A number of Catholic bishops have commented on the Planned Parenthood scandal and the companion scandal of congressional funding for the organization while President Obama staunchly defends it. Today we cover those stories, and then look at the latest in the UN Development Goals charade; Finally, we say goodbye to Dr. John Howard, a friend of liberty, life, and of PRI.
Planned Parenthood Scandal Expands, PRI Loses A Good Friend
The Planned Parenthood scandal continues and expands, as more reports detail the savagery of the abortion body-parts sales industry.
We now know that Planned Parenthood has been selling body parts for 15 years. The dependable Lifesite News reports:
Planned Parenthood and its defenders have constantly played up that the recent undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress were “highly-edited,” and that producers are “not journalists,” but “ violent extremists .” However, one of the Big Three networks aired their own segment on biomedical firms possibly breaking the law to obtain organs from unborn babies.
In 2000, Chris Wallace, then with ABC, revealed on 20/20 that a “hidden camera investigation has found a thriving industry, in which aborted fetuses women donate to help medical research are being marketed for hundreds – even thousands of dollars.”
The main target of the ABC investigation, Dr. Miles Jones, “over lobster bisque and roast duck…explained the business of selling human fetuses”
And that was 15 years ago. Does that sound somewhat familiar?
Yes, it echoes the first Center for Medical Progress video , where Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical service, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, munched on Cobb salad and sipped her Zinfandel while discussed the sale of fetal body parts. ABC’s 2000 report also included a clip from the then-president of the abortion organization, Gloria Feldt, who contended that businesses such as Dr. Jones’s were “totally inappropriate. Where there is wrongdoing, it should be prosecuted; and people who are doing that kind of thing should be brought to justice.”
Wallace ran several extended clips from ABC’s hidden camera footage, where two producers met up with Dr. Jones, a pathologist, over dinner. Jones, who ultimately went to prison for tax evasion and died in 2013, revealed that average fetal tissue sample or organ cost his firm, Opening Lines, “just $50, plus overhead – but that he charges an average of $250. The law only talks about recovering costs. But on a single fetus, Jones said he can make $2,500.”
At one point in the footage, Dr. Jones also blatantly referred to his baby-parts operation as a “golden goose,” adding that, with new abortions every day, “you can certainly keep it well-fed, and it will lay lots of eggs for you.”
There are more reports, all of them disturbing.
For one – we know that taxpayer funding is not supposed to pay for abortions. But now we discover that taxpayers are paying for the sale of the baby’s organs that the abortionists harvest every day. In fact, federal taxpayers have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on aborted babies’ remains that are being used in federally-funded facilities.
We now find that the federal government has been using aborted babies’ body parts to grow experimental organs in rats.
And selected baby body parts are also sold for so-called ‘Scientific Research’ on Cosmetics and Flavor Enhancers.
Yes, you might find this nauseating, but the revelations have had some positive effects.
On Friday August 14, StemExpress informed Congress and Planned Parenthood that they were ending the relationship.
They did not say whether they would stay in the baby parts business or not – it apparently constitutes some ten percent of their business.
The decision comes after the release of six videos, exposing Planned Parenthood’s practice of harvesting and selling aborted fetal tissue. In Northern California, StemExpress’s own technicians worked inside Planned Parenthood’s clinics to obtain consent from the babies' mothers, and the desired "specimens."
Two of the six videos released prominently feature former StemExpress technician Holly O’Donnell.
In the videos O’Donnell describes in graphic detail the process of sorting through dismembered arms and legs of aborted babies. She also claims that StemExpress did not always obtain proper consent from the mothers of the aborted babies to harvest the tissue.
O’Donnell is not alone.
è Abby Johnson, 35, says Planned Parenthood staffers would receive $20 for, in her words, "coercing" women to donate tissue from their aborted babies.
For eight years, Ms. Johnson, who was a director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, didn’t just witness the fetal tissue donation process—she participated in it.
During her tenure at a southeast Texas clinic—the same location featured in the fifth undercover video shot by the Center for Medical Progress—Johnson said she would “coerce” women to sign up for studies, then reap the financial benefits.
In 2009, a year after being named “Employee of the Year” at her clinic, Johnson said she witnessed a doctor performing an abortion on an ultrasound and quit her job.
The former clinic director has since become a pro-life activist, revealing Planned Parenthood’s ghoulish abortion practices. Planned Parenthood tried to discredit parts of Johnson’s account and even obtained a temporary injunction against her, but Johnson was quickly cleared of any wrongdoing.
Abortionists have been trying to get friendly courts to silence these grotesque revelations, but so far they have failed.
Well, if they’ve failed, where’s the outrage?
The answer is simple: for Planned Parenthood’s friends in the abortion-friendly national media, silence is golden.
According to CNS News, the major Networks Spent 0.008% of network News Shows on Planned Parenthood Footage.
That’s eight one-thousandths of one percent. Eight seconds in every 27 hours of news.
Why the censorship?
The Abortion-friendly elites flee the truth about babies like the plague. They don’t have any problem with the baby meat market, but they’re afraid that their viewers might – they’re afraid that the truth might cause some of their viewers to change their minds about abortion itself.
And that would be disastrous.
Look at the chain of logic that has led to abortion on demand. Once contraception was allowed for married couples, it was easy to demand that it be available to everyone.
Once that lethal principle was injected into every day cultural life, it infected everything else: we have a right to prevent the birth of a child, even after that child is conceived – but to do so we have to deny that it is a child.
Then that right became virtually unlimited: on the floor of the United States Senate, Barbara Boxer of California would not deny that the abortionist had a right to kill a child already born, if one hand or one foot of the baby had not yet emerged from the birth canal.
But as ultrasound became widespread ,the general public started to realize what babies look like in the womb. Pro-abortion forces had to push back by insulting and humanizing the unborn child, asserting that it was only a “lump of tissue” or even an unwanted intrusion into the body of the woman – they never mention the word “mother,” of course.
Then, because contraception sometimes fails, we have the right under the same principle to eliminate the child the unborn child by other means.
And that means any other means.
But still, abortion had a grisly, even murderous image – it was surrounded by pain and shame. That had to change.
So feminists succeeded in making abortion not only legal, but so desirable that it should be universally available at no cost. And true to form, Hillary Clinton made worldwide free abortion on demand her highest priority as Secretary of State. President Obama is on the same page, of course, but he and John Kerry, Clinton’s successor, have made gay marriage their first international priority.
There’s no way around it: we’re dealing with profound and protracted evil here. And when evil threatens mankind,
One source that we can count on to shine the light of truth on it is the Catholic Church.
So we should ask – Are the bishops doing their job?
Well, Catholic author Robert Royal studied the Church’s response, and was surprised to find that that few of our bishops have taken the opportunity to highlight the barbarity of this Planned Parenthood butcher business.
Fortunately, our own Bishop Paul Loverde, of Arlington Virginia, is a happy exception.
But across the river, in the Archdiocese of Washington, Royal found, and I quote – “Nothing. Absolutely nada, he says – Nothing from the Cardinal, nothing even by the superb Msgr. Charles Pope. A news story in the archdiocesan Catholic Standard reported that some lawmakers were calling for an investigation. The paper – and archdiocese – did so little or so little visible, that it might have well done nothing.”
Well, perhaps that silence is better than what Chicago’s new liberal favorite, Archbishop Blaise Cupich, had to say – or didn’t say – about Planned Parenthood’s butchery. Quote:
“While commerce in the remains of defenseless children is particularly repulsive,” the archbishop writes, “we should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.”
Well, there you have it – as one commentator observed, “moral equivalency enthroned.”
Cutting children up alive is an objective evil. Selling their remains is not only repulsive, it constitutes another objective evil. Instead of sorrow and repentance, it seeks profit. To equate it to illegal immigration is tawdry and trivializing – a banality beyond belief.
I wonder: as we survey the holocausts in Germany, Ukraine, the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia in the twentieth century – where over 100 million innocent civilians were killed without cause – should we say that those murders were no more appalling than the lack of adequate medical care or food in refugee camps?
Well, we’ve heard about the dictatorship of relativism before, and unfortunately it hasn’t gone away just because Pope Benedict has.
But wait, there is hope: Not necessarily in response to Archbishop Cupich, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput put it clearly – and bluntly:
“Here’s a simple exercise in basic reasoning,” he said. “On a spectrum of bad things to do, theft is bad, assault is worse and murder is worst. There’s a similar texture of ill will connecting all three crimes, but only a very confused conscience would equate thieving and homicide. Both are serious matters. But there is no equivalence.
The deliberate killing of innocent life is a uniquely wicked act. No amount of contextualizing or deflecting our attention to other issues can obscure that.”
Thank you, Archbishops Chaput – and continued prayers as you prepare for the arrival of Pope Francis in the city of brotherly love next month.
This is the PRI Review from Pop.org. we’ll be right back.
The is the PRI Review from Pop.org. When we come back, we’ll look at how this all got started, and then, what comes next.
Station Break
Do you know what NFP means?
NFP stands for Natural Family Planning is the natural way to celebrate life, love, and marriage while avoiding the dangers of powerful artificial hormones.
NFP brings husband and wife together, sharing the mysteries of life as they work together with God’s natural plan for raising a family.
And you don’t have to be Catholic to practice NFP. In fact, many women have switched from the pill to NFP after they’ve discovered the damage that the pill does to their bodies and to their well-being.
NFP recognizes that women conceive only when their bodies are ready. And the science behind NFP reveals to the couple when those “fertile days” are by giving certain signals that can easily be detected.
In fact, when you cooperate with these natural signals, you’ll find that NFP is more accurate than the pill – totally without any damage to your health, your marriage, or to the environment.
So don’t let the Pill come between you and your spouse. Celebrate life and its mysteries by learning about NFP. You can easily check out PRI’s NFP video – just search for PRI and NFP on YouTube.
You’ll be glad you did.
Segment two
On July 26, Archbishop Cupich’s neighbor to the south, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, provided some context to the battle we are now witnessing regarding life, family, and marriage.
“Historians tell us that abortion and infanticide were widespread, commonplace, and for the most part legal in the classical world of the Greeks and Romans," he said. "Perhaps if they had the technology at the time, they would have sold fetal body parts for profit.”
“Since the moral decadence of our 21st century Western world now rivals the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, it should not surprise us that the nationwide abortion provider Planned Parenthood has been exposed for trafficking and selling the body parts of aborted babies.
“I say we should not be surprised, but we still should be shocked and appalled at this moral depravity,” Paprocki said.
“Unborn babies are absolutely unable to consent to donating their organs, and the harvesting of their organs involves the premeditated killing of these babies.”.
The bishop also criticized President Obama for not speaking out against Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
“President Obama, in 2013, was the first sitting president to address Planned Parenthood, telling them: ‘ I want you to know that you’ve got a president who’s going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way.’
“What have we heard about this expose of Planned Parenthood from the White House, which was illuminated in rainbow colors when the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal throughout the country?” Paprocki asked.
“Silence. Deafening silence.”
STATION BREAK
Founded in 1989, the Population Research Institute is a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to objectively presenting the truth about population-related issues, and to reversing the trends brought about by the myth of overpopulation. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries.
Our mission statement describes our goals.
Debunk the myth of overpopulation, which cheapens human life and paves the way for abusive population control programs
Expose the relentless promotion of abortion, abortifacient contraception, and chemical and surgical sterilization in misleadingly labeled “population stabilization,” “family planning,” and “reproductive health” programs.
Defund these programs by exposing the coercion, deception, and racism inherent in them.
Emphasize that people are the most valuable resource on the planet, the one resource we cannot do without.
Promote pro-natal and pro-family attitudes, laws, and policies worldwide.
Encourage programs to help the poor become agents of their own development.
And silently help those living under oppressive regimes to preserve life, love, faith, and family in spite of official hostility and government persecution.
PRI welcomes your spiritual support, and we need your financial support. Just go to our website, www.pop.org, and click the “Donate” button to contribute easily and securely. And be sure to look at the thoughtful gifts that we offer our donors in gratitude for their much-needed support.
Segment three:
Listeners to the PRI review should get to know Michael Hichborn, an intrepid investigator and analyst at the Lepanto Institute here in Virginia.
The Institute is named for the famous Battle of Lepanto,
The battle of Lepanto, the most important naval contest in human history, is not well known to Americans. Pope Pius V made October 7, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, because on that day in 1571 the Holy League won the victory at Lepanto in 1571 that saved the Christian West from defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
Overwhelmingly outnumbered, The Sovereign Military Order of Saint john of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta – known as the Knights of Malta – successfully defeated and destroyed the Ottoman fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent.
So here is the report from Lepanto’s Mr. Hichborn:
This coming November, the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Science is holding a workshop intended to figure out how to indoctrinate your children in the Sustainable Development Goals . This comes on the heels of the Vatican nuncio to the United Nations announcing “verbatim” support for those goals , and after Catholic Relief Services president, Dr. Carolyn Woo echoed Pope Francis’ call for support for them as well.
So, what are the Sustainable Development Goals? They’re a United Nations ruse designed to create a global socialist utopia thinly disguised as a poverty reduction program. They are the fruit borne out of Agenda 21, the Millennium Development Goals, and a host of other socialist programs that are dear to the United Nations, a majority of whose member governments are corrupt to the core.
Now Mr. Hichborn is touching a raw nerve: A lot of good folks, many of them well-educated, don’t realize how much of the political agenda of the left comes straight out of Karl Marx.
Let’s start with hatred of the family. Marx hated the family. He left his own children in penury; they starved, and lived only because other people took pity on them and gave them charity.
But more importantlz, the family is the strongest natural bulwark against the power of a tyrannical state. So, for Karl Marx, the family has got to go.
Then we have the graduated income tax – one of Marx’s most successful ideological goals. The graduated income tax is born of envy, which is the engine of socialism. Once socialism is achieved, the budding tyrant’s lust for power – the libido dominandi – kicks in, but the tyrant will always appeal to the envy of his oppressed subjects, blaming everyone else for their poverty and suffering.
Think of it. The Masonic Crony corruptos in Mexico have blamed the United States for a hundred years for the suffering of the Mexican people. And Marxists generally stir the envy of the Third world to blame America for their poverty.
Trouble is, most of the people in the Third World know better. They aren’t buying it – they all want to move to America.
Marxists also reject reconciliation and constantly embrace and foment violence. We see that in Missouri and Florida, with Obama fanning the flames of reverse racism – unfortunately, with the blessing of a number of Catholic bishops.
This reverse racism – fomenting hatred for whites among minorities – is just business as usual for the Marxist, who is constantly fomenting class conflict.
But that’s what history is all about, said Marx: in the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto, he proclaims that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.
For Catholics, salvation History is the drama of God’s saving mercy.
Yes, these approaches are worlds apart. For Catholics, history is about love.
For Marx, it’s about hate. And that hatred inspires today’s militant secularism, materialism, and atheism.
In coming weeks, we’ll look at the Lepanto Institute’s findings on a wide range of development topics.
Today, let’s just take a quick look at a couple of what the United Nations calls its Sustainable Development Goals.
- Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Now tell me, does it really take hundreds of billions of dollars and the entire United Nations bureaucracy to identify poverty as a problem?
And while we’re at it, do they really mean it?
Mister Hichborn doesn’t think they mean it. Communists have always used the plight of the poor as justification for the implementation of their nefarious schemes, he says. But when in power, they always make people poorer.
Except themselves, of course.
Well, we have to bear in mind that Karl Marx wasn’t interested in the poor at all. He was interested in power. As far as he was concerned, the truly poor – he called them the Lumpenproletariat – these poor folks had no place in the People’s Paradise.
In a large part of the world, after all, the poor are found in the countryside. Karl Marx hated the countryside. In the Communist Manifesto, he actually condemns what he calls the idiocy of rural life.
No, Karl Marx did not want to cure poverty. He wanted to incite envy among the poor and the working class against his true enemy, the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie liked private property, another bulwark against the state – even if they had very little ofit – or even if they just longed to own a little property someday.
That’s why Stalin killed tens of millions of poor farmers – they were simply more attached to their little plots of land then they were to Stalin and his Soviet commissars. That’s all it took to get a death sentence in the People’s Paradise.
One more note before we go. Lyndon Baines Johnson was growing up in Texas when Norman Thomas ran for president on a Socialist Party platform in 1948. Thomas’s platform contains several of the planks that Karl Marx had advocated in the Communist Manifesto 100 years before.
So when Johnson became Senate majority leader, and then president in 1963, he advocated a vast expansion of federal government power, especially in the executive branch. And lo and behold, he based it all on his professed desire to eliminate poverty.
In fact, in his 1964 book, “My Hope for America,” Johnson promised to end poverty in the United States by the end of the century. By the end of the twentieth century, that is.
Well, we all know how that worked out – the federal government became much more powerful, more reckless, and more criminal, and the poor we still have with us.
The people have much less liberty and much less money. Over $18 trillion has been spent in the war on poverty and there are just as many poor people today as they were in 1964.
Ironically, the official figure for the national debt today is also $18 trillion — 40 times greater than it was in 1965, Meanwhile, and the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen by 90%. All in the name of fighting poverty.
The goal of ending poverty was a charade and a fraud, but it served effectively as a bumper sticker on the left-wing bus that was taking the country down the road to ruin.
Next week will see more of Mister Hichborn’s analysis of the United Nations development goals, but today we’ve got one more story, and we’re saving the best ‘til last.
All of us at the Population Research Institute have lost a great friend with the death of John Howard on August 7.
A decorated soldier of the First Infantry Division in World War II , Dr. Howard was president of Rockford College and The Rockford College Institute where I was his assistant for three years.
All his life, John fought to preserve the virtues of a free and Christian society. Early on, he realized that the family was the critical issue on which the survival of our culture would depend.
From the Institute, and then from the Howard Center, named in his honor, he founded and led the World Congress of Families, which drew international acclaim at its meetings held in various world capitals. Both PRI president Steve Mosher and yours truly spoke at those events, and it was truly inspiring to see the vitality of families from all over the world, fighting to preserve the good, the true, and the beautiful in their own cultures.
We will miss John Howard, and we pray that these were the first words he heard as he crossed the river: “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
This is Christopher Manion for the PRI Review. Visit us at www.pop.org – and thanks for listening.
