue stream,” and insist that the “compensation” they receive be “big enough that it makes it worthwhile”?
And there are more questions. How does Planned Parenthood incur any shipping costs when buyers, like Stem Express, send their technicians onsite to retrieve the organs? Why does a Planned Parenthood official in Denver fear that a clinic in “a really anti state” is “probably going to get caught”? And why did most Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas conclude that the harvesting was “illegal”? The list goes on.
There is a danger, however, in limiting the debate to legality. History is replete with legal atrocities. The most important question is a moral one. Voices on the political left and right agree that the videos are “disturbing.” Planned Parenthood’s executives tell us that is so only because “medical and scientific conversations can be upsetting to hear.” But there was no national uproar over the Discovery Channel’s “Blood and Guts — A History of Surgery.” This is a matter of conscience.
Consider this scenario. A young woman feels trapped by an unplanned pregnancy. Alone and afraid, she decides on abortion. She’s certain there’s no other option, convinced an unwanted baby would be far worse. At an abortion clinic, she’s told that her decision can actually promote “lifesaving” research. Her misfortune can become a miracle for modern medicine. She’s even told that it’s “God’s work.”
But then the curtain is removed, and what she sees is a nightmare. That friendly person who persuaded her to “gift” her “pregnancy tissue” — promising cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s and AIDS — is paid a “bonus” for obtaining her consent and never tells her that organs are being harvested.
Staff at the abortion clinic sift through her donated “tissue” and excitedly announce to prospective buyers, “It’s another boy!” His little limbs and organs are carelessly dumped into a bag with other dismembered fetuses and kept in a freezer until disposed or sold. Over casual lunch conversations, Planned Parenthood officials talk about offering a “menu” of organs and assure buyers that doctors can use “less crunchy” techniques for higher yields. The officials insist it’s not about the money, and jokingly exaggerate about wanting a Lamborghini, yet they become plenty serious on being paid enough to make it “worthwhile.” And they’re sure their lawyers can build enough “layers” to protect them from being “perceived” as selling organs.
Many Americans now realize their trust has been betrayed. Women were promised a selfless sacrifice, but it’s been unmasked as capitalistic commerce, preoccupied with “bottom lines” and “line items.”
Whether criminal or not, Planned Parenthood’s yearly draw of half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money is deeply troubling. The same money could be reallocated to federally funded community health centers, where women can obtain access to a full range of health care, not just the limited services offered by Planned Parenthood. Also, bills to limit abortions in the second trimester — which two thirds of Americans support — should now be given a fair hearing, unimpeded by congressional filibusters and presidential vetoes. And fetal tissue research should be reevaluated without letting arguments for medical advancement, which is disputed, overshadow moral considerations.
Abortion is a topic we would all prefer to avoid. But if we do not talk about it now, then when? In his first abolition speech before Parliament, Wilberforce warned, “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
Michael Erickson is an attorney. Jenet Erickson is a family sciences researcher and a former assistant professor at Brigham Young University. They live in Salt Lake City.