worth a thousand words

Thinking out loud about why the Planned Parenthood video is so disturbing, and why it might finally move a nation, or at least those citizens with hearts, to stand and fight for our children.

We learned from the video that Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted babies. They take pains not to crush the babies’ torsos so that researchers can use their tiny heart, liver, and lungs. But selling dead babies is not the worst part of abortion. Abortion is the worst part of abortion. We already knew that millions have been aborted in our country, and in the most ghastly ways, so why the big deal now that we learn they also are often cut into pieces and sold for research?

The reason is the video. There’s power in the seeing. Everyone knew that Ray Rice had struck his fiancé, but then we saw the video. He was suspended for the entire year. Everyone suspected Mitt Romney was elitist, but then we saw the undercover video and heard his own voice blaming the 47%. He never recovered.

Yesterday we saw an abortion doctor discussing the price of baby parts as she picked at her salad. And we knew. This is the face of evil. A person so calloused to her work that the most horrific act you can imagine (really, what could be worse?) is handled with the nonchalance of asking about the weather.

Turn off the sound, and you would imagine she is saying, “Think it might rain today” or “This summer’s been cooler than normal.” Definitely not, “A lot of people want liver” and “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.” Munch, chew, take a sip of wine.

I generally dislike analogies to Hitler, but isn’t this how the Nazis did it? How could they kill so many Jews in gas chambers then go about their normal routines? I still don’t understand how, but I now understand that. It’s possible for evil to become so banal that its most ghoulish parts can be shared over salad. I wouldn’t believe it either, if I hadn’t seen it. If you watched the video, then you know it too.

I wish the response to the video was less political. I wish the Left would acknowledge it. Lester Holt had time to tell us a beached shark was saved but couldn’t fit in a mention of the story that at least a third of the country is talking about? I wish some on the Right wouldn’t use it as a way to raise money, get my email, or beat up on Democrats.

The president of Focus on the Family has become friends with the head of Planned Parenthood, and I worry what this fuss will do to their relationship. These are real people, and we must love them as such. But so are the babies they’re mutilating, apparently for money.

I wish killing babies was less political, but if we wait until everyone’s motives are pure we’ll never do anything good. Don’t let politics stop you from doing the right thing.

We responded to the Holocaust by declaring “Never again.” Time to see if we meant it.

Photo via LifeNews.