Planned Parenthood Derangement Syndrome

From C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, "Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that," or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

I think this is what's happening with the Planned Parenthood baby parts video in which Dr. Deborah Nucotela is recorded discussing setting up a relationships between Planned Parenthood affiliates and a fetal tissue procurement firm.

Click to enlarge.

We start out with the story of a filthy atrocity: There sits a friendly, attractive woman relishing her salad while cheerfully describing how she chooses where to place the forceps to crush the tiny bodies of living unborn babies in order to harvest their organs. It's hard to think of a more filthy atrocity than that. And that atrocity is sufficient unto itself. Why must we search to up the evil ante?

I can't recall who made the comment, but a very astute man postulated that too many prolifers suffer from "Planned Parenthood Derangement Syndrome." If we hear anything bad about Planned Parenthood, we latch onto it with the tenacity of the damned. I must admit, I have a touch of PPDS myself. When the baby parts video first came out, I "fact checked" it and was agreeing about the selling baby parts harvested via partial birth abortion. Then I watched the full, unedited video and realized I had been wrong. I had been, as C.S. Lewis said, indulging in the sheer pleasure of thinking my enemies are as bad as possible.

"But she kills babies!" I'm admonished again and again as I defend Dr. Deborah Nucotela  against allegations of perpetrating partial-birth abortions in order to profiteer from selling the organs and tissues of unborn babies.Yeah, she kills babies, and she's pretty blasé about it. That fact stands alone.

The other allegations -- that she performs partial-birth abortions to get the organs and that she sells the organs for profit -- are simply not true. The original video was heavily edited to make it seem as though that's what she said. The title of the video even makes that allegation. But again, it's not true. And the fact that somehow so many of us want it to be true -- badly enough to ignore and/or dismiss all evidence to the contrary -- speaks ill of us. Repeating false allegations against Dr. Nucotela is bearing false witness against her. There's a Commandment against that. There is no codicil to that commandment adding, "Unless, of course, the person has a besetting sin, in which case all bets are off."

When I watched the full video, I did it looking for the details about how nasty Dr. Nucotela was, to get more specifics. I didn't watch it trying to find reasons to defend her. But there they were.

My blog profile quotes Ephesians 5:11: "Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them." That admonition holds true even if it's prolifers participating in a deed of darkness against a Planned Parenthood worker. No matter what she does, it's still a sin to bear false witness against her. And it's my job to defend her against that false witness. She has enough sins of her own without us inventing more. And I have enough sins of my own without adding sins against Deborah Nucotela.

Did She Really Say Planned Parenthood Sells Aborted Baby Parts?

The Center for Medical Progress has made a big splash with a short, heavily edited video purporting to show that Planned Parenthood profiteers by selling the organs and tissues of aborted babies.

The claim centers on a few snippets of conversation during which Dr. Deborah Nucotela discusses that Planned Parenthood affiliates typically charge $30 to $100 "per specimen" and that the national office doesn't want to be "a middleman."

That sounds pretty damning until you watch the entire video. Since it's nearly three hours long, the Center for Medical Progress is probably hoping that hardly anybody will bother to slog through the whole thing. But I did. I also provide a rough timeline so that you can listen to the sections that are of particular interest to you.

What really jumped out at me was that it was the people posing as buyers that kept bringing up money. All Dr. Nucotela seemed to want to talk about was how exciting it was to know how the tissue would be used, what kind of medical research was being done, and how the best way of recruiting affiliates would be to do presentations and hold meetings that address the research that is being done with the tissue. In fact, her enthusiasm about the medical research is so strong that she actually texts the medical director of Family Planning Associates Medical Group, the biggest competitor to Planned Parenthood in California, trying to arrange for her to meet with the buyers.

Dr. Nucotela went into some detail about how Planned Parenthood calculates what to charge for procuring fetal tissue by noting that they use the same calculation that they use when they come up with a fee for training people on their premises. These calculations focus on staff time and whether or not they'd be able to use space for paying patients or would have to use it exclusively for the training during a certain period. The affiliates use roughly the same formula when calculating how to "break even" on providing fetal tissue.The fee depended on things like whether the affiliate would have to use additional staff time to "consent" (do counseling and informed consent) for the donations, and how much staff time might be taken up in the lab or packaging tissues for shipping. The more the procurement company did themselves, the lower the cost per specimen. The more the affiliate had to do, the higher the cost per specimen.

The real clincher, I believe, is in this exchange:

Buyer: If we can offer to a given affiliate that we're gonna -- we'll take care of everything -- the consenting, and the collection, you know -- we don't even need an extra room, really just need, you know, three feet of space in the path lab in the back with a light and everything to do that.

Dr. Nucotela: Which we already have set up, you just have to --

Buyer: Right, right. Is that -- are there affiliates that would just donate the tissues for free? Or --

Dr. Nucotela: Probably.

That simply doesn't sound like profiteering to me.

I don't want anybody getting the idea that I'm a big fan or Planned Parenthood, or that I approve of gutting fetuses for medical science. I would love to see Planned Parenthood go down in screaming flames. One of the biggest reasons that I hate Planned Parenthood is their habitual dishonesty. They lie about fetal development. They lie when they say they provide "non-directive options counseling." They lie about the quality of their doctors. They lie about prolifers. Their lies are despicable.

It is equally despicable to lie about Planned Parenthood.

The way that the short video was edited goes beyond simple lying and into the real of bearing false witness against Dr. Nucotela. The video is edited to make it seem as if she's saying the opposite of what she's really saying. The only thing presented honestly -- and granted, it's gruesome -- is Dr. Nucotela cheerfully munching on her salad while casually discussing how she crushes living unborn babies in order to avoid damaging their organs.

That segment alone is enough shock and  horrify almost everybody, regardless of how they feel about abortion. I really wish that the Center for Medical Progress had simply stuck with that. Honestly bringing evil to light is Biblical and moral and ethical and ought to be done. Espionage in order to bring these things to light is moral and ethical. But lying and trying to make people's motives appear deplorable is not. It's breaking a Commandment. And there is no excuse for that.