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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

‘A Lot of People Want Liver’

The silence of American progressives on the Planned Parenthood scandal
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Reader DSP quotes from the Dr. Deborah Nucatola transcript:

Buyer: We need liver and we prefer, you know, an actual liver, not a bunch of shredded up—

Nucatola, of Planned Parenthood: Piece of liver.

Buyer: Yeah. Or especially brain is where it’s actually a big issue, hemispheres need to be intact, it’s a big deal with neural tissue and the progenitors, because those are particularly fragile. If you’ve got that in the back of your mind, if you’re aware of that, technically, how much of a difference can that actually make if you know kind of what’s expected or what we need, versus—

PP: It makes a huge difference. I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps. The kind of rate-limiting step of the procedure is the calvarium, the head is basically the biggest part. Most of the other stuff can come out intact. It’s very rare to have a patient that doesn’t have enough dilation to evacuate all the other parts intact.

Buyer: To bring the body cavity out intact and all that?

PP: Exactly. So then you’re just kind of cognizant of where you put your graspers, you try to intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact. And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex, because when it’s vertex presentation, you never have enough dilation at the beginning of the case, unless you have real, huge amount of dilation to deliver an intact calvarium. So if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last, you can evacuate an intact calvarium at the end. So I mean there are certainly steps that can be taken to try to ensure—

Buyer: So they can convert to breach, for example, at the start of the—

PP: Exactly, exactly. Under ultrasound guidance, they can just change the presentation.

Look at this, from a Federalist story. It’s a screen grab from the page of StemExpress, the California company that trafficks in aborted baby parts. It advises clinics that they can increase their profits by mining the bodies of human beings they kill in the womb:

Financial-Profits-Baby-Organs

News from the WSJ:

Several Republican lawmakers condemned the video discussion, with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio calling for hearings and urging the Obama administration “to denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices.”

Four top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a statement vowed to investigate Planned Parenthood, a major provider of abortions that receives federal funding for other medical services it provides. “The committee will get to the bottom of this appalling situation,” said Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan along with Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Tim Murphy and Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also said his office had launched an investigation.

I criticize Republicans around here a fair amount, but notice that they are the only politicians speaking out against this. From the Democrats? Crickets. This is why many of us vote Republican in spite of everything.

Christopher Hale, a liberal, is worried about the silence from his side:

Nucatola’s indifferent disposition revealed a disturbing attitude. She had no problem casually discussing her organization’s participation and leadership in what Pope Francis has called an “economy that kills.” But what’s perhaps even more troublesome is the radio silence from the progressive community in the wake of the video’s release.

To date, no high-ranking Democrat in the United States has commented on the video. That’s unfortunate, because progressives should be leading the fight against this grotesque act of selectively removing and preserving aborted fetuses’ organs for scientific use.

Deeply rooted in the foundation of our nation is the belief that every human being has dignity and the right to live in that dignity. As progressives, we further believe that the government plays a crucial role in protecting that dignity, especially among those who face adverse societal conditions: the poor, the unemployed, the uninsured, immigrants, the LGBT community — and yes — pregnant women and their unborn children.

This radical inclusivity is at the heart of the progressive tradition.

Chris, Chris, Chris. Don’t you know that anything that limits sexual autonomy and liberty is contemporary progressivism’s idea of the ultimate evil? The only thing that will get America’s progressives speaking out against this is if the Blessed Caitlyn Jenner says something.

What if people were buying aborted fetal body parts for use in gourmet cooking? Would that be okay with progressives? If there’s no moral problem with using these parts for medical research, what would be the problem using them for soup?

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