BY RACHEL DEL GUIDICE
CATHOLIC VALUES COLUMNIST
It is always heartening to see an element of good come out of a discouraging and evil situation. A striking example of this can be seen in the national attention the abortion issue has received due to the videos that the Center for Medical Progress has released in its ongoing undercover investigation of abortion giant Planned Parenthood.
Abortion is a delicate issue, and for that reason, many people of faith have decided not to talk about it. This is a great advantage for the culture of death because many of us have enabled its evil to stay hidden in the shadows.
While the videos from the Center for Medical Progress depict unthinkable disrespect for human life, these videos have, nonetheless, been a good to society, as they have challenged all Christians to get a backbone on this issue and start calling abortion the evil that it is.
The impact of these videos has been so strong that the presidential candidates have had to weigh in on this issue.
Presidential contender Carly Fiorina even dared President Obama to view the videos.
“I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes,” said Fiorina on the debate stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sept. 16. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’”
The horrendous practices shown in the Center for Medical Progress videos have changed the abortion issue from a taboo issue to a serious human rights violation that deserves national attention.
While some are saying the videos from the Center for Medical Progress are heavily edited and merely appealing to emotion, it is clear that they are completely authentic. The Center for Medical Progress has even uploaded completely raw footage to YouTube.
Even former abortionists have come out in support of the authenticity of these videos.
Life News reports that Warren Hern, a late-term abortionist, testified in a paper that he wrote for the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians about what a baby feels when he performs an abortion in which he tears the baby apart, limb by limb.
Hern said, “(T)hose capable of performing or assisting with the procedure are having strong personal reservations about participating in an operation which they view as destructive and violent. … Some part of our cultural and perhaps even biological heritage recoils at a destructive operation on a form that is similar to our own. … We reach a point…where there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”
The testimony of people like Warren Hern is all the confirmation needed to reaffirm the authenticity of and evil present in the Planned Parenthood sting videos.
It is important that society must realize the late-term abortions discussed in these videos are not a rare occurrence. Life News recently spoke with the legislative director for National Right to Life, Douglas Johnson, who explained the widespread use of late-term abortions.
Johnson said, “Late abortions are not ‘rare.’ At least 275 facilities offer abortions past 20 weeks fetal age. Because of publicity surrounding the trial of Kermit Gosnell and subsequent revelations about other abortionists, many Americans are becoming aware for the first time that abortions are frequently performed late in pregnancy on babies who are capable of being born alive, and on babies who will experience great pain while being killed.”
Johnson has seen the horrific evil of abortion, and he is courageously refuting the lies of society that attempt to play it off as a minor issue.
It is time to learn a lesson from people like Fiorina and Johnson. They are having the backbone to swallow any fear they may have and condemn the horrendous practice of abortion. Let us use this window of opportunity that the Center for Medical Progress has given the pro-life movement and stand together in courage, compassion and hope to take down the giant of Planned Parenthood.