So We Agree Then?

The tenth video from the Center for Medical Progress is out and the issue highlighted by the videos appears to be gaining some mainstream traction. This video is one of the more effective of the released videos — though they all of them have packed a punch — and I wanted to take a minute to explain why I think this is so.

First, if you haven’t seen this video, take a few moments. There is no graphic footage here, but there are some amazing and nightmarish statements.

The issue is hypocrisy, and what is being revealed is that Planned Parenthood is guilty of high hypocrisy. Not only so, but it is a hypocrisy that is plainly self-aware.

Bernie Sanders just spoke at Liberty University, and was there asked about abortion. He said, in effect, “look, we just disagree about this.” He was received courteously, and his security detail did not have to fight their way to the door for him afterward. Now, despite the fact that pro-lifers believe that he is advocating murder, he denies it. This question, and this denial, all occur in the framework of a large gathering place where people were being civil and courteous to each other. That is a good snapshot of how the abortion debate usually goes.

Because of the way the issue has been framed for us, we say “child” and they say “tissue,” and isn’t this just another political disagreement? That is certainly how it has been played — with the pro-lifers being cast for the last four decades as being on the extreme end of this political disagreement. How do we get past this assigned cultural framework for the disagreement?

Well, it is happening with these videos. What the videos are revealing, in effect, is that we say “child” and they also say “child.” Then, out in public, when they know that the cameras are running, they say tissue, research, tissue, research on tissue. Because science. The issue is no longer between what pro-lifers know and what pro-choicers deny. The glaring discrepancy now is between what pro-choicers know in private and what pro-choicers deny in public. This is a different debate entirely, and the only fair conclusion is that PP has been running a monstrous operation.

This breakdown for them is happening in several distinct ways. First, if it were just indeterminate tissue, they would dispose of it like they thought it was tissue. This is what might be called the dumpster problem. Why is everyone outraged that they are selling gonads and livers, but there has not been the same kind of outrage-traction when the babies were being thrown into dumpsters? Pro-lifers are outraged by this, obviously, but the pro-aborts have been able to defend themselves at that point, and have done so successfully for decades. And why? Because they claim it is just tissue in public and they were treating it like “just tissue” in private. No one has a problem with how hospitals dispose of the placenta after a birth. In an honest disagreement you would predict that pro-lifers would treat it like a baby and that pro-choicers would treat it like tissue, which means that throwing it in the dumpster appears at least consistent.

The great problem for Planned Parenthood now is this. They were getting away with all of this because a lot of people took their word for it. Because they did not want to look at it too closely, they were willing for medical professionals to dispose of lumps of tissue. “Some people say this, some say that, and I don’t want to be disturbed.” But now it appears that all parties to the dispute are saying the same thing, and we are dealing with very specific nouns. Eyes, brain, livers, thymus, heart, and now gonads. These are all human parts, and the veil has been lifted.

But the veil has not been lifted on the children — we have always had photos of the dead children who were dumpster bound. When shown such photos, people usually just recoil and retreat to a safe place where they can treat it like just another political dispute.

The damning thing for Planned Parenthood now is that the veil has been lifted on their knowledge of what they are doing. It has now been revealed to the world that Planned Parenthood agrees substantially with the pro-life movement — and so  the veil has been lifted on this stratospheric hypocrisy.

This can be seen in another way. This last video revealed that they know exactly how the whole thing would look to normal people. As one woman in the video put it, “just think of the headlines.” So they know that they are trafficking in the sale of human baby body parts, and they know how it would look if the veil were lifted on that. Well, it has been.

The one miscalculation apparent in the video is that they appeared to think that any revelation of this could shut them down entirely. And it really should have by now. But while Planned Parenthood has had a very bad summer, and if it had been anyone else they would have been shut down, they did underestimate the depth of complicity in our ruling class. It turns out that they are not the only hypocrites.

This hypocrisy is their vulnerability. This hypocrisy is the place where we must dwell. This is why the videos are so devastating and so effective. We can help make them more effective by accentuating and underscoring the same point.
I have been in any number of debates and discussions, and I know that the end is nigh if I am able to say something like this to an opponent, “So we agree then?”