Sunday, November 07, 2010

What's the significance of the video PP is trying to censor?

I posted here about Planned Parenthood's efforts to keep this video from the public eye:



One YouTube viewer comments:
And relating to the video; these kids didn't make much sense, but how about you interview people actually in charge of Planned Parenthood instead of using a few unprepared comments by some undereducated undergrads at an obscure college to analyze the intentions of Planned Parenthood?

Yeah, those kids are pretty ignorant. How did they get to be that dumb? Were they dropped on their heads as babies? Did they eat a lot of paint chips? Are they all recovering from acute alcohol poisoning? No. There's no organic brain dysfunction to explain this level of idiocy. These are all college students, fairly bright to start with. Then what happened to make a bunch of bright kids into such laughable morons?

Here's where we get to the real point: These kids are members of "Advocates for Choice", a Planned Parenthood college outreach. Those kids, who "didn't make much sense", were trained and "educated" by Planned Parenthood. This video shows us very clearly what the best "educated" and "trained" youth come away from Planned Parenthood with: not only staggering ignorance, but blithe over-confidence in their misinformation and ignorance.

It took a lot of work to make those kids that stupid. Work that was paid for by your tax dollars.

Consider this:
Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of sex education in communities across the United States. Every year, Planned Parenthood physicians and nurses see nearly 675,000 teenagers who come to our health centers to get help in making informed decisions about their sexual health.

And what are they being taught?

  • That every woman "sheds a fertilized egg every month". (WTF?)

  • That an unborn baby's heart doesn't start beating until 24 weeks.

  • That science and evidence are irrelevant -- that, in fact, science and evidence are mere "opinion".

  • That there is no scientific way to determine if something is alive. (What's the point of having death certificates if there's no way of determining if the person is alive or dead? And yeah, your goldfish has gone belly-up, but that's not proof that there is or is not life there. And NASA is wasting TONS of money looking for life on Mars, since there is, according to Planned Parenthood, no scientific way to detect life.)

  • That there is no distinction between viruses and zygotes. (Which would mean that if you have a cold, your pregnancy test will come up positive.)

    And the topper:

  • An X and Y chromosome combo make you biologically female. (Though, to be honest, I don't think PP specifically taught him that. I just think they taught him to speak confidently about things he knows nothing about, so he had no qualms about authoritatively shooting his mouth off when he had no real knowledge to back it up with.)

    How do we see this promotion of ignorance in other contexts? Let's go to a completely other state, in a completely other context:



    So the "education" Planned Parenthood provides a prospective abortion patient includes the following "facts":

  • A 6 - 8 week embryo has "no legs, no arms, no head, no brain, no heart."

  • That at 6 - 8 weeks "there's nothing developed at all."

    Let's go ahead and assume that the patient is at the 6-week end of this window. I've blogged already about 6-week embryos.

    MayoClinic.com notes these developmental milestones:
    Just four weeks after conception [6 weeks LMP, the way pregnancy is calculated], .... your baby's heart is beating with a regular rhythm.

    Basic facial features will begin to appear, including an opening for the mouth and passageways that will make up the inner ear. The digestive and respiratory systems begin to form as well.

    The Visible Embryo notes the following:
    Head and Neck
    Brain is well marked by its cerebral hemispheres. ....

    Thorax
    Primary cardiac tube separates into aortic and pulmonary channels and the ventricular pouches deepen and enlarge, forming a common wall with their myocardial shells. ....

    Limbs
    Hand region of upper limb bud differentiates further to form a central carpal part and a digital plate. The thigh ..., leg ... and foot areas can be distinguished in the lower limb buds.

    Let's go back to The Visible Embryo and see what would be happening if she's a bit further along in that 6 - 8 week window:

  • Stage 17, c. 41 days post-ovulation, "The nasofrontal groove becomes distinct and an olfactory bulb (sense of smell) forms in the brain." "The dental laminae or teeth buds begin to form."



  • Stage 18, c. 7 weeks post-ovulation, "Nipples appear on the chest." "Kidneys begin to produce urine for the first time."



  • Stage 19, 47-48 days post-ovulation. "Brain has the first detectable brain waves."



  • Stage 20, c. 8 weeks post-ovulation. "Brain is connected to tiny muscles and nerves and enables the embryo to make spontaneous movements." "Testes or ovaries are distinguishable."



    All this is pretty remarkable in an embryo that's "nothing developed" and has "no legs, no arms, no head, no brain, no heart."

    (Also, note the "non-directive counseling" urging her to "go with abortion." That an abortion is the default choice, and that continuing the pregnancy is something "you'd really have to think about." The "non-directive counseling" urging her to make a decision quickly, when it's "cheaper" and "won't stress you out as much.")

    The ignorance displayed in the Colorado video isn't some flukey thing, just a bunch of dumb kids who picked up a Planned Parenthood brochure and declared themselves to be spokespersons. The ignorance displayed in that video is something Planned Parenthood deliberately plants, nourishes, and cultivates. At taxpayer expense.

    The first time I was exposed to the way PP promotes ignorance was back in 1983, when my babysitter told me about her first abortion. It was at Planned Parenthood in San Diego. She had specifically asked about "the baby". She was told that her 8-week unborn baby was "like a blood clot". Does that 8-week fetus to the right look like a blood clot to you?

    It seems nothing has changed from 1983 -- except that now, people are recording PP's lies and calling them out on it.

    It's about time!
  • 12 comments:

    Christina Dunigan said...

    This all brings to mind a conversation I had back in the mid-1990s. I was the Pennsylvania contact person for Feminists for Life of America.

    I got a phone call from a recent pro-life convert. Up until a few weeks earlier, she'd been a clinic "escort" in Philadelphia. I can't remember the woman's name, so I'll call her Pam.

    The person who trained the "escorts" made it plain that their primary task was to make sure the women did not get the brochures from the prolifers, and that if they did get hold of the, that they were taken away. The volunteer coordinator told the "escorts" that the reason for this was that the brochures were "full of lies."

    Pam took the brochures away from a patient, explaining that they were "full of lies" and that she therefore shouldn't look at them. But she kept them and took them home. "I wanted to be ready to counter the lies if a woman actually read them and asked me questions."

    Pam went to the library with the brochures and started doing research. "I couldn't find any lies," she told me. "Everything in those brochures was accurate."

    Pam went to the volunteer coordinator with her findings. The volunteer coordinator admitted that she knew that the brochures from the prolifers were accurate and factual, but since the patients "didn't need that information," they "protected" them from it by assuring them it was all lies, and taking it away from them.

    Pam took some materials from the clinic -- for public consumption and for the patients. THESE materials, she discovered, were inaccurate.

    So Pam called up the clinic's contact person at the Philadelphia Inquirer and set up a meeting with him and his editor. She brought her materials from the library. She brought the prolifers' brochures. She brought the handouts from the clinic. She showed them how the prolifers were handing out factual information, and the clinic was countering the facts with lies.

    "They told me that this was all very interesting. They asked if they could keep the brochures and handouts and do their own research. I gave them everything."

    She paused, then started ranting at me, "They're STILL printing lies!"

    I started laughing so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. Pam wanted to know what was so darned funny about it.

    I asked, "Did you really think that just because you, personally, caught on, that anything was going to change?"

    She was silent for a moment, then chuckled quietly. "I guess you're pretty used to it."

    Yup. But God willing, there's gonna be a tidal wave of people who have caught on. And then things can start changing.

    Nulono said...

    Viruses aren't even alive!

    Christina Dunigan said...

    According to Wikipedia (the repository of all knowledge and wisdom in the universe. Ha!), the jury is out on whether or not viruses are a form of life. They have no cell structure and have to hijack a host in order to reproduce, so they're not quite alive, but they do pass on genetic material, so they're sort of alive.

    But they're a hell of a lot less sophisticated than even a single-celled embryo.

    Anonymous said...

    I once got accused of prolife bias for using Mayo clinic as a source. They get more deluded by the day.

    Cecilia said...

    In the 1980's, when I was in my mid twenties, I thought I might be pregnant. I was living with the guy and his family, neither of whom wanted kids. His sister already had two abortions, his mother had three.
    I was determined that if I was pregnant, I'd not have an abortion. I'd keep the pregnancy secret and leave town if necessary to avoid an abortion.
    I called Planned Parenthood to get a pregnancy test. They would not cooperate in keeping it secret from this family that I was living with. They insisted that the only way I could find out the results of the pregnancy test was for them to call the results home, and leave a message if I wasn't there. They wouldn't let me come by later in person get the results, it had to be called home and maybe a message left, and that was final. It was their policy, and all my complaints about confidentiality didn't make a dent.
    Then I said that I needed more confidentiality than that and that if they couldn't accommadate me in this, then I'd get my test elsewhere, and goodbye. The woman on the other end of the phone panicked over losing me. I hung up the phone to the sound of her desperately begging me not to hang up.

    Is this story weird, or what? That's what PP was like in Fresno California in the mid 80's.

    Just in case anybody's interested, I got my pregnancy test at a college campus clinic that promised not to call my house. It turned out that I wasn't pregnant.

    L. said...

    Cecelia, that story is weird. I had a some blood tests in the 80's at a PP, and they told me the opposite -- that they preferred to NEVER give results over the phone, only tell me (in a sealed letter with no return address) that they were ready, and I should call at my convenience. Or I could come back in person if I suspected anyone would tamper with my mail!!!

    This was VERY inconvenient for me, to say the least, since I wanted the results as soon as possible and I was even willing to let them leave a message with anyone who answered the phone -- but no luck. They said they could give the results only me, and me alone.

    By the way, my miscarred 7-week old embryo looked EXACTLY like a blood clot, even though I do know it was more complex than that.

    Christina Dunigan said...

    Cecelia, that is bizarre. They're usually VERY privacy oriented, unless you're suing them later, in which case they do everything possible (if they can't get you to drop the suit) to get your name on the 6 o'clock news.

    Lil, I think if the entire embryo passes intact, still inside the amnion and with the placenta wrapped around it, then it would look a lot like a blood clot.

    Kathy said...

    L., I miscarried around 8 weeks gestation (although I'm reasonably certain the baby had stopped developing before then; perhaps it was a blighted ovum), and I never saw anything that looked like an embryo. Having seen pictures, I knew what to look for; not seeing it, I felt for a body within the "blood clot," and felt nothing. I've read enough miscarriage stories to know that the baby would look like a baby at that stage, and would have a form that could be felt, which makes me think that this is why I miscarried -- the baby wasn't developing right and couldn't live.

    Lilliput said...

    I can't believe it - Christina and Kathy agreeing that an embryo can look like a blood clot!

    I can see know why PP might use it to advise women what to expect in abortion?

    Christina Dunigan said...

    Lil, it's not the EMBRYO that looked like a blood clot. It was the placenta that it was wrapped in.

    Why not tell a vegetarian that there's no meat in that burrito, because it's just a hunk of corn-flour flat bread? The fact that you can't SEE the meat in the burrito doesn't mean it's not there.

    Kathy said...

    Lilliput, if you want to see exactly what I saw and read the detailed story of my miscarriage, click here (you can see the group of pictures by clicking on the link with the words "saw this" which is in paragraph 12.

    And, as Christina pointed out, there is a difference between saying that something "looks like X" and saying that something "**is** X". Besides, I've read numerous miscarriage (and abortion) stories in which mothers were able to positively identify the baby in the midst of all the blood and clots and other tissue they passed. There was no doubt for them as to when the baby passed -- and these miscarriages or abortions happened both earlier and later in gestation than mine did.

    So, even if an abortion worker were to tell the mother to expect the fetal remains to look like a blood clot, she would very likely be wrong; and if the mother asked what the baby looks like while it's still inside her, or what the baby *is* at 6-8 weeks of gestation, saying "it's basically a blood clot" is a huge lie, no matter how you slice and dice it.

    Cecilia said...

    L: Either you were in a different town than me, or the woman I talked to on the phone desparately wanted me to abort, sensed I didn't want to and that my family wanted me to. I think she wanted to pull them in as allies in breaking down my resistance and gettng me aborted whether I was willing or not.
    PP is known to put ethics aside if it will get an abortion sold.
    This PP was in Fresno. Yours was probably in another town. Or maybe it was in the same town, and they were afriad your family would talk you out of it, so they wanted to keep them out. Differing views in the family, so different views in PP as to whether the family's input is wanted by PP.