On Denial and Planned Parenthood
May 8, 1945. Dachau, Germany. The elite of the town of Dachau were forced by American soldiers to walk past the evidence of the savagery and inhumanity that had occurred within their community. When the wind blew the right direction the smell from the crematoriums would have permeated the air. How had they missed it?
But they had lived in denial. They had turned their eyes, as many Germans had done. When their neighbors disappeared. When they saw Jewish stores destroyed. When the synagogues burned. When the cattle cars moved down the tracks.
Yet when the citizens of Dachau paraded by the visual evidence of the Camp, they cried, gagged, and even fainted. As if they had never known.
That is the power of the visual image. It is undeniable.
I wonder what would have happened if a video of the atrocities of concentration camps had leaked out. Would the citizens have risen up and protested? Would not even the anti-Semitic have been horrified? Could the atrocities have continued if the people had really known?
Or would they have sat idly by, more committed to the Reich than to humanity?
July 14, 2015. The Internet. The world is exposed to the first of many videos that have progressively revealed the harsh reality of what occurs to all those babies that are aborted, especially the more developed ones.
What will humanity do?
- will we rise up and condemn an organization that has devolved into the most grisly application of their position possible?
- or we will use word like "access to health care," "war on women," "women's bodies, women's choice," or the worst one "reproductive rights" in the denial of what is happening?
Here is the deal. I did not need the videos to be horrified by abortion. I have carried 10 babies in my womb. I have 7 children to walk through life with me. I have seen the sonograms of my babies' beating hearts and grieved as I have seen my babies whose hearts had stopped. They had been alive and then they had died. And I ached at the loss.
As I have raised my 7, I have been repeatedly awed by the wiring that God built into each one. They have very different personalities, appearances, abilities, challenges, and talents. And they came that way. I began to know their personality and individual natures while they were still in me.
What I don't understand is how anyone who has looked into their child's eyes after they are born could still support their own right to have snuffed out that life a few months earlier.
But I have many friends and family, who I love deeply, who hold that position. And honestly, that is not the core issue of this post.
The issue of this post is this: where is the pro-choice outrage at what Planned Parenthood is undeniably doing?
Questions for the pro-choice:
Have you watched the videos? Will you? Or are you too afraid?
Our own White House, while vehemently defending Planned Parenthood, hasn't watched them. Why? Because Planned Parenthood said they weren't true.
And this administration believed them.
There will always be those, who like the notorious ostrich, will stick their heads in the sand and refuse to have their beliefs brought under the glaring light of examination.
But let me ask you something. Wouldn't it be possible to be pro-choice and still condemn Planned Parenthood?
If your pro-choice convictions are true, wouldn't they stand if Planned Parenthood is wrong and their practices of selling fetuses is abominable?
Is the pro-choice community intellectually honest enough to ask the hard questions and thoroughly examine the facts? And if they are, will they be brave enough to condemn these actions?
Don't be like the citizens of Dachau.
Residents near all the death camps closed their eyes, ears, and noses, while turning their heads from the reality that was right in front of them.
They lived within a stone's throw of the atrocities that would infamously define their communities and culture for generations. And they did nothing.
Our civilization stands at the same cross road.
Planned Parenthood will not go down without a fight. Be prepared. All the old tricks will be pulled out.
- They will attack the rights to have done undercover videos.
- They will attack the organization who shot them in an effort to discredit.
- They will deny it really happened or call these cases anomalies.
- They will try and change the subject or misdirect the focus to avoid the conversation entirely.
- Names will be called. Scare tactics will be deployed.
Or they will simply refuse to watch the videos.
But denial will not work. The visual proof is in front of us. Honesty is required. Even if you don't agree with the positions of the organization that shot the videos, the reality of the visual, undeniable truth still sits in front of us. Even if you support abortion, the undeniable truth still sits in front of you.
"You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” William Wilberforce
Watch the videos. Be honest. Our humanity requires it.