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Harvest of Shame
The year was 1985, and the place was Jerusalem. A capacity crowd had assembled in Yad Vashem to listen to 30 Auschwitz survivors describing the barbarism of Josef Mengele. Vera Alexander, 62, described how Mengele pampered one young lady during her pregnancy, only to personally tear the baby from the womb and hurl the live child into an oven because it wasn’t a twin.
Vera Kriegel, 60, told of seeing Auschwitz guards crush the skulls of babies with their rifle butts, a practice that I assume Planned Parenthood would disavow on purely economic grounds. Besides, as Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter explained with the nonchalance of someone describing a new candy bar, babies can now be finished off in ways that are “less crunchy.” Which is to say, their young lives can be exterminated while keeping certain organs intact for the purpose of selling them. Indeed, as one Planned Parenthood “care provider” said, “Sometimes, if we get, if someone delivers before we are able to see them for a procedure, then we are intact.”
Ms. Kriegel described the indescribable to the gathering in Jerusalem, back in 1985, recalling the sight of hundreds of human eyeballs pinned to the office wall in Dr. Josef Mengele’s little shop of atrocities. “It was like a collection of butterflies,” she recounted. There were of course still more horrors in the camp. “Usually you can see the whole brain come out,” said another doctor, Savita Ginde. “Here’s a stomach, kidney, heart,” Dr. Ginde explained.
Sorry, but I’m playing loose with the chronology here, because Dr. Ginde didn’t really ply her deadly trade for Dr. Mengele, but rather for Planned Parenthood. The difference? Whereas yesterday’s butchers pinned eyeballs to the wall, today’s dismember children and sift through their bloody remains in search of remunerative body parts. As the old Virginia Slims commercial used to say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”
“C’mon Carter,” you say, “the Nazis were interested in outright genocide! You can’t reasonably compare that with Planned Parenthood now, can you?” Well, let’s do a little comparing, shall we? First, a look at the animating philosophy as described by Mengele himself:
Everything will end in catastrophe if natural selection is altered to the point that gifted people are overwhelmed by billions of morons. … we have to prevent the rise of the idiot masses.
Pretty harsh, no? Now, compare Mengele’s ghastly reasoning with the enlightened and tender-hearted philosophy of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger:
A government which allows men and women to become parents whose records show insanity, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, syphilis, pauperism, idiocy and various other transmissible defects, cannot be said to consider the welfare or happiness of the country or of the next generation. Billions are now spent on charities, both public and private, in the U.S.A. The normal and intelligent citizens are being taxed and drained and bled to keep alive an increasing horde of human beings who never should have been born into a civilized society.
And that, sports fans, stripped of its rhetorical and euphemistic finery, is liberal “compassion.” And you thought Donald Trump was crude! But the woman Hillary Clinton described as her “hero” wasn’t done:
Our “overhead” expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded “captains of industry,” financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business abilities are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community.
Well. That is certainly bracing! Notice how the quote fits neatly into the stereotype constructed by people such as Ms. Clinton to describe conservatives and yet … and yet it proceeds directly from the mind of Margaret Sanger, of whom Ms. Clinton rhapsodizes, “I am really in awe of her, there are a lot of lessons we can learn from her life.” What lessons are we to learn from a woman whose exertions in eugenics gave birth to an organization that locates 79% of its abortion clinics in minority neighborhoods?
“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously,” cooed Hillary, “her courage, her tenacity, her vision.” Was it the courage and tenacity to announce her vision — “Birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defective” — that prompted Hillary Clinton to accept the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood?
Describing Planned Parenthood as “the object of such a concerted attack for so many years, and it’s really an attack against a woman’s right to choose,” Ms. Clinton invites the question: a woman’s right to choose what, exactly? The right to choose what school her children may attend? The right to choose to arm herself in self-defense? The right to fight the unwanted sexual advances of Hillary’s husband? The right to practice her religion even if it offends gay activists? The right to resist those Obamacare mandates that violate a woman’s pro-life convictions? The right to choose an incandescent lightbulb? The right to purchase a large soda even if Michael Bloomberg doesn’t approve? The right to keep her doctor or health insurance? The right to put her Social Security contributions into her private account? The right to retain her earnings rather than see them apportioned out to strangers who didn’t earn them?
Of course not, for the “choice” that has become enshrined as a liberal sacrament begins and ends at the abortionist’s door. Through that door, as the Center for Medical Progress’s cameras confirm, the human capacity for savagery unfolds in all its depraved and bloody wretchedness. The camera focuses on a petri dish containing a petite foot here, a liver there, a small lump from which extends tiny human fingers, and, placed haphazardly on opposite sides of the dish, two minuscule human eyeballs that stare lifelessly, like those that adorned Josef Mengele’s wall 70 years earlier; historical descendants, victims of a timeless evil, bearing silent and unflinching testiment to Mengele’s statement: “The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe that we are doing it.”
“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. There can be no acquiescence, no half-hearted or weak-kneed compromise. Not from a country that liberated Auschwitz and declared, with the rest of the civilized world, “Never again.”
Published in Domestic Policy, General
People can rationalize away the label of “evil” for only so long.
Brilliant essay. Life is so precious, the ease with which the PP workers willingly (encouragingly?) discard life is chilling.
Thank you Dave Carter. Thank you Mr. Jefferson.
But Dave! What of all the life-saving therapies that might result from the use of this waste material? Have you no sense of compassion?
Thank you.
Of course, Dave Carter, this means nothing because you carry the wrong equipment between your legs and you’re only mansplaining opposition to a woman’s right to choose!
The genius of Planned Parenthood is the degree that they’ve dehumanized their victims. What is appalling is the complicity of groups who once faced the same treatment. Jews, homosexuals and other minorities were categorized as subhumans. Blacks were defined not as people but as property. Yet in the political classes, they are all advocates for this barbarity.
Of the 54 million legal abortions that have taken place since Roe, 18 million have been African-American children. Think about that. That’s three times the number of Jews who lost their lives in the death camps. Still, Barack “God Bless Planned Parenthood” Obama is their hero.
How, then, does this happen? Because they’re selling revenge – against the church, against “the patriarchy,” against the family, against everything. Unfortunately revolutions tend to be self consuming.
Culture War
Conservatives: Culture = Sanctity of Life
Libs: Culture = Petri dish = womb = War on Women
Powerful thinking-writing from start to finish. Forget for a moment Benghazi………et al, your forth paragraph from the end is enough of an indictment on its own to disqualify HRC as the champion on the families, women and the little guy everywhere. The third paragraph from the end and questions posed are the very best refrain I have yet heard to the question….Don’t you support a woman’s right to choose? I will put them to memory for future use.
I know this is in jest, but it’s a good opportunity to suggest that the abortionist might want to develop “life saving therapies” by first volunteering his own body parts.
Thanks for this Dave – the horror of this must be brought into the light. I get so angry with PP yet fail to pray for their conversion. I’m going to confession this afternoon and will spend some time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. When I’m overcome with grief over abortion, I turn to Fr. Richard John Neuhaus for strength:
God bless you.
St. Michael the Archangel, ora pro nobis
Good point, how many employees at Planned Parenthood .. just trying to get a ballpark of the number of body parts the employees will be offering.
I don’t know what is more shocking….the truth about Planned Parenthood or the number of Americans who brush past the videos to defend Planned Parenthood and condemn those who are abhorred by the videos. Can a country survive having so many amoral citizens?
Dave, thanks for this. Of course you are preaching to the choir here on Ricochet, so I am sharing it on Facebook, as should every person who reads it. The practice of abortion conservatives have been vehemently opposing for decades has actually managed to prove that evil knows no bounds. Time to go viral.
I rather doubt it, but it seems we’re about to find out.
It’s not normal because it’s acceptable. It’s acceptable because it’s normal.
Many of our fellow Republican voters support abortions without a logical leg to stand on because of simple peer pressure. To counteract that pressure, we must apply pressure of our own by refusing to pretend there is room for reasonable disagreement. As I have argued many times on Ricochet, there isn’t.
If nuclear powers threatened to obliterate American cities, that would not be a greater threat than the mass slaughter of our own innocent children. When we acknowledge souls and honor, then the failure of purely statistical comparisons of lives lost becomes clear. Abortions kill America more than any war ever could. Abortion kills souls… and I don’t mean the souls of babies.
Stalin, Hitler, and Mao were pikers. There have been nearly 58 million people killed in this country by the abortion industry since Roe. May God have mercy on all our souls.
Thank you for this. Wise advice indeed, and much needed in my case as well.
They share that bed. There are those whose livelihoods depend on death, and those whose contempt for the truth which includes the value of a human being precludes their willingness to bring an end to this murderous organization.
I am really reeling from this entire debate. I have trouble even listening to commentary on this topic. I’ve always been pro-life, actually primarily from a scientific standpoint. To me, there really is not a logical place to draw the line between person and non-person. A zygote will be a fetus will be a baby will be a child will be an adult will be an old person…it’s pretty solidly a continuum. The limits of personhood are entirely artificial and dependent on your own personal opinion about what is valuable. I am really having trouble not reacting to my very liberal facebook feed. I did post this the other day in response to a “support PP” pie graph listing the breakdown of funding for various services:
Ugh… Just so demoralizing to read the support despite these revelations. Thanks for the great post.
Dave Carter’s incredible essays are one of the main reasons I re-joined Ricochet, although I don’t post very often. The unfolding of the horrors at PP and our government’s complicity in this evil are making me physically ill. The millions who defend and even approve of this depravity, especially our POTUS, scare me very much as I approach my twilight years. The same “logic” that endorses these actions in the name of “Women’s Health” are the same cold-eyed utilitarians who will fight for mass euthanasia of the elderly and disabled. God help us, please!
Truly sick and barbaric, both the past and the present. How do people become so inhuman? Everything decent is becoming despised, and the ugly and despicable is becoming the accepted new norm – it’s upside down.
My opinion of the unbearable heatwaves as of late and more earthquakes across the world? “They’re” firing up the furnaces and having to make more room down below!
A great essay by Mr. Carter. I’m afraid very few realize the true story of Sanger. The more it’s exposed, the better. There should be ads telling her story, then showing Hillary saying how much she admires her.
BUT if the Republicans don’t leave the abortion issue alone, they will lose the White House. I don’t care how many Conservative women voice Pro-Life sentiments, believe me when I tell you every unmarried woman’s biggest nightmare is an unwanted pregnancy, and every mother’s is an unwanted pregnancy for her teenaged daughter. If you are a candidate promising to end abortion on demand, you will lose.
Just leave it alone, do not have it as a plank in the party, do not mention women’s health care, their sex lives, their uteruses (uteri?), or any other aspect of it. Please, Republicans, ask yourselves if you’d rather make a Moral Statement or win back the White House. You can’t do both, not this time around. Let’s talk about National Security and fiscal responsibility instead. You can defund Planned Parenthood when we have the White House back.
Thank you for your kind comments, Rubysue. I fear that in the sentence I took the liberty of highlighting, you are exactly right. You do remember Obama’s response when a lady asked whether her mother would qualify for a pacemaker at her advanced age, yes? It had something to do with taking pain killers instead:
Rob is going to reach his goal of 10,000 members just by signing up SKDKnickerbocker employees.
For a start, we can learn what Obama, Clinton, media and others think of “disparate impact.”
For those who just need some ray of hope in this, don’t forget that abortion rates are now the lowest in the US since Roe v. Wade. I tend not to trust any of their analysis about why this is so: My gut says it was the widespread introduction of ultrasound, and then the widespread sharing of those images — even more, now on social media.
It’s just so powerful: You look at it and what do you see? Argument over.
Thank you Claire. I’ll take all the hope I can get.
Are you saying women don’t understand what causes pregnancy? If a mother really wants to help put her daughter on the pill do you think that’s impossible?
The polling doesn’t necessarily support your assertions. Gallup found that 61% found no trouble with first trimester abortions. But once you move into that 15th week an equally impressive 64% say “no.” Into the 28th week and that number climbs to 80%.
I’m willing to make that compromise right now.
Afternoon Dave,
Great post. It seems that our society did not have an answer to the assertion that a person owns their own body and can dispose of it as they like. And since we were not effective at establishing that the unborn life has a superior claim to its life, we allowed adults to end life for personal reasons. Will science (the sonogram) make the unborn life more visible to us and help establish its claim to life, or do we have answer to the claim that we own our own bodies which will be persuasive?
Amen, Dave. Our nation has no leg to stand on in lecturing other nations about human rights as we casually slaughter our own then sell off the parts like a commodity.