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Planned Personhood Hero Image
Aug 10, 2015 / 5 min

Planned Personhood

Jonathan Pokluda

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth lately about Planned Parenthood and some undercover videos filmed by the Center for Medical Progress.

In the videos,which are all here, multiple high-level Planned Parenthood officials are seen discussing how much money they can get for body parts (livers, kidneys, hearts, eyeballs, heads, etc.) harvested from aborted children, and talking about how they can change the abortion procedure to get more intact organs. Making money off the body parts of aborted children is illegal, as is changing how you do a medical procedure in order to get intact body parts. Planned Parenthood has defended its actions by saying that it does not make a profit off the sale of children’s body parts; that the money only covers costs like the shipping and handling of the children’s organs.

As people argue back and forth about whether or not this trade in children’s body parts is illegal, I feel like there’s one giant elephant in the room that’s largely being ignored. Something that makes the whole question about the legality of selling children’s body parts a moot point. And that’s this: we’re talking about children’s body parts!

The Science of Abortion

See, the only logical reason why abortion is allowed at all is because the aborted children are not considered individual people. Because if they were people, then intentionally killing them would be considered murder, on the same level as killing a child in preschool. But, no, they’re just a clump of cells, right?

Sorry, but if you can get an intact and functioning heart, liver, thymus, kidneys, intestines, arms, legs, brain, etc. from an aborted child, then it’s quite a bit more than a clump of cells. In fact, just one of those organs alone would qualify as more than a nondescript clump of cells. Each part has a specific structure, function, and purpose. And you can’t get body parts without a body. A specific human body, with its own unique DNA, its own separate blood supply and blood type, and its own dreams. Yes,dreams.

None of this comes as a surprise. It’s long been known in science and medicine that, from conception, you have a separate, living human being, which develops all its own organs and parts very quickly. Somefun facts: weeks of pregnancy are measured from the first day of the mother’s last period, which is a full two weeks before conception can occur. So, measuring from conception, children start to develop organs in the third week—the same time that you would notice being late for your period. By week four or five after conception, a child has its own beating heart, pumping its own blood. It has arms, legs, eyes, and ears.

The only difference now is that we have video actually showing what these body parts look like at early stages. We can’t pretend that we just don’t know, or avoid thinking about it because it’s hidden from view. Abortion ends an innocent human life. And it’s done so roughly 58 million times in this country since 1973—almost 10 times as many people as were killed in the Jewish Holocaust, or roughly the equivalent of 400 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.

And we’re OK with this, why?

As these videos displaying the trafficking of human parts have come out, much of America was unbelievably apathetic to the news. We started allowing the killing of children in the womb a long time ago, and we’ve grown comfortable with the idea. And if you’re going to profit from taking a life in the womb, it simply makes sense to profit from selling the parts as well. You can hide the profit in “shipping and handling” if you want, but my guess is soon you won’t have to.

Stand for Life

To be fair, many people are not OK with it. Polls have consistently shown that the country is split, about 50/50, between being pro-life and pro-choice. Interestingly, though,one of those same polls found that most people think that the majority of their fellow Americans are in favor of abortion, even though pro-lifers had the slight majority at the time. I don’t know what that says about how the issue is portrayed in the media and the public sphere, but just know: if you are pro-life, you’re not in the minority, and you don’t have to be afraid of what other people think. You’re not an “extremist,” asPlanned Parenthood has tried to claim. Killing over 300,000 children a year, as Planned Parenthood does—I’d say that’s the real extreme. Stand up for what is right.

If you wonder whether you would have spoken out against evils like slavery or the Holocaust, this is your chance to find out. Now is the time to speak out andto vote.

If you have been part of an abortion, I’m not saying you’re evil or a murderer. You’ve made a mistake in a tough time, as we all do. You might have even been misled by people who saw you as a potential sale and a source of profit. And regardless, God offersforgiveness to everyone. If you’re in Dallas and you’re a woman, check out Someone Cares. If you’re a man, check out Forgotten Fathers.

Now, I know many people will have objections. What about this situation? Shouldn’t abortion be allowed because of (insert reason here)? Click here to see answers to those objections.

  • JP

(With help from Kevin McConaghy)

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