The response by the head of Planned Parenthood—the nation's largest abortion provider—to the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad is telling. And it deserves a look. (Click here for the video.)
For those unfamiliar with Planned Parenthood's influence in the area of abortion rights, it suffices to say that they lead the pack. The organization provides a series of services and consultations for women considering abortion and artificial forms of birth control, including an abortion referral service and information on the details of the in-clinic abortion procedure. (This video is well worth watching.)
In response to the Tebow commercial, Cecile Richards stresses a few points about the ad, and about Planned Parenthood's mission and guiding principles. Understanding her words is key to understanding the meaning of the video; and we will look at each point individually.
Abortion as a "Deeply Personal Medical Decision"
Perhaps the most glaring, and central, moment of the entire forty-five second response by Richards is the statement about Tebow's mother making an important "medical decision" not to abort her pregnancy: "[The ad features] a football player, Tim Tebow, and his mom, talking about a deeply personal medical decision she made years ago." At bottom, this particular choice of words sets the tone for the entire video, and it deserves to be unpacked.
First of all, by calling the choice to continue a pregnancy a "medical decision," Richards immediately and intentionally evades having to deal with the termination of pregnancy as a moral issue. This is critical, so let me say it again: by placing abortion within the scope of "medical decisions," Planned Parenthood denies that there is anything more ethically controversial about this procedure than the decision of whether or not to go to the doctor because of a cough (a thoroughly "medical" decision); and thus, they remove any negative moral stigma about abortion right from the beginning. In short, Planned Parenthood sniffed out the underlying premises of the Tebow approach and squelched them immediately by shifting the focus of the conversation from a matter of "right" and "wrong," to an issue of prudence.
Of course, this shift is not complete; without an alternative to an ethics of "right" and "wrong" there is nothing for Planned Parenthood to rest its position upon. And so, the words, "deeply personal," are prefixed to the discussion of "medical decisions."
For the observant viewer, Richards' moves aren't too crafty. They are the tried and true tactics that ethical proportionalists have used for ages, only here they are set into motion swiftly and attractively on a 720p hi-definition YouTube video. The facts are unchanged, though: Richards pulls the rug out from under the ethical debate surrounding abortion, and replaces it with the shaky scaffolding of relativism. If "medical decisions" aren't benign enough, then "deeply personal medical decisions" will do the trick. In other words, the decision of whether or not to abort a pregnancy is not only a matter of prudential judgment, but of a prudential judgment rooted entirely within an introspective investigation of what truly is best for oneself. In the case of Pam Tebow, according to Richards, a "personal medical decision" was made that was "right for her and her family."
Since the ethics of "right" and "wrong," as we saw, were neutralized by the mitigation of abortion from a moral decision into the realm of prudence, something else has to account for Tebow's decision being the "right" one. And, because of a sly shift into the language of proportionalism, we have a solution: Pam Tebow's decision was "right for her and her family" precisely because it was based on what seemed most advantageous for them—in whatever moral framework they had constructed for themselves—given the "serious risks" of her situation. For Planned Parenthood, the "personal decision" of one woman is incommensurate to the "personal decision" of another, precisely because "person" denotes not only an individual moral agent, but also an individual moral cosmos. To put it bluntly, the folks at Planned Parenthood are relativists through and through.
"Planned Parenthood Trusts Every Woman"
So what's the point of the video? It's simple: to convey the message that "Planned Parenthood trusts every woman to make her own important, personal medical decisions." But now we have a better idea what that means; and we can ask a few pointed questions. First, what is Planned Parenthood really trusting women to do? And second, what significance does the word, "trust," really retain?
The answer to both is "nothing."
By diminishing the question of abortion ethics to the mere assertion of some personally held, deeply individualistic sense of what-is-best-for-me-now, Planned Parenthood empties the term, "trust," of any worth, and posits it merely as an alternative to the word, "empowers." Planned Parenthood empowers all women to make their own important, personal medical decisions. In fact, it even bestows upon them the power of meting out life and death (since they openly acknowledge that abortion "removes a pregnancy," which is nothing other than the removal of a life). Ultimately, Planned Parenthood enables women to pursue, without coercion, their free choice to abort an unborn human life—and they do it unapologetically, and under the guise of trust, care and personal interest.
Copyright © 2010 ProLife ProPatria. All rights reserved.
Comments
Also, no mention was made of Pam's husband. This is one aspect that PP has to hold on to. 'It is noone's decision other than that of the mother'. 'Private', as Richards repeated again.
Finally, 'without government interference' is a blatant distraction . Everyone knows PP is funded by the government. Richard's meant 'government restrictions' but, they need the government to continue their work. So we're supposed to sympathize with PP in their opposition to government interference, while shoveling PP our money through the same government.
Medical procedures are those interventions undertaken by the clinician to:
1. Treat disease
2. Promote health
Regarding the former, a human embryo/fetus is not a tumor, and therefore pregnancy is not a disease.
Regarding the latter, there is an abundance of literature showing that a First Full Term Pregnancy (FFTP) actually reduces a woman's risk of developing breast cancer, while an abortion before FFTP raises those risks-an issue I'll be commenting on in depth here in the weeks to come. Thus, not only does abortion not promote health, it actually promotes breast cancer.
Further dismantling PP's verbal engineering, they simply do not trust women to make this decision, at least not an INFORMED decision. Physicians who can see on their sonograms the baby writhing in agony and fear, trying to escape the suction cannula or forceps, tell the mother reassuringly that this is nothing more than a clump of cells.
Abortionists do not tell women the truth of the baby's developmental achievement, do not tell women that the suction cannula, which has 16x the suction of a vacuum cleaner, will increase her probability of either not being able to implant another embryo, or leave her with incompetent cervix. They do not discuss with the woman her risk of developing breast cancer, nor of the burgeoning literature dealing with Post-abortive Stress Syndrome-a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
In failing to disclose all of this, the ethics of informed consent that apply everywhere else in research and therapeutics are cast aside.
When one considers how vociferously PP tries to have crisis pregnancy centers, which show women sonograms of their babies and discusses ALL of the woman's options socially, economically, medically, etc., then one sees the full extent of PP's loathing for the women who entrust themselves to PP's care.
Reliable law cannot be made on the basis that the government can do what I want it to and it cannot do what I don't want it to do. Either the government has jurisdiction, or it does not. If it does, the legislature has considerable discretion on how it exercises that jurisdiction. For example, congress is authorized to regulate interstate commerce. It is not authorized to license churches.
The Bill of Rights was written in broad language. So was the 14th Amendment. Some suggested they should be more precise, while others said there should be no such amendments, because our natural rights might be limited to those specified. Courts have had to expound and apply broad principles. Freedom of the press does not mean complete freedom from libel laws, but unlike many European countries, libel has to be both false and malicious, not merely defamatory. Equal protection of the laws does not mean that a five year old can vote. Freedom of religion does not extend to human sacrifice.
Roe v. Wade was not an emotive decision. It was a conservative application of well established law. Obviously, if an unambiguous and generally accepted case is made that a human life worthy of the same protection as a 35 year old adult exists from the moment of conception, then any state government has a right to intervene to protect the fetus. However, such a consensus did not, and does not exist. Therefore, the state has been restrained from intervening. Those of pro-life convictions have every right to share with their fellow citizens why a woman should CHOOSE to carry her pregnancy to term.
I think on some level, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has a problem with this, because the church did not develop its canons in the framework of a government of limited powers. It developed in the womb of the later Roman Empire, and a collection of feudal states, where the king could do whatever he wanted, and if the church declared something immoral, the state would arrest, imprison, even immolate the perpetrator. The notion that the state is denied the power to act is foreign to this way of thinking.
Obviously, reasonable men may differ about what powers the government should be granted. That is itself a legitimate debate, but it requires constitutional amendment, which is not an easy thing to accomplish, because it changes the fundamental basis of our social contract. At any rate, state intervention in decisions regarding pregnancy are not a matter of giving anyone whatever they want. It is a matter of carefully examining and applying the limits of government jurisdiction. As I've noted before, the pro-life movement may someday have reason to thank God for Roe v. Wade. By its very terms, it also prohibits the state from MANDATING abortion -- and we could all imagine a government coming to power which might thing that a good thing to do.
FACT #1: If it is a life (simple biology says it is, and NO ONE refutes this), and that life is purposely and willfully terminated (through abortion), then a child has been willingly killed. Stop the euphemisms -
Abortion is what it is. Pro-choice individuals should stop hiding behind the facade of "choice" and openly acknowledge that abortion kills an innocent child. "Pro-choice" people WILL NOT address this directly - they know that they cannot openly and willingly acknowledge this without abortion being shown for what it is. Perhaps pro-choice people on this site would like to actually address this DIRECTLY? I have yet to ever see that happen.
FACT #2: If it is a "medical" issue, then show individuals the actual so-called "medical procedure" of an actual abortion and let them decide. (We've seen all other medical procedures - why is this one always hidden?) Unless you're a totally hard-hearted calloused individual, I believe most people's hearts and minds would change in an instant if they were to see the graphic destruction of an individual child through the violent act of abortion.
FACT #3: If you resort to the whole "privacy" issue, then I'd like to ask since when is it o.k. to murder someone (short of in the act of self-defense, which abortion IS NOT). Murder is considered a PRIVATE DECISION? Since when??? Before birth, it's considered "private" ~ but after birth, that SAME decision is considered "murder". YET the action is the same, so why is one o.k. (pre-birth) and one isn't (after birth)?
We live in a totally schizophrenic society with our mentality that somehow abortion is a right (the right to kill our kids???) and totally acceptable. It's like the old saying from Hitler (paraphrased), "Tell people a lie over and over, and they'll believe you". OPEN YOUR EYES, AMERICA. You are condoning the killing of innocent children and calling it a "reproductive right/choice, ad nauseum". Acknowledge abortion for what it really is. I challenge "pro-choice" people to do this HONESTLY!!! ~ God help us all!
Back to point #1. Be honest. To say that abortion is murder is the premise of your entire belief system. To then offer it as the only possible conclusion is tautological. Life is not really the issue: most of us take life every day. Murder is the killing of a human being. The word "being" is more important than many pro-life people are willing to acknowledge. Yes, from the moment of conception, there is a living cell. Moreover, this cell has a unique DNA sequence, and it is epigenetically equipped to diversify into all the types of cells and organs necessary to form a complete human being -- as opposed to many other cells which can only produce more of their own specialized kind in situ. It is indeed a human zygote. Nevertheless, every skin cell on my arm is human, and living, but after serving their short lifespan for no other purpose than sustaining the total organism that is me, they die and are sloughed off. Each has the same 23 chromosome pairs as the original zygote. A human being exists when all the specialized organs which constitute a human being are in place and interacting with each other. That is not true of a zygote, an embryo, or the earlier stages of a fetus. You have every right to make the case that abortion is murder, but don't tell me that it is axiomatically true and I should just accept that. I believe it to be false, for the reasons I have just stated. You, of course, disagree, but we have a difference of interpretation of the data, not self-deception on the part of either one of us.
Point #2: I think a dispassionate, meticulously accurate, presentation of what an abortion really entails should be available to each woman considering abortion. I wouldn't go so far as to say that she should have her nose rubbed in it -- after all, open heart surgery patients don't have to watch films of open heart surgery. But, I have little doubt that medical staff have at times downplayed or even lied about exactly what is going to happen, and one result is that women who would not have chosen to abort have had the procedure, and deeply regretted it. I would note that sonograms of a three month fetus should be shown without magnification. The impact will be different, but the point is to show the truth, not to exaggerate to sway a woman's decision, right?
Point #3 I think I've already covered. Your expression of frustration is understandable. For over 33 years, millions of women have acted in a manner contrary to your own deeply and sincerely held moral understanding of what would be the right way for them to act. The law allows them to do so. I'm not sure whether you really want to execute doctors and imprison women as a means of reducing the number of abortions, but I don't. Citizens with pro-life convictions have every right to freedom of speech, and every right to reach out to pregnant women, offering them whatever help they require in order to CHOOSE to carry their pregnancy to term. In fact, that would be much better use of your time and energy than trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, or demanding that people who don't agree with you should accept your premise as the foundation of any discussion. I freely leave this prospect open to you: what if they built an abortion clinic, and nobody came? If you can achieve that, without any change in the legal rights of women to make their own choice, I won't be complaining.