Refutation of justifying abortion because of zygote mortality, historic infanticide, and more

Evolutionary biologist Heather Heying's recent argument for abortion makes appeal to zygote survival, historical periods of infanticide, and careers.

Often, arguments for abortion avoid the ultimate question: is that which is in the womb a human life? This article clearly concedes it is, stating that even zygotes "are human, by any usual definition of the term." The argument in this article is not whether the enwombed are "human." Instead, their level of sacredness is called into question. Let's look at the various arguments in the article, starting with this matter of zygotes.

THE MAIN ARGUMENT: ZYGOTE SURVIVAL RATES
The article says “most human zygotes throughout history never became children” because they were either “miscarried,” had “chromosomal abnormalities” that proved fatal to the zygote, or that “genetic and environmental conditions rendered the zygote non-viable.” The article then concludes of these zygotes:

They are human, by any usual definition of the term, but they cannot survive. This happens to most zygotes that have ever been conceived. This fact leaves me, a biologist, wholly unconvinced by arguments about the sanctity of life.

Before we parse this conclusion, let’s again pause on the point of agreement. Fertilized zygotes “are human.” The article is correct in this regard. From the moment of conception, the nascent life has its own unique DNA, and is the empirical beginning of human life that progresses unto death. Now, let's analyze this main premise.

• Why should we question the sanctity of life of babies in utero on the grounds that “most zygotes” do not survive? Explanation for this foundational claim is absent. It is merely asserted. Later, we will address the claim that sacredness is attributed to varying stages of physical development.
• The argument here resembles, but falls short of, a logical three-term syllogism. The argument in syllogistic form is: Most zygotes die, therefore they are not sacred; or: Most Z are D. Therefore no Z are S. Missing is a second (minor) premise, such as a statement about what constitutes sacredness. The argument is logically invalid without even addressing whether the premises are valid.

Ultimately, it's nonsensical to assert life isn't sacred regardless of the frequency of biological malformations. It would not matter if 99% of zygotes didn't survive. No statistical appeals are necessary once we recognize human life is sacred and human life begins at conception.

Keep that in mind when reading these next three bullets, which are not foundational rebuttals to the article's zygote argument. Remember, the statistics are inconsequential to sacredness of life. Where there is human life, the sanctity proper to human life is present. The following thoughts are rather an inspection of zygote mortality statistics.

• What effect does the pill, which literally siphoned the life out of society beginning in 1960, have on the failure of zygote survival? The FDA's description of the "mechanism of action" of the oral contraceptive Ella admits: "alterations to the endometrium that may affect implantation may also contribute to efficacy." How many zygotes are counted that couldn't implant simply because the mother took an abortifacient pill? How many zygotes were deemed "flawed" because the mother had a virus, consumed too much alcohol, took drugs, used spermicides, had a bacterial infection, or an STD? Should we deny the sacredness of the nascent human on account of external forces? According to the article, which states "environmental conditions rendered the zygote non-viable," the zygote wouldn't even have to be "flawed" to lose sacredness. It only needs to fall victim to some unnamed environmental condition. This would be, of course, a nonsensical index to measure the sacredness of human life, for a baby could be speciously deemed unsacred on account of someone else taking heroin.
• An examination of embryo mortality rate studies was published in June 2017 by Dr. Gavin E. Jarvis in the Cambridge Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. He concluded current data is not reliable regarding the mortality of embryos, stating: "natural human embryo mortality is lower than often claimed and widely accepted." (e.g. A multitude of studies have widely disparate statistics, e.g. ranging from 46%-90% mortality for all pregnancies, from zygote to term.) 
• Consider the following: According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the total "rate of pregnancy loss after implantation" is 31%—much less than half. If one denies the sanctity of life based on "most zygotes" not surviving, wouldn't one have to say life is sacred at the stage in which the gestational survival rate exceeds 50%? And, if not, the appeal to "most zygotes" is moot.
  
  But, again, the percentages are irrelevant. Life is sacred from conception, because, even as the article concedes, it is a "human" life. We needn't demand a certain stage of gestational development to elapse before we can attribute sacredness to the life. What these statistics demonstrate is that post-implantation abortion would be unacceptable even to someone who arbitrarily wishes to claim a greater-than-50% mortality statistic as the threshold for sanctity of life.

INFANTICIDE
Another phenomenon to which the article appeals to justify abortion is the reality of historical infanticide. Granted, it does not endorse infanticide, at least not for modern cultures. The article states of America: "Society-wide, we have agreed on this much: once they are born, let us not kill our children."

That much is a relief (even though proponents of post-birth infanticide exist in the West, such as the notorious atheist professor Peter Singer). However, the article still appears to use the reality of historical infanticide as justification of abortion as a necessary evil:

There is a long list of behaviors and actions historically available to women who are trying to control their own reproductive lives. Infanticide is on that list. I am not arguing that this is good, but it is true. ... Evolution responds to circumstance. Most zygotes disappear before even making themselves known to their mothers. In many cultures, in which the environment was variable enough that many children were unlikely to make it to adulthood, infanticide has been acceptable. ... Indian and African slave populations in Surinam [used abortifacients] so that they would not bring children into a life of slavery.

And, in the opening paragraph of the article:

Sometimes, though, in the service of the greater good, abortions are necessary.

You see in these related excerpts several ideas. Let's examine them:

One must carefully read this section of the article to grasp exactly why historic infanticide is cited, ultimately, as justification for abortion. Although the article claims it is not arguing that infanticide is "good," it says it has at times in history "been acceptable." This ties into the opening claim that "in the service of the greater good, abortions are necessary." Essentially, this all amounts to arguing that, although abortion is not "good," it is something "necessary" to prevent something bad in the judgement of the mother. The "bad thing" ranges anywhere from the mother's judgement of saving a baby from growing up in slavery to the baby being an obstacle to the mother's career.
This brings us to a segue. Earlier in the article, we see reference to the career factor:

One of my friends escaped an abusive home, became addicted to heroin, and got pregnant very young, before aborting the fetus, getting her act together, and becoming a scientist. That part where she got her act together and became a scientist? Far less likely had she been a teenage mother.

To the devout pro-lifer, this is an atrocious razing of the ears and heart. One could imagine a paraphrase of the conclusion: "That part where the baby grew up to be a scientist? Far less likely since she was killed in utero." But, more to the point, the mother's potential future career is an irrelevant factor when determining the sacredness of the enwombed baby. It is not sensible to justify the killing of one's children on the grounds that one might enjoy a successful career without them. And, a baby is not more or less sacred if her mother eventually becomes a scientist, a seamstress, a homemaker, or whatever. We don't need to wait to find out what the mother's career aspirations are before we can determine if life in the womb is expendable. The life of the enwombed is sacred on its own merit. The mother's career is a diversion.

Scapegoating evolution
Let's return to "evolution." You see how evolution is cited as a scapegoat both for the unwilled death of zygotes and willed infanticide. This is not the first time we've seen evolution speciously cited as some unimpugnably good force to justify something outside its purview (Atheist evolutionary biologist professor Gad Saad erroneously argued that "morality" was strictly a "scientific" phenomenon of evolution). But the problem with such appeals to evolution is at least twofold.

• First, what constitutes behaviors that are "evolution responding to circumstances"? Zygote mortality? Killing the young? These are the first two notions the article mentions in light of "evolution responding to circumstances." These are both unwilled and willed deaths, which are deemed beneficial for "evolution." But, if these are not "good" but "necessary" evolutionary responses, what other willed and unwilled phenomena is? What about the Black Plague that wiped out a third of Europe? What about the Titanic tragedy? What about 20th century smallpox? What about killing the weak? What about killing the neighboring tribe because one tribe wants the others' more fertile land? What about Aztec temple sacrifices? What about any genocidal regimes in history? What about prolific serial killers? Shall we argue these are all simply "responses of evolution" because afterward there were more resources available per remaining person? Shall we legalize related forms of terminating life on the grounds that "evolution" delivered similar deaths in history? And shall we call each a necessary evil for a greater good? Kind of like a recent movie villain did with the snap of a finger?
  
  You see the danger in grouping things like zygote mortality, infanticide, evolution's "response," and abortion as an argument for "greater good."
• Second, let's say one wanted to attribute every action in human history as the work of "evolution." That wouldn't make any of those actions "good." Nor would it make any of those actions "bad," nor even a necessary evil. The study of evolution is in the purview of science. It deals with observable facts. It has no capacity to quantify good or evil. One cannot use evolution as an axiom to say that an action that was the response of "evolution" (if that can even be "observed) is automatically "good." Value judgements must be derived elsewhere.

LINE VS. CONTINUUM

Line
The article then argues against the notion of a distinct “line” at which sacrosanct life begins. I emphasize sacrosanct because the article has conceded earlier that the fertilized egg is already a “human” life. This section of the article is really a thought exercise about what are acceptable stages of development it’s still okay to terminate that human life. The two most “obvious” lines, conception and birth, are both rejected.

• First, conception is rejected in the article on the grounds of the main argument, that “most zygotes are not destined to survive.” But, again, it is illogical to deny the sanctity of human life on the grounds that unwilled malfunctions or external factors sometimes interfere with biological processes. 
• Second, birth is rejected on the grounds that "for most moderns, the idea of abortion at nine months gestation, just before a full-term birth would occur, is a bridge too far." However, this is followed by another appeal to historic infanticide: "given the prevalence of infanticide in human history...this line has not always been considered sacrosanct." Two fallacies of argument are at work here:
• First, the appeal to "most moderns," is the fallacy of ad populum. Even though the pro-lifer obviously agrees it is wrong to terminate a baby at 9 months (or any stage!), that view is not derived by submitting to "most moderns." Rather, the sanctity of life is intertwined with the value of humanity itself, a value necessarily beyond a human's biological cluster of subatomic particles, but in the human being's inherent participation in the image of the Transcendent. This idea is the foundation for all morality. Morality dissolves when one attempts to reduce humanity to biological functions alone or as a tool, as in the case of determining a human's value based on what effect one thinks that human will have on the determiner's career. 
• The second fallacy is the appeal to historical "prevalence of infanticide." This is the fallacy of ad antiquitatem, which argues if something was done in history, it must have been correct.

Continuum
So, if conception and birth are both inadequate "lines" to determine sanctity of life, when is it supposedly no longer okay to end a human life because it became too sacred? The article tosses out more than one suggestion.

One of the article's suggestions is that abortion could be considered acceptable up to the stage when the baby would survive outside of the womb. The viability argument has been refuted in prior articles: e.g. Notre Dame professor's flawed argument for abortion).

The article also posits the average age at which organs are laid down or when "brain development accelerates in utero" as a possible threshold to no longer allow for abortion.

• But, the article has already conceded that the zygote is "human." Arbitrarily appealing to this or that normative and natural stage of development as an apparent consideration for sacredness is nonsensical. Why should a baby be killable when it is at the correct and normal stage of life development? We're not even talking about an abnormality in development here—which is neither justification to end a human life. These are normal stages of development. A cynic might not be wrong to think such abortion-supporters are merely citing stages arbitrarily in order to accommodate abortion.
• As well, considering sacredness of life in view of something like level of organ or brain development also suggests that even adults' lives would be "less sacred" if they suffered from some setback of organ or brain development. It also begs the question: What other developmental drawbacks can compromise the sanctity of one's life? Poor vision? Deviated septum? Narcolepsy? 

The article does not actually define any of these considerations as the exact threshold of sanctity of life. Rather, it is ultimately arguing for a nebulous "continuum" for abortion instead of a definite line. From there, the article suggests the following unspecific solution:

If we recognize a trade-off between the positive social impact of keeping abortion available to women, and the problems of providing carte blanche for all abortions up to some very late date, perhaps we should seek a solution that renders barriers to abortion higher the farther along in the pregnancy a woman is, but allows free and easy access early in pregnancy, and so does not sacrifice a woman’s ability to choose her life’s fate.

Many readers were probably already aghast at the phrase "positive social impact of keeping abortion available."

• To start with the obvious, estimates of over 1.5 billion babies have been killed by abortion in the last 40 years. It remains a vexing reality, the elephant to end all elephants in the room, that the lives of aborted babies are not counted, and often not considered, when the effects of abortion are discussed. The previous quote parrots the common abortion supporters' sole angle: "her life," never the baby's. 
• Later, the article even claims that "[f]acilitating choices that allow people to live their highest and best lives is consistent with...a pro-choice...position." But, obviously forgotten in that statement is the bloody hemorrhage of lives intentionally lost in the womb. The idea that a supporter of abortion calls for "allowing people to live their highest and best lives" is one heap of irony. The babies aren't given a choice. They are dismembered or pulverized and killed. Only the woman who wants to pursue her science career gets a choice. And none of this even touches on the many statistics that show the psychological and social detriment resulting from abortion.

The article segues here to call anyone who is pro-life and believes the possibility of the death penalty a hypocrite. This is a common claim by abortion supporters and has been rebutted in numerous places (eg. CatholicVote, Jimmy Akin).

BROKEN LEG ANALOGY
The article then attempts to justify abortion by claiming it is morally analogous to fixing a broken leg:

Furthermore, if you play soccer and break a leg doing so, it is not responsible to remain maimed simply because the playing of soccer brought with it the risk of breaking one’s leg. It is, in fact, responsible to have your leg fixed, not merely so that you can live to play soccer again, but so that you can go on to contribute maximally to society, living up to your potential, not just with regard to soccer, but in other regards as well. If you have sex and end up pregnant, it is not responsible to become a parent out of a sense of moral obligation, if you are not ready to do so. Responsible athletic and sexual behavior both involve a reduction, on the front-end, of the chances of undesirable outcomes. Setting a bone is not identical to aborting a fetus, but there is a moral analogy to be made, with regard to how a person should take responsibility for their actions.

There is actually no moral analogy to be made here.

• Breaking a leg is a medical disorder that needs fixing. Pregnancy is the opposite of that. It is not a medical disorder.¹ Pregnancy is the normative, correctly functioning, and proper order of gestation and human life. This analogy is exactly backward. Abortion corresponds to breaking a leg, not fixing it.
• Also, the notion that it's okay to have an abortion if the mother is "not ready to" "become a parent" is an argument that entirely ignores due regard for the enwombed. The value of the life in the womb is not dependent on the mental "readiness" of the mother. And adoption is an option. The mother's "readiness" is an inexcusable and irrational barometer for determining the worth of enwombed life.

AN UNCONVINCING ATTEMPT TO CALL ABORTION "HUMANE"
The final section of the article is called "A humane and reasoned response." But, this argument for abortion is neither.

There is a question of which of two lives we, as a society, prefer. Do we prefer the life of an adult who can make decisions for herself, and who has found herself in an unfortunate position? Or do we prefer the life of her unborn child—a child who has not yet had the opportunity to make decisions for itself, good or bad? ... The implicit moralizing that prefers the fetus to the woman has judged the woman guilty for needing an abortion in the first place.

This is a glaring fallacy of false dichotomy.

• First, think about this statement: "prefers the fetus to the woman." We are talking about death for the baby. Death. The mother's "punishment"—if one has been conditioned and deluded enough to believe motherhood is a punishment—is a possible career setback or lack of "readiness" to be a mother. She might have to complete her science degree via distance learning. We're not being asked if we "prefer" vanilla or chocolate here. We're not being asked which of the two shall be killed. We're asked if one person's life is as valuable as someone else's ease of getting job.
• Second, the reason there are pro-life organizations like Ireland's LoveBoth Project is because "the baby or the mother" is a false dichotomy. Love both. 
• Third, one of the ways we can help women (and men) avoid situations where abortion is seductive is to discourage pre-marital and recreational sex, stop handing out "birth control" to teens, and start teaching that sex is a serious act that could result in another person who otherwise would never exist. Particularly, Western culture fosters promiscuity from entertainment to education. From such attitudes we have record STDs and articles promoting abortion instead of encouraging abstinence for those not "ready" to be a parent. Passing the culture's reckless norms onto babies by killing them in utero is an egregious injustice.
• Notice the juxtaposition of a mother "who can make decisions for herself" versus the unborn child who cannot "make decisions for itself." The implication here is that, because only the mother is capable of making a choice in this situation, the choice should go to her. Apparently, the logic here is that the baby hasn't actually articulated a desire not to be dismembered or killed by suction machine. So let the mother chose because the baby can't decide yet! This ability-to-choose argument is utterly convoluted, and, much like most arguments for abortion, ignores the dignity of the enwombed human being.

Finally, let's look at one more excerpt from the article:

By preferring the future baby—who will need love and sacrifice, and lots of it—over the adult—who does not need that kind of support—you guarantee that our shared social fabric will be stretched ever thinner.

Consider the following reactions to this quote:

• First, this assertion is actually a call for less love. Reread the statement to see. It says babies need lots more love than adults—therefore, it's better to kill a baby to save all that love effort. This brings us back to earlier in this blog post where we philosophized as to whether genocide or a massive plague is just evolution performing some good "response to circumstances." According to the this-requires-too-much-love theory, all such loss of life is good because now we can concentrate our "shared social fabric" of love on fewer survivors.
• Second, according to this quote, a person who requires "lots of" love is expendable. The logical conclusion of such an attitude is to terminate the sick. What about a cancer patient that has a fair chance of recovery with months or years of treatment? What in the too-much-love theory suggests we should expend resources on such a person rather than salvage the "lots of" "social fabric" by killing them as soon as possible? Nothing,
• Third, if even adults need some degree of love and support, proponents of too-much-love would commit suicide, no? This is not to be provocative. This is to let the trajectory of a claim play out of its own accord. The only thing in the article that suggests killing birthed people is bad is the statement: "Society-wide, we have agreed on this much: once they are born, let us not kill our children." But, not only is there is not full agreement on this matter as shown earlier, but leaving such a matter open to some implied majority has historically given rise in various cultures to cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery, and more. 

FINAL THOUGHTS
The modern abortion movement is the bloody scandal of our time. All this brings us to an even clearer understanding of the evil of abortion. Neither evolutionary, nor biological, nor career-based arguments for abortion can withstand scrutiny. Each collapses under their own fallacies and self-contradictions. Proponents of life from conception until death should stand strong in these dark times, by being informed, praying and fasting, and continuing to contribute time and resources on behalf of the enwombed innocents, marriage, and stable families.




¹In extreme cases where pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, see discussion of incident at Phoenix hospital in 2010—refer to paragraph beginning with "Brown's book is fraught with footnotes..."

5 modern lies sold as truth

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,

who put darkness for light and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

Detail of Prophet Isaiah in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling.
Acquired from Wikimedia Commons.

Today's culture, in plain sight, successfully sells lies that are often 180 degrees opposite the truth.

Contraception
Birth control is "medicine," claimed Hillary Clinton in 2017. Planned Parenthood has called it "basic health care." Yet contraceptives used to prevent birth are the opposite of medicine—for their end goal is to cause a normally functioning body to malfunction. Birth control more closely resembles the medical definition of Poison: a substance that "may cause structural or functional disturbance."

Read more in earlier TCV blog post: "Birth control" is not medicine.

Abortion
"It's my body!" shouts the 21st century feminist of enwombed offspring. Yet, in reality, the fertilized egg—the zygote—has its own unique DNA, distinct from the mother. A mother thus advances the culture's lie when she refers as "her body" to that which is not her body.

Additional resources: Science is clear: Each new human life begins at fertilization (Sarah Terzo, 2013); 41 Quotes From Medical Textbooks Prove Human Life Begins at Conception (Terzo, 2015); The Science About When Life Begins Makes Pro-Choicers Look Terrible (Dr. Donna Harrison, 2018)

Marriage
During the years leading up to the 2015 gay "marriage" ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, there were three common slogans used to advance the idea of gay "marriage": "love is love," "same love," and "marriage equality."

Dialogue on this issue was minimal and even discouraged. Then-First Lady Michelle Obama declared: "In a country where we teach our children that everyone is equal under the law, discriminating against same-sex couples just isn’t right. So, it’s as simple as that."

Although the state declared marriage redefined by stroke of a pen, marriage was not the only thing their verdict "redefined." The censoring of discussion disguised this. Notice how each of the three slogans advanced the idea that men and women are interchangeable with no difference. One ingredient is equal to another. This was among the undiscussed, dangerous side effects of the formulations: "same," "equal," "A is equal to B." These were the Orwellian newspeak that tickled many ears.

The idea that Man+Man = Man+Woman is absurd on its face. The sale of this idea that men and women are interchangeable variables is also contrary to science, which shows the unique qualities brought to parenthood by mothers and fathers, as well as the obvious family structure innate in the male and female union. Any children raised in such arrangements are deprived of one or more of their mother and father. The idea also paved the way for society's next chapter, discussed below (Sex/Gender), in denying the significant qualities between males and females.

Additional Resources: Reengineering the Family (Heather Mac Donald, 2010); How Re-Defining Marriage Harms Society (Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, 2012); Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom (Dr. Ryan T. Anderson, 2015); and additional social science resources in the endnotes at Same-Sex “Marriage”: The Victims. The Children (2015).

Sex/Gender
Modern transgenderism: It is the idea that a man can "become" a woman (or vice versa) either based on his own feelings and/or after a surgery alters some of his body parts. A significant portion of society is at the point where it cannot tell the difference between a boy and girl and even believes there are a multitude of sexes beyond male and female. This is the hypnotic effect that abusing truth has created.

The idea of switching "genders" is again contrary to science:

In human embryos, the SRY gene encodes a unique transcription factor that activates a testis-forming pathway at about week seven of development. Before this time, the embryonic gonad is "indifferent"... (Genetic Mechanisms of Sex Determination, Nature Education 1(1):25, 2008)

Instead of simply admitting a boy with xyz feelings is still a boy who has these feelings, society fosters the lie that he's not a boy at all, or that somehow a new "gender" can even be created as a result of sexual proclivities.

But calling a boy a girl and a girl a boy is a dangerous inversion of reality that has led to regretful surgeries, harmful use of puberty blockers in children, and other personal and public damage, not to mention the instability caused to any other truth. In "redefining" marriage and what is a boy and girl, society has paved the way to other redefinitions, such as the recent effort to rebrand pedophilia under the moniker "minor attracted person (MAP)." The trajectory will result in future "redefinitions" of parenthood and more as previously discussed in 5 difficult issues human cloning will cause.

Additional resources: Transgenderism: Semantic contagion or biological fact? (Dr. Anne Hendershott, 2018); The Genetics of Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior (NCBI, 2010); The myth of gender-neutral parenting (Dr. Deborah Soh, 2017)

Morality
As previously detailed at length, modern atheists such as Sam Harris, Gad Saad, or Patricia Churchland have attempted to explain morality strictly as a function of biology and evolution. Harris goes so far as to say morality exists even though he believes free will does not.

But these efforts are as misguided as they are ironic. By assigning the label "morality" to biological instincts or automatic actions devoid of free will, morality's necessary feature of obligation is stripped from the equation. By reducing man to an automaton or animal obeying euphoric bodily chemicals, these atheists actually make the argument that morality doesn't exist.

---

Conclusions
The significance of these lies is not something to take lightly. They are prone to cause damage, whether to public policy, the innocent baby, the fatherless child, the sexually confused, or the very foundation of moral truth. We end with a relevant quote from a saint:

[Y]ou did well in urging me not to betray the truth, but to refute the slanderers, lest, by a success of falsehood against truth, many might be injured. (Gregory of Nyssa, On the Holy Trinity, ca 375 A.D.)

Thoughts on Gosnell film

Dean Cain in Gosnell
(production still from gosnellmovie.com/press)

Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer is one of the most important films in recent years. It is an engaging, well-paced crime drama that sheds overdue light on the nature of the abortion industry and the government and media powers that protect it.

ABORTION COVERUP
Perhaps the scariest moment in the Gosnell movie is when one realizes how protected the abortion industry is. During a scene depicting pretrial questioning, a state official shrugs at the fact that the state of Pennsylvania neglected to properly vet abortion businesses.

In the actual case, Pennsylvania health department official Janet Staloski testified that health department attorneys "changed their legal opinions and advice to suit the policy preferences of different governors" and that the state didn't want to be "putting a barrier up to women" seeking abortions.

The lack of media interest in the case likewise reveals the propagandist quality of the abortion industry. Whether from government or media, such propagandists have proven reluctant to even discuss abortion's true nature.

The actual Gosnell Grand Jury report filed in 2011 goes on for over 60 pages detailing how the Pennsylvania Department of Health woefully permitted unsafe medical conditions to persist at abortion offices. Gosnell's office, as the movie reiterated, went uninspected at one point for a span of 17 years.

That section of the report begins:

We discovered that Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has deliberately chosen not to enforce laws that should afford patients at abortion clinics the same safeguards and assurances of quality health care as patients of other medical service providers. Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety. 

The film moves along at a decent pace, beginning with investigators discovering illegal prescription drug activity from Gosnell's office. The abortion horrors transpiring there might not otherwise ever have been exposed if not for the state following the drug leads.

It is a fascinating watch, especially for those interested in true crime, courtroom drama, and police investigation. Ed Morrissey, senior editor at Hot Air and regular guest host on Relevant Radio, reviews some of the other accurate attributes of Gosnell here.

Although the subject matter largely revolves around abortion, the movie is not graphic. Evening television depicts far more gruesome imagery than can be seen in Gosnell. That brings me to Baby Boy A.

BABY BOY A
Baby Boy A was born alive and subsequently murdered by Gosnell. "[T]he doctor just slit the neck," testified Kareem Cross, an assistant at Gosnell's office. A photo of the baby factored into Gosnell's guilt. Gruesome details of Baby Boy A's fate are given in the Grand Jury Report beginning on page 100. Cross was asked why she took the picture of this boy Gosnell killed. Cross testified:

Because it was big and it was wrong and we knew it. We knew something was wrong. ... I’m not sure who took the picture first, but when we seen this baby, it was – it was a shock to us because I never seen a baby that big that he had done. So it was – I knew something was wrong because everything, like you can see everything, the hair, eyes, everything. And I never seen for any other procedure that he did, I never seen any like that.

Below is a screencap of Baby Boy A from the Grand Jury Report.

I asked film director and star Nick Searcy via Twitter why the photo was not shown in the movie. He graciously replied: "Because we have good taste and discernment."

While I respect that decision and the audiences Gosnell had to consider, I would like to have seen the photo in the film. Granted, the film's epilogue does refer the viewer to the Gosnell film website to see the photo.

The issue brings to mind the question of whether or not to show images of aborted babies. For example, images are shown by the Pro-Life Action League's "Face the Truth" tours. Pro-life theology professor Dr. Monica Miller argues photos expose the truth of abortion's atrocity in a way non-visual communication cannot. In 2013, not long after the Gosnell trial, she was interviewed on the Kresta in the Afternoon show on the topic Graphic Images: An Apologia (written form of her arguments can be also read at Pro-Life Action League).  In the case of Baby Boy A, I do not find the photo that graphic. It is a photo of a newborn. I would like to have seen the image in the movie, if even by way of a long camera shot. To include the photo in the film seems consistent with the unmasking theme of the film itself. The matter also reminds me of the graphic nature of The Passion of the Christ (2004). Although many criticized the brutality in that film, many others argued for the necessity of depicting the violence. And the Baby Boy A image is far more benign than what is depicted in The Passion.

GOSNELL EVEN WORSE THAN FILM REVEALS
Depicting all of Gosnell's crimes could probably fill multiple television seasons. The Gosnell film focuses largely on the investigation and parts of the trial, including Baby Boy A and the death of Karnamaya Mongar. However, his gruesome legacy went much further. As the film mentioned, Gosnell's atrocities go back at least to the early 1970s in which he participated in an experimental abortion technique that badly damaged many women's insides.

The Grand Jury Report goes on for hundreds of pages about his improprieties, including especially disturbing accounts beginning on page 6 under the subhead "Butcher of women."

For example, Gosnell tore the cervix and colon of one woman, prevented relatives from getting to her, and only let them in once they threatened to call police. The victim was brought to a hospital and had to have a portion of her intestine removed. Multiple other stories in the report tell of similar horror.

SUMMARY
All in all, this is a gripping film full of accurate details on one of the most important issues of our time. Not to be lost is awareness of the collaborative effort by government and media in facilitating Gosnell's crimes in the name of abortion. It is an eye-opening account to anyone unfamiliar with the abortion industry and the schemes that hide its true horrors.

"Birth Control" is not medicine

On October 13, 2017, the federal government issued an interim rule which exempts religious entities from paying for objectionable services as part of their insurance plans. These include:

(FDA)-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures ... [including] certain drugs and devices that may not only prevent conception (fertilization), but may also prevent implantation of an embryo ... that many persons and organizations believe are abortifacient.

See here for several prior TCV blog posts about this issue.

WHAT IS MEDICINE?
Responding to this interim rule, Hillary Clinton tweeted: "Rolling back no-copay birth control shows a blatant disregard for medicine, science, & every woman's right to make her own health decisions."

Planned Parenthood, which is pacing at about 300,000 abortion victims per year, also responded. Their president, Cecile Richards, issued a statement saying exemptions for "birth control coverage" are an "attack on basic health care."

Many other celebrities and non-celebrities upset by the rule echoed similar sentiments.

But medicine is designed to fix an affliction of the body. Medicine's end goal is a body that functions properly. For example, medical remedies can come in the form of pills that directly fix a bodily problem such as antibiotics that attack or prevent bacterial infections. Medical remedies can come in the form of a surgery to repair a broken limb or remove a cancerous mass—any necessary part of that surgery could be considered medical care.

Birth control is not medicine. In fact, birth control's end goal is to cause a properly functioning body to malfunction.

One might try to argue something like anesthesia is not medicine, since, for example, it temporarily causes the patient the inability to feel—a malfunction of the body. However, this is only done as part of a larger goal of correcting the body. Body malfunction is not the end goal of using anesthesia. Something like an incision is similar. The ultimate goal isn't to scar a patient, but it can be necessary to ultimately treat the affliction. Contrary to these, the end goal of birth control is body malfunction.

In the case of oral contraceptives, an otherwise properly functioning ovulation cycle is stifled. Other oral contraceptives thicken an otherwise fertile uterine wall, preventing implantation of a zygote, thus killing it. Generally speaking, these are all forms of sterilization—which is a field of disease in itself. This is the product we are told must be covered by medical insurance. Forget for a moment any religious beliefs behind objections to the original mandate. Requiring insurance coverage of birth control can be opposed on medical grounds alone—specifically that birth control is not medicine.

In the earliest stages of this birth control/insurance matter, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo wrote on behalf of the U.S. bishops: "[P]regnancy is not a disease." 

In response to this latest rule, Lila Rose, president of Live Action, defended this concept in a tweet:

Abortifacient drugs are the antithesis of "healthcare." Medicine is meant to heal, not kill.

Abortifacient drugs are the antithesis of "healthcare." Medicine is meant to heal, not kill. https://t.co/Xx2XKP3TYp

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) October 6, 2017

And she is exactly right. Medicine is meant to heal.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER USES FOR CONTRACEPTIVES?
As in 2012, objectors immediately pointed out that some contraceptives can be used to regulate cycles or alleviate pains. However, in such cases, the product would not properly be called "birth control" because the drug is not used to prevent birth. Recall in 2012, Bishop Lori, speaking before congress, explained how the same medications typically used for birth control could possibly have other uses:

Blake Farenthold - The Catholic Church does not have a problem with contraceptives for medical purposes. So I would assume from that it wouldn't be morally objectionable to the Church to pay for those for medical purposes. I'm not trying to put you on the spot, I'm just trying to make sure I understand where the Church stands. 

Bishop Lori - That would be my understanding also.

And:

Bishop Lori - I think Catholic moral theology is very nuanced. It recognizes that the same drug can operate in different ways and accomplish different things. If it is used to prevent birth, it is against our teaching.

The Bishop's principle can be seen in action, for example, at the University of Notre Dame's human resources page:

[U]nder the university’s plan, you cannot receive reimbursement for oral contraceptives, contraceptive devices or contraceptive implants, except when specifically requested by a physician based on medical necessity and for purposes other than contraception.

Insurance companies have made similar distinctions with other drugs. For example, Finasteride can be used to treat enlarged prostates but also to treat hair loss. The latter is considered cosmetic and insurance companies are not required to cover the drug in such cases.

Nevertheless, the original HHS Mandate made no distinction regarding coverage of contraceptive products. Contraceptives were required for medicinal as well as anti-medicinal purposes. The Church and other entities object to the anti-medicinal use of contraceptives, i.e. birth control.

WHAT ABOUT VIAGRA?
You may have seen in reaction to this latest rule cries that requiring coverage for Viagra is hypocritical or misogynistic. For instance, NARAL, a vocal pro-abortion group, tweeted: "In case you were wondering, bosses can’t “opt out” of paying for Viagra." 

But what is the obvious failure of intellect in that statement? Viagra, which treats erectile dysfunction, is designed to correct a body malfunction. And, again, birth control, is designed to cause body malfunction. If NARAL and their peers were serious about finding a valid parallel, they would argue that something like OTC skin ointment should be covered since it is designed to fix a bodily affliction or mouthwash which is designed to prevent poor hygiene.

I should note, for the purposes of this blog post, I'm not arguing whether or not any drug/treatment should be "required" in medical insurance policies. Certainly there are reasonable discussions that could be had regarding coverage of only major medical expenses or to give market forces a greater voice in shaping insurance policies. The purpose of this post is focused on birth control and the nature of medicine.

OUR LADY'S INVOLVEMENT?
You might have noticed at the beginning that this interim rule was issued on October 13, 2017, the 100th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun. One of the central figures in this contraceptive case was the Little Sisters of the Poor who would have incurred severe fines under the original mandate had they not paid for birth control for someone else. Other religious entities faced similar burdens. Many prayers on this matter have occurred over the past 5 years. Participation in birth control, sterilizations, and chemical abortions are clearly a moral offense in the eyes of the faithful. This is why the matter of conscious rights took a prevalent position in this discussion. We saw in a previous TCV article the amazing rescue of Chilean miners on October 13, 2010. Might Our Lady have interceded for the faithful and little ones, to protect their consciences, lives, and souls?

5 difficult issues human cloning will cause

What will happen when a significant portion of the human population is the product of cloning? These will be individuals that were created in a laboratory rather than having gone through natural human gestation in the mother's womb. For the purposes of this blog post, cloning represents not only a "duplicate" of an existing person, but any person generated in a laboratory by biological and chemical means. This would even include unique persons generated by more than two parents, as is already a scientific enterprise.

What you will read herein is this author's projection, grounded on the trajectory of current events. And there are certainly more issues at hand than supposed herein. Time may reveal more issues or eliminate the likelihood of others. This thought exercise is intended to shed light on potential consequences, particularly moral, on the matter of human cloning.


1. Are the cloned human?
The cloned may or may not have umbilical cords and will not be the product of man and woman conjugal union. They will not be the direct result of a physical expression of a loving action. An obvious question will be whether or not a person's "humanity" depends on that natural union. I would surmise the Church would consider such person's human, just as those who are born today by means of in vitro fertilization. Even though those born via in vitro are conceived in a manner outside the conjugal act, such persons are still welcomed to baptism, which is only receivable by a human being. Basic clones generated in a lab from a single sperm and egg will be recognized as human just as anyone else.

More complex clones may pose greater problems. Suppose laboratories begin to produce clones who do not need sleep. Or clones with six appendages. Or androgynous clones deliberately generated without genitalia. Or clones with two human parents and one chimpanzee parent. Or further down the road if a being is constructed from a variety of human and mammalian or even reptilian or other foundations. We have seen nascent evidence of animal incorporation in human-animal organ crossovers. As more complex experiments occur, the debate over the humanity of the clone will grow more complex.

For her part, the Church in such cases might at least perform "conditional" baptisms. This would be similar to a conditional baptism bestowed on a person unsure if he/she had previously been baptized. In the case of a clone, the baptism might be administered on the condition that the recipient is indeed a human being.

In civil life, there will be a number of legal cases that will be considered landmarks regarding the human status of the cloned. However, these cases will be difficult precedents if the cloning process continues to evolve and if persons are developed by multiple methods. So, for instance, if a court determined that a five-parent-one-other-mammal person merited full human rights, the precedent might not stand if a future case arose regarding a person generated from seven-human-parents-and-one-reptile.

These speculative examples may be fanciful. But they are designed more to demonstrate the difficulties that will arise the further mankind gets from matrimonial, conjugal offspring. Clones with greater and greater aberrations will suffer tremendous psychological difficulties, wondering what they are, whether they are human. The human DNA written in their fabric will alert them to the abnormalities within themselves. The natural arrangement of mother-father-child will arise as a discovery to the pensive mind of some of these clones, alerting them that something is disordered. This will cause great psychological trauma in some clones and families.

2. Clones will not have parental attachment
Written in the fabric of normative human generation are parents who have a certain attachment to offspring that is "of oneself." Paternal and maternal instincts can be seen in parents' protective tendencies toward their children. In fact, when a parent fails in this obligation, we recognize the violation committed by that parent. Phrases like "dead-beat dad" are evidence that a father has failed in his attachment to his own child.

Let's say an infertile couple in the future goes to a cloning market and selects a "child" to be developed for them. This is different from in vitro in which the father's sperm is united to the mother's egg and the child is developed in the womb. This is a "child" developed wholly in a laboratory according to whatever catalog options are offered by the cloning company. By commodotizing the child, parental attachment will suffer. If the child grows up to have criminal or unsatisfactory tendencies, the "parents" will be more apt to blame the "failure" on the cloning company. It will be easier to dismiss a child as a corporation's failure versus a child raised out of conjugal love, the direct gift of one's conjugal action.

From this, complexities will arise among parents who adopt clones. There will be a market for "returned" clones who did not meet the satisfaction of the adopting parents. Psychological problems will run rampant among clones, particularly among those who are rejected as corporate defects. Their plight could turn very ugly.

3. "Abortions" of clones will find new debate
Abortions of lab-generated clones may occur if the clone is not developing according to the customer's order. There will be debates as to what should happen with cancelled orders. Should the clone be terminated? If so, the same debate we have with abortion today will characterize the termination of developing clones. As speculated in point #1, simpler clones will be considered human. So at what point in the laboratory development period will such a clone be considered human?  Will there be a legal point at which a customer who orders a clone can no longer reject the product produced?

Rejected clones who are not terminated will suffer terrible psychological strains of inadequacy. Mental illness will be an enormous problem in the future, both among clones, and among a society whose expectation of custom-made satisfaction will permeate their everyday attitudes.

Even today, the "my body, my choice" argument is a red herring because it does not take into account the baby, who is essential to the pro-life movement's perspective. But when women order a lab-made child through a catalog, they will not be able to abort the child under the guise of doing what she wants with "her body." With a lab-generated baby, a couple, or an individual "ordering" a clone will have no such so-called right. Their argument will come from commerce and the power of the dollar with which they ordered the clone.

Those who order clones and seek to terminate their order prior to completion may seek refuge, not in "my body, my choice," but "my possession, my choice." It is difficult to determine what kind of traction such a specious argument might boast. But it will nonetheless be a serpentine diversion away from the violation of another being that takes place in an abortion.

For their part, the Church will oppose abortion of the developing clone, even if there is some question as to the humanity of the clone.

Today, some politically correct feminists accuse the Church's pro-life stance of being a means to control women unjustly. In the future, if persons are generated in labs, this argument won't even have specious merit if the Church voices a pro-life stance for the developing laboratory clone.

4. Good "health" will be used as a pro-cloning argument
On the eve of mass-cloning, proponents of the measure will abandon the moral consequences of lab-generated persons in favor of producing persons with good health. Over time, the cloning process will tend toward producing healthier and stronger beings, immune to old diseases. While healthiness on its face is a "good," such proponents will not be able to counter moral arguments against a person's right to be born of conjugal love. And, as supposed in this article, mental unhealthiness will spread. Written in the fiber of human DNA is a person's desire to be loved and raised by his natural parents. We can see evidence of this in the many difficulties that plague children of fatherless homes.

5. More legal problems relating to clones
Presumably, when a couple or person orders a clone from a catalog, the corporation will require legal indemnification once the clone leaves its possession. In other words, the buyer will have to sign a document absolving the company of liability if the clone should not meet expectations once bought or if the clone commits a crime, etc.

However, legal cases will arise in which the customer will accuse the corporation of deception if the clone fails to meet expectations. For example, if a teenage clone commits murder, the buying parents will seek recourse to hold the corporation liable in spite of the indemnifying document signed. The parents' attorneys will argue that the corporation willingly sold a flawed clone to parents who had no way of knowing the clone would have criminal tendencies.

There will also be cases in which the clones themselves will bring lawsuit against their manufacturers. The clones' attorneys will argue that the cloning corporation did not take proper care of the clone during development, which resulted in some health or social defect. These cases will add to the psychological disaster bound to raze at the hearts of clones, and at a society that spars with making sense of their identity as fully human or otherwise.

Refuting Planned Parenthood on viability and SCOTUS

THE VIABILITY ARGUMENT
The "viability" argument goes something like this: "A fetus can't survive on its own outside the womb, therefore, it's not a fully developed human." Therefore, says the Planned Parenthood supporter, abortion is morally acceptable.

For example, we see this from among Planned Parenthood's Arizona advocates, one of whom writes that a woman has the "right not to be forced to give birth and choosing not to carry a non-viable, non human being..."

With the scandal of Planned Parenthood having been caught on film negotiating the sale of infant body parts, such supporters of the organization are perhaps finding themselves having to seek refuge in such shelters as the "viability" argument. (By the way, you can keep abreast of the Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden's legal battle surrounding Planned Parenthood at Life Legal Defense Foundation.)

So what's wrong with the viability argument?

• The presence of human life is not dependent on the subject's personal capacity to survive in any particular environment. For example:

• Even a post-live-birth baby cannot survive without a variety of dependencies and isn't "viable" of his/her own accord. A newborn baby cannot feed him/herself, dress him/herself, protect him/herself, nor a variety of other things that can easily determine that child's fate. Thus, a baby's ability to viably self-preserve is not a logical measure by which the presence of human life is determined.
• If the PP supporter is referring to a baby's ability to survive outside the womb even with medical assistance, there is another problem. Throughout history, the stage at which a baby has survived outside the womb gets younger and younger. The PP supporter finds him/herself arguing that human life comes into being at a different point, depending on whether that child was born in 2016 or 1916. The same supporter would have to argue that human life comes into being at a different point, depending on whether that child was born in Beverly Hills or the terrains of Somalia. Holders of this view must change their view of when they believe human life to exist by appealing to available medical technology. This is a nonsensical position.
• If the PP supporter is merely talking about respiration, there are clearly situations in which even an adult human cannot "viably" respire of his/her own accord, such as under water, in outer space, in a dense fire, amid toxic air, or other situations. Point being––ability to respire is not a logical measure by which the presence of human life is determined. It's absurd to say an adult who cannot respire in any given environment is less than human. 

THE SUPREME COURT ARGUMENT
The Supreme Court argument goes something like this: "The Supreme Court determined that a fetus isn't a human being." Thus, says the PP supporter, abortion is morally acceptable.

For example, we see this implied by NARAL Wisconsin, outlining what it believes to be good arguments to tell pro-lifers, including the following statements (emphasis mine): "The Supreme Court has said and I believe that legal personhood begins with birth" and "Embryos are a cluster of cells with the potential to develop into a human life if implanted into a woman's womb and brought to term."

So what's wrong with the Supreme Court argument?

• The presence of human life is not dependent on any verdict by the Supreme Court of the United States. For example:

• The Supreme Court itself has reversed its own prior verdicts. In fact, it has done so well over 100 times. Appealing to a source that denies its own immutability is hardly a satisfactory argument.
• Thus, appealing to the "Supreme Court" results in the nonsensical position that human life began in the womb prior to 1973 but not after 1973. It fails the same test as the "medical technology" fallacy described in the first section above: depending on when a child was born, the court's Roe v. Wade opinion may not even have existed. In fact, prior to 1789, SCOTUS didn't even exist. 
• As well, the Supreme Court's jurisdiction ends at the United States. Obviously, the majority of the human population is not subject to SCOTUS verdicts. Appealing to a single country's legal verdict as the benchmark for a philosophical argument for all of humanity is self-defeating when the court itself does not claim to govern all humanity. 
• In an ironic twist, Planned Parenthood doesn't even embrace verdicts of the Supreme Court. For example, in 2014, SCOTUS upheld a federal abortion ban involving second trimester pregnancies.  PP immediately sent out a press release which stated: "Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) denounced the ruling."

CONCLUSIONS
It's not difficult to refute arguments built on shaky ground as we can see here. It may be a bigger challenge simply to find a mind willing to permit his/her views to pass scrutiny.

Regarding the matter of abortion, I would suggest the discussion must always be founded on whether or not that which is in the womb is a human life. Biological arguments are effective here. It is no secret that the when a zygote is formed at conception, the baby has a unique DNA, distinct from the mother. Even the government admits this:

The zygote contains all of the genetic information (DNA) needed to become a baby. Half the DNA comes from the mother's egg and half from the father's sperm. Fetal Development, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2013) (see more references at Life begins at conception, science teaches, Live Action News)

The NLM is ironically part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services––the government entity that admitted oral contraceptives increase cancer risk in women. And here it admits the unique DNA identity of the enwombed infant from conception.

Building on the science from a philosophical perspective, we can observe the beginning of the life process with the merger of the egg and sperm (the zygote). And we can observe continuity from that stage until a person passes away. To assign human life's beginning at some other point along the empirical timeline inevitably proves arbitrary, inconsistent, and fails scrutiny. For some examples of these flawed arguments here at TCV, see Replies to Planned Parenthood arguments or Notre Dame professor's flawed argument for abortion.

Reactions to CO Planned Parenthood shooting reactions

EDIT 12/2/15 to add: Witnesses, among others, apparently say the CO shooter initiated his violent actions outside Planned Parenthood and closer to a bank down the road. This contradicts the media's central narrative on this story. In the Nov. 29 Examiner, we read: "the Public Information Officer for the Colorado Springs Police Department 'told reporters that the entire incident started with shooting at the Planned Parenthood facility;' multiple reports conflict with this narrative, including accounts from eye witnesses." For the purposes of the blog post below, the sentiments remains the same, as they are a reaction to reactions about pro-lifers in relation to this tragedy. 

On Friday, November 27, 2015 a man entered a Colorado Planned Parenthood, shooting and killing three and wounding several others. We immediately saw a multitude of pro-life supporters and Christians condemn the act and pray for the victims and against future violence. See here for just a handful of examples.

Also immediately came a geyser of Planned Parenthood and abortion supporters on social media and elsewhere accusing the pro-life movement for causing this act. For instance:

Site Of Planned Parenthood Attack Is A Hub For Anti-Abortion Christians- so not surprised this happened there... ––Martina Navratilova, former professional tennis star and pro-abortion activist, Twitter post on November 29, 2015)

Perhaps Navratilova is unaware that for decades Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide have been the site of Christians praying against abortion, day after day, year after year, and yet violence is all but non-existent.

Another example:

Carly Fiorina and every single one of them has blood on their hands this morning. And these idiots that put out these deceptive videos in the first place... Yeah, it's because of them. … These videos are complete bull---. You get lunatics like this all ginned up. "Oh, they're selling baby parts, and blah blah blah blah…" ––Stephanie Miller, pro-abortion radio host, on her November 30, 2015 show.*

Common folk likewise expressed similar sentiments, often suggesting that pro-life rhetoric is responsible for the shooting. In social posts, the terms "Christian," "hypocrites," and "Planned Parenthood" are often assembled to suggest Christians condone this act.

And, as evidenced by Miller's rant above, often, The Center for Medical Progress is specifically brandished the culprit. The murders occurred "because of them," Miller indicted.

But what is the 800-lb gorilla in the room about these bold accusations against The Center for Medical Progress and other pro-lifers? The avoided questions are such as these: Is what they say true? Does abortion take a human life? Does Planned Parenthood kill enwombed babies and sell their body parts?

In the case of The Center for Medical Progress, what we have is not so much what The Center has said, but what they have revealed Planned Parenthood's own management and affiliates to have said. For example:

We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact. ––Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director for Medical Services, Planned Parenthood

On liver tissue, because that's such an area of demand for us. ... As you probably know, one of the issues with neural tissue, it's so fragile. It's insanely fragile...it's the hardest thing in the world to ship. ... [T]hey don't want to know where it comes from. I can see that. Where they're like, "We need limbs, but no hands and feet need to be attached." ... Or they want long bones, and they want you to take it all off, like make it so that we don't know what it is. ––Cate Dyer, StemExpress CEO

If we want to pursue this, mutually, I'll talk to Ian and see how he feels about using a less crunchy technique to get more whole specimens. ... When we first started this program, we had a situation, a policy that she would call the day before and how many ten-weekers do you have. She wouldn't come in unless we had a chance for getting tissue that day. ––Dr. Mary Gatter, President, Medical Directors' Council, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Medical Director, Planned Parenthood Pasadena & San Gabriel Valley

We've just been working with people who want particular tissues. Like, a, you know, cardia–– they want cardiac, or they want eyes, or they want neural. ... oh, gonads. Oh my god, gonads. ––Dr. Carolyn Westhoof, Senior Medical Advisor, Planned Parenthood Federation of America

These quotes are, sadly, a small sample and can be found among others at The Center for Medical Progress' Investigative Footage page in video and transcript. And these don't even include the procedural improprieties nor the visual evidence exposed in the videos. Pro-lifers don't have to say Planned Parenthood sells body parts. Planned Parenthood is saying it themselves.

So where does that leave us? Essentially, devout PP supporters are saying, "If The Center for Medical Progress hadn't exposed Planned Parenthood's management admitting to selling babys' body parts, no one would be upset with them!"

Perhaps a final example may help put this in perspective. Imagine a brothel consisting of victims of the sex slave trade. An undercover video exposes the evils occurring within its walls. Then an unstable individual enters the brothel and goes on a murderous rampage, killing several, including police staff on the scene. Would we turn a blind eye to the women and children victimized in the brothel? Would the killer's actions erase or nullify what had happened and what will continue to happen to the women and children victimized in the brothel? Would we focus blame on the undercover videographer for exposing what happened there? It would be irrational to do so.

Being both opposed to the murder of adults and the murder of babies doesn't make one a hypocrite. It's nonsensical to suggest otherwise. Nonsensical, emotional, irrational rants on social media are one of the hallmarks of our time.  The Christian needn't let another's mad ravings define him/her.




*Attempts to discredit the content of The Center for Medical Progress' videos based on the videos being "edited" are hardly honest, particularly when an accusation is never paired with examples. Lengthy segments of the Planned Parenthood representatives proceed unedited. The words they spoke are in context. Readers can see the videos or transcripts for themselves. Even the Fiorina accusation, mentioned in the above quote by Miller, is an embarrassing attempt to cloak what actually occurs at Planned Parenthood clinics. Essentially, PP supporters reacted to her comments by insisting the baby she described was different than the one whose brain was actually procured. See a breakdown of that matter here.

Replies to Planned Parenthood arguments

Recently, the Center for Medical Progress revealed undercover videos taken with Planned Parenthood executives and personnel revealing that the abortion-provider commonly sells baby body parts, allegedly for profit, and in potential violation of various laws. Since covered here on TCV, the Center has released more videos and has announced the release of more in the future. Evidence continues to mount that PP has been involved in trafficking baby body parts for much profit in some cases.

It should be noted, for the purpose of this thought exercise, the aborted victims, many of whose hearts, livers, brains, etc. were sold, will be considered human beings. Lest this article itself be accused of the fallacy of a False Premise, I welcome anyone to confront the question of when life begins and what rational basis can be used to identify that beginning (further reading: Human Personhood Begins at Conception by Dr. Peter Kreeft).

From radio, to the web, to social media, I have heard several common reactions to this PP scandal by PP supporters. Following are paraphrases of four arguments made in support of PP and responses to those arguments.

Studying aborted fetuses leads to cures for diseases, therefore it is a good endeavor.

• This reaction is a Non Sequitur. It does not follow logically that if a "good" can be derived from any given action that the action therefore must itself be good. For example, it would be good if a random person, say Ted, does not rob a bank. Therefore, if we permanently chain Ted in a dungeon, we can achieve the good that he not rob a bank. However, the acquisition of the good in this case does not eliminate the moral violation inflicted on Ted. In the previous TCV post, we reviewed how Nazi laboratories made medical advancements by subjecting Jews to various tests that often resulted in that Jew's death. It razes the sensibilities to claim virtue in the subjection of unwilling subjects to fatal or maiming experiments.
• If proponents of this argument suggest medical advancements can only be made by way of sacrificing babies, they commit the fallacy of a False Dichotomy. There are many ways to accomplish medical research without committing human sacrifice. Edit 8/2/15 to add: In unfortunate cases of stillbirths or miscarriages, this science could ethically find ground.
• Proponents of this argument are essentially espousing the following maxim: the sacrifice of some is justifiable if we can advance medicine. As reviewed in the previous post, the Nazi scientists made this identical argument. However, these proponents are not willing to accept the role of the sacrificed person themselves. In other words, if it is "good" for a person to be sacrificed for the sake of medical advancement, why are these proponents not first in line to have their bodies destroyed and organs sold? It is a serious question. These proponents appear to be very willing to champion the destruction of a person for medical advancement as long as that person is someone else. The hypocrisy reveals that the original claim is not the "good" they claim it is. And there is no irony lost in the idea that the goal of medical advancements is to preserve life.

Planned Parenthood does a lot of good. If they were to close, we would lose all that good. Therefore, they should be left alone.

• By "lot of good," those who espouse the above argument refer to things like cancer advice or STD treatment. (Some of what PP is alleged to provide, such as mammograms, are actually not provided by PP. For the sake of this reply, let's grant that some PP visitors do indeed receive "good" medical counseling or product of some kind.) Proponents of this argument commit the fallacy of the Halo Effect (or cognitive Splitting). This refers to a person whose psychology only allows himself to view a person or entity as "all good." The beholder is blinded to any evidence that contradicts the "halo" they have assigned to the person or entity. The slaughter of babies are not considered in order to uphold the "halo" assigned to PP. 
• The argument likewise includes the fallacy of Appeal to Fear. Proponents of this argument also avoid confronting the human violation occurring by scaring listeners into thinking they will lose good medical service if PP's operations are jeopardized.
• Finally, this argument contains a False Dichotomy. The availability of truly good medical care is not dependent on PP staying in business, nor continuing to provide abortions.

Planned Parenthood must be allowed to continue aborting babies because otherwise who will take care of all these children? There aren't enough adopters and we don't have money to put all these kids in orphanages.

• Proponents of the "overpopulation" argument commit some of the same fallacies mentioned earlier. One is Appeal to Fear. We are to believe the destruction of babies is "good" because we can avoid the "frightening" idea of having to pay to raise them.
• There is also here a False Dichotomy. Proponents of the argument assume the baby must be killed or sent to an orphanage/adopter. The option of encouraging the mother to raise the child does not cross their mind. There are at least three reasons why mothers should be encouraged to raise their children. First, is because children fare best in life when raised in a loving house by their mothers and fathers. Obviously, this is not always possible (which is one reason why the Church does not support extramarital sex and welcomes engaged couples to go through marriage encounters to properly prepare for marriage), but in many instances, it is a financially and stably viable option over abortion. Second, as evidenced by a February 2015 study by the Brookings Institute, "low-income women are less likely to...have an abortion once pregnant." This suggests that higher income women still have abortions despite the availability of financial resources. Third, even when the mother is in poverty, there exist a number of non-profits who help discourage abortion by helping those mothers pay to raise their children. For example, places like the Waterleaf Women's Center or Elizabeth's New Life Center help mothers with baby supplies, resources, and counseling.
• Even in cases where children are adopted or raised in orphanages, it is also reasonable to encourage financial support for these options. It is not logically humane nor dignified to say to a person, "You're too expensive, so we're going to kill you." If money shouldn't be spent on life, on what should it be spent. Similar to the question posed above, should we not ask such proponents of this argument, if society can only afford x number of people, why do you not volunteer your own elimination? The question is provocative and intended as such to reveal that which they ask of the aborted child and to reveal the evil inherent in killing to save money.

The undercover videos are illegal!

• This line of argumentation is a complete Red Herring from whether or not PP has committed atrocious crimes, whether illegal or immoral or both. Even if the recordings were illegal, it fails to address the morality or legality of what occurs within PP's walls.
• But to address the Red Herring, the assertion certainly may not be factual. According to federal law:

It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for a person not acting under color of law to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication where such person is a party to the communication or where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception unless such communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States or of any State. (18 U.S. Code § 2511)

To me, this suggests a real possibility that the recordings were federally legal since the undercover parties were aware of the recording.  

• State laws vary. As of May 2014, according to the Digital Media Law Project, 38 states require only one-party consent to record conversations. This means one of the criteria for a legal secret recording to occur requires at least one of the parties involved in the conversation to consent to the recording. An article at Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press cites several case studies regarding secret recordings. Some of those cases seem similar to what has happened here in this PP scandal. One is Sussman v. American Broadcasting Co. in which an undercover reporter exposed the activities of "psychic" employees behind the scenes. Another is Desnick vs. ABC, in which ABC sent reporters posing as medical patients to secretly film interaction with a doctor. In both cases, the court found no legal consent violations in the undercover recordings. Even in some one-party consent cases, courts have accepted otherwise questionable recordings in a private home on the basis that the recording was not used to commit a crime or tort (cf. Cora vs. Weintraub LLP). In states that require all-party consent, such a recording may still be considered legal in court based, for example, on whether the conversation took place in public (such as the Dr. Nucatola recording in a CA restaurant). For their part, the Center for Medical Progress, with regard to a two-party consent state like California, said: "The recording was done in full compliance with the California recording statute."

Analysis of Planned Parenthood baby body parts scandal

THE VIDEO
Recently, the Center for Medical Progress released an investigation into Planned Parenthood, provider of approximately one-third of abortions in the United States. Undercover video footage features correspondence between Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Nucatola speaks with men posing as potential buyers of infant body parts for the purposes of medical research.

Excerpts from Nucatola garnering attention include:

Nucatola: I think every provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue, and they absolutely want to accommodate them. They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘This clinic is selling tissue, this clinic is making money off of this.’ I know in the Planned Parenthood world they’re very very sensitive to that. And before an affiliate is gonna do that, they need to, obviously, they’re not—some might do it for free—but they want to come to a number that doesn’t look like they’re making money. They want to come to a number that looks like it is a reasonable number for the effort that is allotted on their part. I think with private providers, private clinics, they’ll have much less of a problem with that. 

Buyer: Okay, so, when you are, or the affiliate is determining what that monetary—so that it doesn’t create, raising a question of this is what it’s about, this is the main—what price range, would you—? 

Nucatola: You know, I would throw a number out, I would say it’s probably anywhere from $30 to $100 [per specimen], depending on the facility and what’s involved. It just has to do with space issues, are you sending someone there who’s going to be doing everything, is there shipping involved, is somebody gonna have to take it out. You know, I think everybody just wants, it’s really just about if anyone were ever to ask them, “What do you do for this $60? How can you justify that? Or are you basically just doing something completely egregious, that you should be doing for free.” So it just needs to be justifiable. 

And later, in the interview, Nucatola explains methods of abortion used to accommodate a body part buyer's request:

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

Nucatola: 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? 

Nucatola: 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—” 

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

LEGALITY
One of the first questions that comes to mind, what are the ramifications of this matter according to U.S. law? Peter Jesserer Smith, writing for the National Catholic Register, responds to Nucatola's descriptions as such: "much of it may actually be legal." The possibility of legally selling baby body parts concerns the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 which states:

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce. (498b)

The phrase "valuable consideration" is said to exclude compensation related to the "transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.'." (498b)

In other words, it is lawful to accept money for donated "human fetal tissue" if that money is applied to the necessary handling and presevation of the "tissue." The question then seems to be whether or not Planned Parenthood, in selling baby body parts, exceeded compensation necessary to handle the body parts.

This very matter was considered in an interview conducted by Al Kresta of Kresta in the Afternoon radio show on July 14 with David Daleiden, project lead of the Center for Medical Progress' undercover investigation. Kresta asked Daleiden to address the matter of receiving costs associated with the handling of "human fetal tissue" and this is the reply:

Daleiden: The most important thing is that most of those ancillary costs that might come with trying to facilitate human organ donation or a tissue donation–– none of those costs are actually incurred by Planned Parenthood. Because in a situation that you have in Planned Parenthood and StemExpress, for example, StemExpress is an outside, middle-man, biotech company that comes into the Planned Parenthood clinic. They send their technicians into the clinic. The clinics consent the patients. The clinics identify the patients that they want to harvest from. The clinics receive the fetuses in the pathology lab after they've been aborted. The StemExpress technicians do the dissection. They package up the body parts. And they drive over to the FedEx and ship them off across the country at the end of the day. So literally, the only thing that Planned Parenthood is doing is they're opening the front door for them in the morning, or sometimes the back door. And they're carrying the fetus from the operating room to the pathology lab which is across the hallway which is in the back of the clinic. And that's something that they do every day anyway because that's their standard processing of specimens anyway when they're doing abortions. So the Planned Parenthood clinic doesn't have any cost with the tissue procuring. In fact, they're actually saving money already because it's less volume of medical waste that they have to dispose of. And on top of that, the procurement company is paying them 50, 75, 100 dollars per specimen extra. 

At one point in the undercover video, Nucatola communicated that she had "8 cases yesterday." Let's say that is a normative number, and if, as Daleiden asserts, PP incurs zero or negligible handling costs with regard to the fetuses, that would mean a PP clinic could make upwards of $800 per day, and that's if each fetus was only used for one body part. If such is the case, PP would be in violation of federal law. This amount is unnerving if one calculates the thousands of dollars that could be earned in a year, and the added incentive for clinics to steer clients toward abortion. The legality and dollar amounts could also depend on variations between PP affiliate to affiliate, as not all of them may necessarily be arranged in exactly the same way Daleiden describes.

It may also be legally suspect that the PP consent form, acquiring permission from a woman to use her aborted baby for medical research, does not disclose that the clinic receives money for the donated body parts. NIHRA, however, states a doctor must reveal any "physician's interest" in the research process, which may legally be considered to include financial compensation. As quoted above, Nucatola did suggest clinics attempted to "come to a number that doesn’t look like they’re making money." A lengthier quote from Daleiden in the next section expounds on this.

The NC Register article describes what may be a more definitive violation of federal law, which is the alteration of the abortion procedure for the purpose of harvesting body parts. NIHRA states:

[I]n the case of tissue obtained pursuant to an induced abortion-- ... no alteration of the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy was made solely for the purposes of obtaining the tissue. (498a)

This law appears to have been violated as we see in Nucatola's words such as:

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...

These are explicit deviations in the "method" of the procedure for the purpose of harvesting suitable organ specimens. Such deviations could well qualify as illegal "methods."

The NC Register article also identifies one point in Nucatola's statements that potentially describes a partial-birth abortion, which was declared illegal in 2003.

"2 ADMISSIONS, 3 LIES"
Upon revelation of this undercover video, PP soon released a statement denying any illegalities and that the Center for Medical Progress unethically edited the video. Responding to that during the Kresta interview, Daleiden states the following:

Daleiden: Basically to summarize what was interesting about Planned Parenthood's response through Planned Parenthood's statement is that they make two really key admissions and then they tell three lies afterward. And the two important admissions are that they admit that some of their clinics supply aborted fetal tissue and they admit that there is money involved with supplying aborted fetal tissue.  The three lies that they tell are: Number one, that their patients asked for it and consent for it; Number two, that there is no financial benefit to Planned Parenthood, and; Number three, that there's nothing illegal going on there. Number one, the patients are consenting to donate tissue like we discussed in the previous segment with the consent form. But it's not being disclosed to the patient that there's money involved and that Planned Parenthood receives remuneration for the fetal tissue. So patients are consenting to donate. They are not consenting to selling. Selling is what's actually going on.  Point number two. In the document vault section of our website at centerformedicalprogress.org we have actually a flyer advertisement from one of the main, real-life purchasers of Planned Parenthood baby parts. They're a company called StemExpress. They're a private LLC, for profit company in northern California that partnered with very many Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. … That flyer advertises four different times to Planned Parenthood clinics the financial benefits that they can receive if they supply fetal tissue. It uses the phrases "financially profitable," "financial profits," "financial benefits to your clinic," and "fiscal growth of your own clinic." And that advertisement to Planned Parenthood clinics includes an endorsement printed on it from another Planned Parenthood medical director.  And so then the third lie that nothing illegal is going on about this. It all hinges on Planned Parenthood's claim that there's no money involved. But that's patently false, because every other source that you can go to, other than their communications director, will prove otherwise.

IS IT FAIR TO COMPARE PLANNED PARENTHOOD'S BODY PARTS SCANDAL TO NAZI SCIENTISTS WHO CONDUCTED HUMAN EXPERIMENTS?
A female caller in the second hour of Kresta's July 14 show says, "I'm very happy my father's dead because he [did] not live to see this. He would have felt that the Nazis had won. ... Mengele must have taught that doctor [Nucatola]." And the caller's reaction is not unique.

During World War II, Nazi scientists conducted a number of horrific experiments on prisoners in the name of scientific and medical advancement. Victims of the Nazis were subjected to such experiments as high-altitude tests to determine viable altitudes at which pilots could parachute, freezing experiments to determine treatments for hypothermia, as well as subjugation to multiple diseases in the name of finding a cure.

Victims of Dr. Josef Mengele's medical
experiments at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Poland, 1944. (Image courtesy of
 US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

That these prisoners were subjected to such violations of humanity, against their will, is all but universally held as evil. The sober philosopher recognizes the tragic irony of cruelly destroying mass human life in the name of preserving it. How did these scientists justify these crimes?

In the book The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremburg Code, authors George Annas and Michael Grodin identify 12 arguments made by Nazi scientists in defense of their actions. Argument #10 reads as follows:

Sometimes it is necessary to tolerate a lesser evil, the killing of some, to achieve a greater good, the saving of many. That the experiments were useful, the defense claimed, was evident by the use of the data derived from Nazi human experimentation by the United States and Britain in the war against Japan. (p. 133)

This argumentation is similar to those who now appeal to the "research" benefits garnered from the harvested body parts of aborted babies, as trafficked by the likes of PP (although many defendants of abortion for research deny it as an evil of any kind). Even PP-friendly media headlines have played this angle. This past week, the Washington Post actually altered their headline. It originally read "Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood exec discussing organ harvesting" but was changed to the more benign: "Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood official discussing fetal organs used for research."

The question comes down to this: If that which is in the womb is a human life,* then abortion, as well as the harvesting of that life's body parts for human experimentation, is murderous and horrific. And if that which is in the womb is a human life, then we are indeed living amidst the echo of Nazi concentration camps and human experimentation against unwilling victims, even if that reality is more difficult to see.

Our moral sensibilities recognize the violation done to an unwilling victim in these tragic events. Again, if that which is in the womb is a human life, the "consent form" used by PP is tantamount to asking Person A for consent to harvest the organs of Person B. The victim in question has granted no consent. The victim has been declared expendable in the name of science by someone else. (And, it should not be ignored that cures and medical advancements have been and will continue to be made in great strides without the mutilation and destruction of human victims.)

Furthermore, if that which is in the womb is a human life, as the Church and many allied souls recognize, then the victims of abortion have exceeded 57,000,000 since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. How can even the Nazi scientist, who would argue that the killing of "some" is worthy to save the "many," justify veritable infanticide and subsequent organ harvesting for human experimentation.

Related to this, the Catechism, in the section on abortion, offers what I think is valuable insight:

2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation: "The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights...belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."  –– "The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined.

The tragedy of abortion and organ trafficking for research (or the Nazi human experiments) is at least twofold. First, the victim is violated in the most capital sense. Second, when these persons are classified as expendable subjects, the entire system of humanity incurs a seismic shift of injustice, effectively denying the equal dignity of all persons.

CONCLUSION

Staying abreast of the latest news on this issue may require active searching, as the media has not shown a historic propensity to expose that which validates Christian thought.From a legal perspective, time will tell whether or not PP and/or any of its affiliates will be found guilty of criminal wrongdoing. As the weeks pass, expect further details regarding PP nationally, as well as other individual PP clinics, which may be absolved or further incriminated in illegal organ trafficking or abortion violations. What will be PP's defense? Will they claim Nucatola exaggerated at times to land a sale? Will further incriminating facts surface?

Certainly, from a moral perspective, the spiritual crime of abortion has multiplied to an unnerving total. And the matter of dismembering aborted babies serves as a visible icon of the amputation of human consideration from the situation. Many prayers are warranted for this situation and all involved.

EDIT (7/21/15) TO ADD:
A second undercover video was released July 21, 2015 by the Center for Medical Progress. This video contains interview footage with Dr. Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s for-profit Medical Directors’ Council.

The legal matters of altering the method, as well as profits, again, surface in this interview. At one point, Gatter begins a negotiation by tossing out the figure of "$75 a specimen." The buyer rejoins with, "That’s way too low." And Gatter admits:

I was going to say $50, because I know places that did $50, too. But see we don’t, we’re not in it for the money, and we don’t want to be in a position of being accused of selling tissue, and stuff like that.

Her claim about not being in it for the money could either be taken honestly or cynically. If honestly, PP should be able to substantiate the per-"specimen" dollar amount, that PP incurs that cost to handle the specimen. According to Daleiden's assertions above, PP incurs no such costs. If we are to take Gatter's words cynically, perhaps she is acting as a salesman, convincing the buyer that she is not out to overcharge them. As well, the cynical view would ask why there is a negotiation at all, if PP is not in it for the money. Later in the transcript, she also indicates she will increase the cost based on what her peers charge:

Well let me agree to find out what other affiliates in California are getting, and if they’re getting substantially more, then we can discuss it then.

And, as Nucatola states in the prior video, the goal is to make sure PP "doesn't look like they're making money."

As speculated above, a PP affiliate can collect tens of thousands of dollars per year from these sales. For their part, the Center for Medical Progress speculates a yield of over $86,000 for one affiliate. Whereas $30-$100 here or there may be easier to disguise than larger quantities, the sum total over time can prove lucrative. The accounting side of this matter appears quite pertinent to the investigation.

As for methodological red flags in this second video, Gatter candidly explains the legal concern of altering the procedure for the purpose of procuring intact body parts. The exchange goes as follows:

Buyer: The intact specimens, I wanted to touch on that. What I was trying to say is if the 10 to 12 week specimens, end of the 1st trimester, if those are pretty intact specimens, that’s something we can work with.

Gatter: So that’s an interesting concept. Let me explain to you a little bit of a problem, which may not be a big problem, if our usual technique is suction, at 10 to 12 weeks, and we switch to using an IPAS or something with less suction, and increase the odds that it will come out as an intact specimen, then we’re kind of violating the protocol that says to the patient,“We’re not doing anything different in our care of you.” Now to me, that’s kind of a specious little argument and I wouldn’t object to asking Ian, who’s our surgeon who does the cases, to use an IPAS at that gestational age in order to increase the odds that he’s going to get an intact specimen, but I do need to throw it out there as a concern. Because the patient is signing something and we’re signing something saying that we’re not changing anything with the way we’re managing you, just because we agree to give tissue. You’ve heard that before. 

Buyer: Yes. It’s touchy. How do you feel about that? 

Gatter: I think they’re both totally appropriate techniques, there’s no difference in pain involved, I don’t think the patients would care one iota. So yeah, I’m not making a fuss about that.

Later, Gatter admits:

[T]here are people who would argue that by using the IPAS instead of the machine, you’re slightly increasing the length of the procedure, you’re increasing the pain of the procedure...

You may notice that Gatter earlier said there is "no difference in pain involved" in the alternate procedure, yet here admits others say doctors using the alternate procedure are "increasing the pain." On this matter, Gatter ultimately implies she will defer to a doctor, Ian Tilley, on whether or not they will violate the patient agreement by changing the abortion method to which the client-mother agrees:

And then, if we want to pursue this, mutually, I talk to Ian and see how he feels about using a “less crunchy” technique to get more whole specimens.

*Just to clarify, I don't say "if that which is in the womb is a human life" to suggest the matter is unclear. I use this verbiage as a thought exercise, to invite even skeptics to confront the crux of the issue. I fully embrace the Church's and other philsophers', scientists', and religious persons' views that life begins––at the beginning. Thus, can a skeptic at least understand the perspective of a thoughtful pro-lifer, which reflects philosophical and quantifiable measures of the existence of life.