Abortion – The Legal Holocaust

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…” That’s what I thought as soon as I read the details of yesterday’s passage of the “Reproductive Health Act” in the New York State Senate. Like the terms “abortion,” and “euthanasia,” the name of this particular bill is a euphemism to disguise the horror within the bill. The short summary is that this bill reaffirms all the previous controversial steps to abortion in every way possible, but perhaps the worst element of the bill is that it legalizes partial birth abortion and even further, a baby (we will not call it a fetus) in the womb in the third trimester can be aborted – even should it survive the horrid procedure. Just as one would be stunned by this hideous bill, one would be appalled by the ovation that the Democrats and liberals gave themselves in the Senate chamber and galleries after the terrible bill was passed. Furthermore, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the lights on the Empire State Building and the One World Trade Center and other buildings to be lit pink to “celebrate” the passage of the bill. He further expressed the intention of the Democrat party of the state to codify abortion as a right in the New York State constitution. Before I go on, let me insert an article by Ms. Olivia Summers. This article was made available on the website of the American Center of Law and Justice:

Planned Parenthood’s Newest Report Exposes Its Lies About Its Abortion Agenda

By Olivia Summers, January 23, 2019

Planned Parenthood has just issued its 2017-2018 report [1], and once again [2] it distorts facts and manipulates numbers in order to hide the truth behind its real agenda: profiting from the death of innocent babies.
Here are some fast facts from the latest annual report [1]:

  • 332,757 abortions performed – up 11,000 from last year [3] and the most abortions since 2012 [4].
  • $563.8 million received in taxpayer dollars – up $20 million from last year.
  • $244.8 million in profits (“Excess Revenue over Expenses”) – up nearly 150% since last year.
  • 2,831 adoption referrals – down 27% since last year.
  • Only 9,055 prenatal services (likely provided to only about 1,500 unique clients, as explained below).
  • Cancer screenings and preventative care, including breast exams, pap tests, colposcopy procedures, and LEEP procedures, were all down more than 7%.
  • Contraception services were down 3% over last year.

All told, while many of Planned Parenthood’s supposed other services were down, abortions, taxpayer dollars, and profits were way up.

Dr. Leana Wen has replaced Cecile Richards as president of Planned Parenthood, and the three words that sum up her vision for Planned Parenthood are “provide,” “protect,” and “expand.” This report demonstrates that those goals are primarily for one “service” – abortion.

Aside from its mission to destroy innocent babies in their mothers’ wombs, the ability of Planned Parenthood to use rhetoric and smoke screens to hide its true nature is most disturbing.

For example, Dr. Wen states that she has “been inspired on a daily basis by the dedication, passion, and kindness of the Planned Parenthood family.” I will certainly agree with Dr. Wen that Planned Parenthood supporters and workers are dedicated and passionate. Dedicated to and passionate about killing babies.

But Planned Parenthood was the opposite of kind when it threatened senators [5] and attacked Judge Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearings. It isn’t kindness that has driven Planned Parenthood to vehemently oppose state laws [6] that require the humane disposition of the remains of aborted babies and prohibit abortions based on the unborn child’s race, sex, or potential disability. And it isn’t kindness that is behind Planned Parenthood’s jubilant celebration [7] of a new bill in New York [8] that will essentially legalize abortion up until the point of birth.

It is not kindness. It is a perfect example of calling “evil good, and good evil [9].”

Planned Parenthood’s leadership believes that its “vision is in line with what the American people want . . .” and that “protections for birth control coverage” are being “gutted.”

First of all, polling shows [10] that “[m]more than three in four Americans, including six in ten who identify as pro-choice, want significant restrictions on abortion.” In other words, a MAJORITY of Americans think that abortion should be restricted – significantly restricted. In stark contrast to the American people’s desire for restrictions on abortion, Planned Parenthood has announced its “multi-million dollar plan to protect and expand abortion access [11] . . . .” This flies in the face of Planned Parenthood’s false assertion that its mission is in line with what the American people want.

Second, abortion is not birth control. Abortion is killing a baby. Yet, despite Planned Parenthood’s claim to be in the business of preventing abortions by providing contraceptives, its reports [1] show [12] that Planned Parenthood’s contraceptive services declined by over 80,000 and its abortions increased by over 11,000.

One published report [13] commented on this trend by stating that Planned Parenthood’s abortion services are “supplier induced,” meaning that the call for abortion on demand “may be motivated by financial gain for the service providers, by patients who are not fully informed of their options and thus delegate the decision to the supplier, and by the influence of provider values.”

The report, which studied Planned Parenthood and abortion trends from 1995-2014, further stated that Planned Parenthood “revenues from government reimbursement and grants increased 220% from $112 million to $554 million, reflecting a shift from low-revenue counseling and contraception services to much higher revenue abortions.”

Quite simply, Planned Parenthood is creating the demand for abortion, not the American people.

Planned Parenthood tries to hide this fact by claiming that abortion is only 3.4% of the services it provides. As we’ve explained before, Planned Parenthood is incredibly deceptive when it comes to reporting numbers.

In this year’s report [1], Planned Parenthood claims to have provided 9.7 million “services” to 2.4 million “patients.” Already we can see that averages out to a little over 4 “services” per “patient.” Then, using its highly inflated number, Planned Parenthood concludes that the 332,757 “abortion procedures” they performed last year only amounted to 3.4% of their services.

However, as we’ve previously explained [14]:

Planned Parenthood’s 3 percent figure has been bought hook, line, and sinker by the mainstream media as proof positive that Planned Parenthood isn’t really about abortion. But if you take even a cursory look at Planned Parenthood’s own data, that claim begins to unravel and quickly.

Planned Parenthood’s [2016-2017] report states that it performed “11 million services during nearly five million clinical visits.” So, now their abortion number jumps to 6.6 percent of clinic visits were for abortions. That’s right 6.6 percent of all visits to Planned Parenthood result in an abortion.

Planned Parenthood included a small footnote in its latest report to explain the discrepancy in its numbers reporting – perhaps because even mainstream media like the Washington Post (as discussed below) doesn’t believe the numbers add up? The footnote reads: “A service is a discrete clinical interaction, such as the administration of a physical exam or STI test or the provision of a birth control method. In 2017, Planned Parenthood health centers saw 2.4 million patients, collectively delivering nearly 9.7 million services during 4 million clinical visits.”

Planned Parenthood bundles its services in its report to make abortions seem like a smaller percentage of its services. But let’s do the real math here. Planned Parenthood sees 2.4 million patients, who make 4 million visits, and who require roughly 2.5 services per visit. Out of those 2.4 million patients, 332,757 of them have an abortion – that’s roughly 14% of Planned Parenthood “patients” who get abortions…not 3.4%. Even if you decide to use the larger number and divide the number of abortions by the total number of visits – 4 million – 8.3% of visits to a Planned Parenthood facility result in an abortion – over twice the number that Planned Parenthood cites in its report.

In addition, the other “services” that Planned Parenthood claims to provide, such as prenatal services (9,055) and adoption referrals (2,831), account for a measly 0.1% of all services.

As we’ve previously detailed, Planned Parenthood has carefully crafted a reporting method to make its prenatal services percentage seem larger than it is, and its abortion services percentage look much smaller than it really is.

“In 2009, Planned Parenthood reported performing 40,489 prenatal services [15] for 7,021 prenatal clients [16], an average of roughly 6 services per prenatal client.” If we are to assume an average of 6 prenatal services per client (as was the case in 2009), Planned Parenthood’s current listing of 9,055 prenatal “services” [1] could be for just over 1,500 prenatal clients. When combined with adoption referrals, that would be just over 4,300 live births as opposed to more than 332,000 abortions.

That’s why when the Washington Post fact checker did an actual analysis [2] of Planned Parenthood’s 3% claim, they gave it three Pinocchios [17].

As we explained at the time [2]:

The Washington Post Fact Checker [18] continues noting, as [we] have in the past [19], that looking at Planned Parenthood’s abortion revenue could paint a far better picture of Planned Parenthood’s true business model:

“Typically, this calculation is made by taking the number of abortions, multiplying them by the average cost of abortions advertised by Planned Parenthood clinics, and dividing the figure by the organization’s total non-government health services revenue [clinic income].

The main Planned Parenthood Web site says first-trimester abortions can cost up to $1,500. Some affiliate clinic Web sites provide a range of costs: a Western Pennsylvania clinic lists $390 to $1,090 for abortions, and first trimester abortion is priced at $515 in Arizona.”

It explains that while “advocates and opponents of abortion rights have calculated somewhere between 15 percent [of total revenue] and 37 percent [of clinic revenue]” comes from abortion, “[d]expending on which price you use, you can even get up to 55 percent.”

That’s 55% of Planned Parenthood’s clinic income coming from abortion.  [We]’ve previously calculated this at 51% of its clinic income [19].

Planned Parenthood is working overtime to further its agenda to provide a convenient narrative that helps it protect and expand its main source of income – abortion.

This is why our work here at the ACLJ is so important. We work to expose the true nature of Planned Parenthood by shining a light on its deceptive narrative, and by providing facts that truly inform the American people.

You can join us in our efforts now by signing our petition to defund Planned Parenthood.

How much of an issue is this for the political left? On Wednesday, January 23, the state of New York decided to make law the absolutely vile policy of abortion on demand with absolutely no limitations. The hideous Partial Birth Abortion procedure – it’s absolutely legal in New York State. The mainstream liberal left media will never go into detail about what that procedure is, and for good reason. It is bad publicity and that is the one thing that neither Planned Parenthood nor any other abortion group wants. Last year, amovie was released based on Kermit Gosnell, the worst serial killer in American history. Before I tell you about that case, the silence of the press during that trial was one of the notable aspects of that case which took place in the state of Pennsylvania back in 2011. Shortly after the movie was released, movie theatres began canceling it. They would not market it and refused to show it because Abortion/Reproductive Rights would be seen in a “bad light.” What were they worried about anyway?

Joseph Mengele was one of the most infamous criminals in the Nazi world – a doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp who conducted horrific experiments on children. The number of children who suffered at his hand is incalculable. Kermit Gosnell is the equivalent of Mengele in the United States. Immoral, amoral, without feeling, without remorse; as a believer and follower of Jesus Christ, I would call him evil. In his “medical practice,” he conducted over 7,000 abortions, but that was not the reason he ended up in criminal court. Gosnell was convicted of murdering three infants who were born alive during attempted abortion procedures. Only three such infants were identified, but most likely there were many others. These infants were killed by Gosnell stabbing them in the back of the neck with his scalpel. He was also convicted for involuntary manslaughter when one woman died during an abortion procedure. That is not to say that other women did not suffer as a result of his grotesque practices. Several woman suffered irreparable health damage. Yet somehow, the public conversation revolved only on the lack of sanitation in his clinic. It’s ironic that as macabre the crimes that Kermit Gosnell committed, the law passed by the New York Senate and signed into law in New York State by Governor Andrew Cuomo, would have set him free.

The government of the state of Pennsylvania was in one way complicit to Gosnell and his clinic, at least during two administrations. One was during the administration of Governor Tom Ridge, a Republican. He basically sent word to the lower levels of government in the state not to pursue any further investigations because of the adverse publicity that abortion rights would receive as a result of the horrors that would be revealed. Democrat governor, Ed Rendell, also decided to look the other way until the matter could no longer be hidden. By then, he feigned shock and said neither he nor his administration had any knowledge of Gosnell or his clinic or the incidents and/or the situation within it. But the reality is far different. It is hard to understand how the politicians could plead ignorance with such dirty and disgusting practices. But as the Bible says, these politicians, pundits, administrators, bureaucrats have had their consciences seared with a “hot iron.” Except for one local newspaper, most of the press did not dare cover the Gosnell trial. Even the testimony of abortion doctors did not make it to the media, for how in God’s name does one sit and listen to doctors talking, in clinical detail, about conducting thousands of abortions without any trace of emotion, and expect to come out of that hearing unchanged? The only equivalent would be to go through the Auschwitz concentration camp, see all the horrors that were committed there ,including a pressurized room full of the human hair of scalped victims and not ask, “What on earth possessed the people who committed all these atrocities?” Instead, after seeing all of those horrors, we come to such point of subjective reasoning as to pretend that we did not, or do not see it – and then talk about the sports page!

What the political leaders in the state of New York did was an abomination, a sin so decidedly repulsive as to strike the face of God. The whole premise of the verdict of Roe vs. Wade, which Justice Harry Blackmun wrote which ended up legalizing abortion through the 50 states was that life begins at birth, not at conception. Taken to its full meaning, even if you see a person through a sonogram, that is not a person until he/she comes out their mother’s womb. That last part is now changed – if that person (out of the mother’s womb now) survives the gruesome procedure, it can be killed outside the mother’s body. Partial birth abortions, late-term abortions – procedures so sadistic that no one could believe that it has anything to do with the Health Profession, but since 1973 such procedures have been justified as being profitable to women’s health. How exactly, no one has specified yet.

In 2013, the state of Texas passed a law demanding that all abortion clinics in the state of Texas be required to meet the same medical sanitary standards of any other hospital and clinic in the state of Texas. The bill also banned abortions after 20 weeks and mandated that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. What exactly was the problem with all of this I do not know or understand, but the abortionists, led by former state senator Wendy Davis, went on a rampage. Somehow, even the health safeguards in the bill, Texas Senate Bill 5, was seen as an assault on women’s rights. But neither Senator Davis’ filibuster in the Texas Senate nor the raucous protests by abortion groups in the gallery was able to stop then Governor Rick Perry from calling a special session and having the bill pass through both the Texas House and Senate, both of which were controlled by the Republicans. Why is this issue such a hot button issue for the liberals? Only God knows.

Planned Parenthood, the group most associated with abortion rights in America, was founded by a woman named Margaret Sanger. It should be known that the this group does not want to divulge too much of its founding and founder because of the controversies involved therein. It was one of the saddest chapters in American medical history. There was an idea called Eugenics. The premise was that through social engineering, the perfect society could be formed with no handicaps or mental disabilities. It went further; people who were considered “imbeciles” could be sterilized to keep from “breeding” any other “imbeciles.” At the turn of the 20th century, over 70,000 victims would be sterilized. So popular an idea had it become that Justice Oliver Wendell Homes wrote an interpretative verdict justifying the state of Virginia’s practice of sterilizing criminals and other inferior elements of society. And this was thirty or forty years before Hitler and his Nazis did this in concentration camps and other hospitals in Europe. In fact, it can be argued that it was the kind of rationale that provided the foundation for what the Nazis did later.

Reproductive Rights – that is the operative term today for the abortionist. Just when the New York State bill was shocking enough, a legislator in the Virginia House of Delegates moved a bill that would make abortion in that state not only legal up to the third trimester (as in New York) but with the addendum that if a child survived the procedure, he/she could be killed outside of the womb. Governor Ralph Northam (a pediatric neurologist previously) explained that the child would be incubated and then according to the decision of the family, terminated. And he said this without the slightest bit of irony, like it was as normal as a doctor taking a patient’s temperature in the clinic. It made me wonder. What are these people missing in their souls?

It goes without saying that America should fear a culture of death, but in what sense? No, I do not believe that capital punishment or the death penalty is an evil thing. It is the unfortunate side of crime and punishment, and in the United States, it is used sparingly with the guilty party having every chance to appeal his/her sentence. There are many who work to abolish the death penalty, both secular groups as well as Christian, and I would respectfully disagree with them on the issue itself. But what is particularly irritating to me about such groups is that they ask, “How can you be against abortion and at the same time support the death penalty?” Well, if as they say, the convict would be considered a victim of “judicial murder,” they should also remember that those criminals committed crimes considered worthy of capital sentencing in a trial with a judge and jury. For the victim of abortion – what crime has that baby, that person done to have his/her humanity stripped away by the Supreme Court of the United States, to be denied that it has a heartbeat from the first trimester, to write off its mental development and human attachment to his/her mother? What crime has that child done to be treated this way? Is it right? Is there any redeeming value to society by its death and incineration? What has been resolved by its taking away? Has mankind become kinder and gentler as a result of its death? Or have we changed to the negative to all these questions?

In No Man is an Island, John Donne observes, “Any man’s death diminishes me…” Have we become diminished? Can anyone deny that we have and that we have done so to such a point where now the animal rights to life are counted more important than that of a human being? Since 1973, there have been over 50 million children aborted in this country. Moderates have said that it should not be a pivotal issue in the national debate during an election. After all, it is not politically correct and besides, who would want to be considered “backward” or “opposing women’s righta?” And so, on January 23, 2019, the Senate of the State of New York passed the most liberal abortion bill in history, making abortions right up to the point of birth legal. And as said before, if the child survives that nightmarish procedure, its life will be taken outside of the womb. And the Governor of New York and his Democrat Party celebrated with standing ovations, special lights on the Empire State Building and other places.

Have we not diminished?

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a man nor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.