OPINION:
Like many of you, when I first heard the undercover video of a Planned Parenthood official discussing in a detached and macabre manner the selling of aborted baby parts, I was physically sickened.
Regardless of whether you identify as pro-life or pro-choice, the impact of the ghoulish and craven nature of the negotiation for body parts is profoundly disturbing. Yet there are liberal individuals and institutions, like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, the White House and The New York Times, methodically defending Planned Parenthood, making very sure whatever is left of their critical minds doesn’t disturb them with a reminder of the rank obscenity of the situation.
One thing I can tell you — the feminist movement was supposed to be about ensuring equal rights for women, which included being trusted to make our own reproductive choices.
Horrifyingly, in the 21st century it has devolved into abortionists exploiting women’s bodies and selling baby parts over a glass of chardonnay while giggling about wanting a Lamborghini.
My reaction carries a more personal component as my political activism began in the 1980s with abortion rights. I’ve written extensively about my journey from the left to the right in my three books. Ten years ago in “The Death of Right and Wrong,” I chronicle and warn about the bullet train of moral relativism controlling the liberal activist and political machine and their attempts to drag our entire society into their gruesome descent into moral chaos.
With the exposure of Planned Parenthood, we see the ultimate liberal destination: a world with a disconnect from humanity so profound, so disturbed, that a woman discussing where she chooses to “crush” an in-utero baby in order to not damage the human organs discussed for sale is approached as blase and routine.
As the second video was released last week, again of a female official at Planned Parenthood negotiating the sale of baby parts, I thought to myself, “Why isn’t anyone from the pro-choice movement condemning Planned Parenthood for this?” Then I realized I was one of those people, and instead of waiting for someone else to step up, I would.
The pro-choice argument, for me, has been about wanting government out of our lives; even when on the left my work was based in the desire to be left alone by intrusive government, issues of violence against women, and economic equality informed my activism. I knew then, and still believe, that moral legislation, like prohibition or anti-abortion laws, impact only the disenfranchised. People with money will always get what they want; the poor or powerless not so much.
At the same time, if you’re having an abortion in the 21st century you have failed. With so many birth control options, the first “choice” women have begins with saying the word “no” before you have sex with someone that could result in a pregnancy.
The modern feminist movement abandoned women long ago when they monetized women’s bodies with the issue of abortion, literally needing to romanticize abortions into something that, as one national feminist leader put it at a speech I attended in the early 1990s, an act a woman should be proud of.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Besides the ghastly nature of the Planned Parenthood tapes per se, any normal human being has to question, how did this happen? Who have we become? While I agree to some degree that the current Planned Parenthood issue has nothing to do with abortion rights and everything to do with corruption and moral obscenity, it doesn’t end there. As a feminist I must consider how the argument for abortion-rights, and the left’s narrative rejecting the humanity of a baby in-utero, has contributed to this atrocity.
Our liberal culture in general worships self-obsession, consumption and the throw-away society, where the lives of the voiceless are more invisible than ever before. As the concept of family disintegrates, children (and pregnancies) more often become loose threads that threaten to undo the fabric of our well-crafted lives.
Our liberal media gatekeepers are making animals and even children more like accessories for our reality-television focused culture, to be made in an effort to reassure ourselves, or others, of our increasingly doubtful humanity.
And then there’s the Planned Parenthood videos. It was inevitable with moral relativism and the death of right and wrong. In this world, no one, and no thing, is to be judged, certainly no one from one of the protected classes of the left, and absolutely not one of their citadels, like Planned Parenthood.
We watch as the movement to empower women is brutalized by the left into a scheme which enslaves women to a liberal politics that uses them and their bodies like dirty dishrags. And then we’re told to shut up about it. Because of political correctness.
There is a scramble on the left by politicians like Mrs. Pelosi and Mrs. Clinton, and their legacy media water-carriers like The New York Times, to “save” Planned Parenthood. These moral terrorists must obfuscate and crawl even further into the gutter to do so, because the cost of admitting the truth of what they’ve become is too monstrous to admit.
We, however, have another choice. We can choose to not let that monster prevail. There are actions that can be taken immediately to reclaim the decency we are all worthy of, and that includes making sure we end our complicity in this atrocity by cutting off the $500 million dollar a year taxpayer subsidy of Planned Parenthood.
The left is always complaining about massive corporate profits, and ending “corporate welfare.” Let’s start with Planned Parenthood. Ending taxpayer support can be our first step in taking our nation back by refusing to enable and finance the cruel inhumanity of the left.
• Tammy Bruce is a radio talk show host.
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