by Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ and Director, CREDI
The scandal emanating from the undercover videos revealing the sale of body parts of aborted babies by Planned Parenthood (PP) in the US should spur us on to stand up for life. About a dozen videos were recorded by a pro-life non-profit group, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). They show PP officials talking about the sale of unborn babies’ organs. In one of these a PP executive jokes about pricing aborted baby parts and says: “I want a Lamborghini.”
In a third video released on July 28, a PP employee in the US is seen casually discussing over lunch the sale of the hearts, lungs, livers and muscles of aborted babies. The discussion was with a woman who says she worked in a clinic procuring tissue from aborted foetuses. The PP official said: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”
According to CNN, PP called the undercover video tactics a “profoundly offensive violation of privacy and dignity”. Does anyone care about the dignity of the unborn child? The videos have prompted investigations into PP’s sale of human foetal organs in Congress and in eleven states. To date three states have de-funded PP.
David Daleiden of CMP said. “Our investigators spent almost three years deeply embedded with Planned Parenthood and their affiliates. And we heard from their own mouths, over and over, again and again, that they make money off of selling the parts of aborted babies and have a profit motive in doing so. Turning aborted babies into a revenue stream is an inhuman exploitation of the not fully dead. They are saying that some unborn babies are more valuable dead than alive. It’s a terrible, barbaric place for a democratic society to go” (www.catholicnewsagency.com).
Abortion is a multi-billiondollar business around the world. The financial benefits are enormous. Just look at how much money organisations such as PP have made over the years. It is estimated that PP, “a non-profit organisation that researches and gives advice on contraception, parenthood and reproduction, receives almost US$528 million annually” (www.pressexaminer.com).
Pope Francis continues to urge us to say “No” to the “globalization of indifference”. In his Lenten message this year, he said: “Usually, when we are healthy and comfortable, we forget about others (something God the Father never does): we are unconcerned with their problems, their sufferings and the injustices they endure…Our heart grows cold…It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.”
St Pope John Paul II drew up a list of human rights in his encyclical Centesimus Annus. The first right he included was: “the right to life, an integral part of which is the right of the child to develop in the mother’s womb from the moment of conception.”
If we are to remain in Christ, if we are to build the common good we cannot do so without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.
The Catholic Church teaches that human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception to natural death: “the inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation” (Catholic Church’s Catechism #2273). In his encyclical, The Gospel of Life, St Pope John Paul II defines abortion, in the moral sense, as: “the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth”.
Cardinal O’Malley, Chair of the US Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, rightly said that the PP videos reveal a lack of respect for human life. He said the distribution of foetal organs and tissues “fail[s] to respect the humanity and dignity of human life. Pope Francis has called abortion the product of a ‘widespread mentality of profit, the throwaway culture, which has today enslaved the hearts and minds of so many’. The recent news stories concerning Planned Parenthood direct our attention to two larger issues involving many institutions in our society.
The first is abortion itself: a direct attack on human life in its most vulnerable condition. The second is the now standard practice of obtaining foetal organs and tissues through abortion. Both actions fail to respect the humanity and dignity of human life. This fact should be the centre of attention in the present public controversy.”
Let us renew our resolve to defend all life.
