The Patriot Post® · Shameful: Planned Parenthood's Week Response
What do you have to do to lose your government funding these days? Try believing in natural marriage or running a pro-life charity. But defraud taxpayers, cover-up child sexual abuse, botch abortions, and scavenge babies for body parts, and you’re untouchable. Or at least you used to be.
After a breezy lunch conversation about selling baby organs, Planned Parenthood’s invincibility is being put to the ultimate test, along with the resolve of lawmakers to stand for human decency. Decades of lies and corruption have all come to a head this week after Cecile Richards’s group was accused of running a black market of baby parts. Out of the mouth of the organization’s own senior medical director, more than two million Americans have watched the President’s closest ally talk about changing their abortion procedures (often at risk to the mother) to protect – not the woman’s or baby’s interests, but Planned Parenthood’s.
For the first time [Thursday], Richards addressed the scandal, insisting that her organization “follows all laws and ethical guidelines” – a claim that might have more validity if it weren’t preceded by years of exploitation and wrongdoing. Richards insists that the executive in question has been reprimanded for her “tone – but this problem runs much deeper than one person’s nonchalance. This is a crisis of inhumanity in our culture.
As Dr. Ben Carson told Megyn Kelly on Fox News last night, the real shocker isn’t the video. "What’s really disturbing,” he said, “is the fact that we have become so callous that a lot of people don’t even realize that this is shocking. To see the callousness with which we are treating human life… [T]here are so many people who are concerned about little spiders and things, and yet, the human being inside the mother’s womb… is much more sophisticated than many of these creatures that they’re trying to preserve.” Planned Parenthood is insisting that these organs are important to medical research – a claim the doctor calls “spurious.” “There’s nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue,” Dr. Carson explained.
Meanwhile, still stinging over the loss of the $4.5 million it stood to gain from Congress’s breast cancer bill, Susan G. Komen is desperately trying to downplay its ongoing partnership with Planned Parenthood. In a statement, Komen claims there continues to be a “misunderstanding” about their relationship with America’s largest abortion business. They argue that the grants to Richards’s group “only” total $465,000. But that’s still $465,000 too much, especially for an organization that doesn’t offer mammograms, as they lead people to believe.
Over at Democratic headquarters, the media blackout isn’t fooling anyone. Inside, members are anxiously wondering how much this PR disaster will cost them. If last year’s campaign records are any indication, it may be a lot. More than a half-million dollars flowed directly to its House and Senate candidates from Planned Parenthood’s PAC – money now tainted by a possible organ trafficking ring. Gearing up for 2016, no member wants to answer the question of whether Planned Parenthood’s contributions were the result of baby body part profits. For Hillary Clinton, who rakes in 20 times as much Planned Parenthood money as her Democratic presidential rivals, the decision to keep or return the money will be telling.
Ironically, if a taxpayer-funded group had been caught dismembering baby animals, people would be demonstrating in the streets. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) made that powerful point – and many more – in an emotional speech on the Senate floor [Thursday]. After spending Thursday in meetings about protecting orca whales and horses, the contrast couldn’t be starker. “You can’t say in one moment that’s not a human and then sell it for the next moment as a human organ and say now suddenly it is. It was a human all the way through. There was never a time that wasn’t a child, never a time that wasn’t a human, and it seems the ultimate irony to me that we spend time talking about humane treatment of animals being put down… and we completely miss children being ripped apart in the womb and their body parts being sold.”
For eight minutes, he delivered one of the more eloquent defenses of human life in recent memory. (Watch it here.) Like every American who cherishes life, we’re grateful that Republican leaders are calling for an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s immoral and probably criminal behavior. But we also hope that, unlike so many congressional efforts that have lost momentum or been eclipsed by another White House scandal, this leads to real reform.
In the meantime, taxpayers deserve the assurance that not a cent of their hard-earned money is given to this organization to commit heinous crimes against humanity. Contact your congressman and demand a moratorium on Planned Parenthood funding until Americans know the full extent of their involvement in this dark world of trafficking. Liberals are looking for every excuse to financially punish Christians for no reason. The question on everyone’s minds should be: how is it possible that a person’s religious views can disqualify them from government support, but criminal activity can’t?
County Fair? Not to Clerks’ Beliefs
County clerks spend a lot of time at court – but rarely are they in court for their beliefs. Unfortunately for Kentucky clerk Casey Davis, the ACLU is guaranteeing him a trip there as a subject of a licensing lawsuit. Davis, who spoke passionately about his faith and his resolve on this week’s “Washington Watch,” may find himself before a federal judge as early as next week.
Like hundreds of local officials, Davis opted not to issue court-created same-sex marriage licenses. And, like hundreds of local officials, he was threatened because of it. Not only has the ACLU cracked down on Casey, but so has his own governor. Democrat Steve Beshear met with Davis and gave him an ultimatum: obey or resign. He refused to do either. As Casey told our listeners, “It’s not just me being violated but it’s both sides of the coin, both sides of this issue that’s at stake here, and that is our First Amendment rights,” Davis said. “We have religious freedom in this country and if we lose that we’ve lost everything.”
Kentucky legislators are doing everything they can to stop that from happening. After an entire office of clerks quit over same-sex marriage earlier this month, leaders raced to build a firewall to protect others. On Wednesday, lawmakers filed three separate bills with the goal to shield Christians like Casey from having to violate their beliefs to do their job. One directly protects county clerks, while the other two defend the right of church leaders, business owners, and faith-based groups to refuse any involvement in same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, the governor refused to call the special legislative session Casey and 57 other clerks requested – leaving bills and county officials hanging until January.
While the states try to find a local patch for the problem, Congress is concentrating on the big picture of religious liberty. At a press conference [Thursday], our good friends Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Republican Study Conference Chair Bill Flores (R-Texas) put a spotlight on their efforts to protect every American’s freedom of belief. With Republicans from both chambers, Flores used President Obama’s own statement to call attention to the crisis created by marriage’s redefinition. Even “President Obama has [said] our commitment to religious freedom [is] vital,” he pointed out. “I would challenge everyone in Congress and President Obama to live up to his words and support the First Amendment Defense Act.” Religious Americans have just as much right to live according to their faith as others do not to practice any. Join FRC in calling on Congress to support the First Amendment Freedom Act today!
Always Faithful, Always Remembered
Our hearts continue to go out to the families of four U.S. Marines who were viciously killed on their home soil [Thursday] in Chattanooga. While the media debates the Islamic connections of the gunman, one thing is painfully clear: America is not just at war abroad, but at home. And the environment – under an administration more concerned about open transgenderism in the military than the mission of it – is only getting worse.
As these families grieve, a lot of the focus will undoubtedly be on the vulnerability of our brave men and women, especially in places like this recruiting station and other smaller military installations where the government refuses to let our troops protect themselves. One of the starkest images from [Thursday’s] rampage was a small, white no firearms sign at the station door. Like a lot of places, this Marine office was a gun-free zone, making its occupants sitting ducks for attacks like this one.
[Thursday], Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and I talked about the ridiculousness of these rules – and their potential for exploitation under radical jihadists or anyone with the intent to harm. “The more DOD refuses to acknowledge that Radical Islam is at war with us, the more danger our military members are really in, even where they should be more protected,” Louie told me on “Washington Watch.”
“For heaven’s sake, our military ought to be the ones who are able to defend themselves, but these rascals know that even at the recruiting stations, these are gun-free zones. The Senate needs to stop their opposition to the amendment… to allow commanders that are over any military installation to provide procedures so that they can have people armed at these installations… Let’s get the gun-free zones removed from military stations, and let people defend themselves.” If you’re in the military, he argued, “you ought to be qualified to carry a weapon, and you ought to be trusted to carry a weapon.” Let’s pray the military recognizes that before more unnecessary blood is spilled.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.