Tip for reporters trying to figure out why people are shocked by the PP videos. Just pretend PP staff are talking about baby lions. Get it?

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 28, 2015

It is being widely noted that there has been a national, even international, freakout over the killing of Cecil the Lion by that jackass Minnesota dentist. For the record, I don’t feel sorry for him one bit, and he deserves public censure for his disgusting act (though the social media mob is, as usual, insane and frightening; I have people on my FB feed saying that the despicable dentist ought to be murdered).

(UPDATE: I should have written more clearly. I don’t feel sorry for Dr. Palmer for being strongly criticized. But the social-media mob is absolutely terrifying, and he does not deserve what they are dishing out. Nor, let me be clear, would one of the Planned Parenthood doctors, as revolting as their behavior is. To give ourselves over to mob action like this is barbarism. The mob that turns on people you hate could just as easily turn on you tomorrow. — RD)

That said, the outrage over Planned Parenthood’s butchery of unborn human beings and selling their body parts has been limited to certain sections of the US political and cultural Right. If the dentist had disassembled Cecil’s organs and sold them for medical research to the highest bidder, supermodels would have been rending their couture garments in the streets.

The dentist, Walter Palmer, says what he did was legal:

In early July, I was in Zimbabwe on a bow hunting trip for big game. I hired several professional guides and they secured all proper permits. To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted.

“I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.

He might be right. The story so far is that guides lured Cecil out of a wildlife preserve, where he was protected, so Dr. Palmer could take a legal shot at him. Legal does not equal morally right, as supporters of Planned Parenthood don’t seem to understand.

Let’s be blunt about it. I find the photo of the triumphant Dr. Palmer, with a lion’s dead body (not Cecil’s; Palmer goes big-game hunting a lot), to be appalling. If you do too, good for you. But if you don’t find this photo (which I’ve put below the fold) documenting what Planned Parenthood actually does to be even more appalling, then you need to get your moral priorities straight. And if you can’t look at it, why not? This is what abortion is. Planned Parenthood is selling those limbs. The social media mob has driven the appalling Dr. Palmer into hiding. The even more appalling Dr. Nucatola, who does to unborn human beings what Palmer does to lions, has nothing to worry about, not in America 2015.