[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 120 (Tuesday, July 28, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1141]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE PRICE OF FETAL PARTS

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                           HON. VIRGINIA FOXX

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 28, 2015

  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the following:

               [From the Washington Post, July 23, 2015]

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       Planned Parenthood's reaction to the release of a 
     clandestinely recorded conversation about the sale of fetal 
     body parts was highly revealing. After protesting that it did 
     nothing illegal, it apologized for the ``tone'' of one of its 
     senior directors.
       Her remarks lacked compassion, admitted Planned Parenthood 
     President Cecile Richards. As if Dr. Deborah Nucatola's cold 
     and casual discussion over salad and wine of how the fetal 
     body can be crushed with forceps in a way that leaves 
     valuable organs intact for sale is some kind of personal 
     idiosyncrasy. On the contrary, it's precisely the kind of 
     psychic numbing that occurs when dealing daily with 
     industrial scale destruction of the growing, thriving, 
     recognizably human fetus.
       This was again demonstrated by the release this week of a 
     second video showing another official sporting that same 
     tone, casual and even jocular, while haggling over the price 
     of an embryonic liver. ``If it's still low, then we can bump 
     it up,'' she joked, ``I want a Lamborghini.''
       Abortion critics have long warned that the problem is not 
     only the obvious--what abortion does to the fetus--but also 
     what it does to us. It's the same kind of desensitization 
     that has occurred in the Netherlands with another mass 
     exercise in life termination: assisted suicide. It began as a 
     way to prevent the suffering of the terminally ill. It has 
     now become so widespread and wanton that one-fifth of all 
     Dutch assisted-suicide patients are euthanized without their 
     explicit consent.
       The Planned Parenthood revelations will have an effect. 
     Perhaps not on government funding, given the Democratic 
     Party's unwavering support and the president wishing it 
     divine guidance. Planned Parenthood might escape legal 
     jeopardy as well, given the loophole in the law banning the 
     sale of fetal parts that permits compensation for expenses 
     (shipping and handling, as it were).
       But these revelations will have an effect on public 
     perceptions. Just as ultrasound altered feelings about 
     abortion by showing the image, the movement, the vibrant 
     living-ness of the developing infant in utero, so too, I 
     suspect, will these Planned Parenthood revelations, by 
     throwing open the door to the backroom of the clinic where 
     that being is destroyed.
       It's an ugly scene. The issue is less the sale of body 
     parts than how they are obtained. The nightmare for abortion 
     advocates is a spreading consciousness of how exactly a 
     healthy fetus is turned into a mass of marketable organs, 
     how, in the words of a senior Planned Parenthood official, 
     one might use ``a less crunchy technique''--crush the head, 
     spare the organs--``to get more whole specimens.''
       The effect on the public is a two-step change in 
     sensibilities. First, when ultrasound reveals how human the 
     living fetus appears. Next, when people learn, as in these 
     inadvertent admissions, what killing the fetus involves.
       Remember. The advent of ultrasound has coincided with a 
     remarkable phenomenon: Of all the major social issues, 
     abortion is the only one that has not moved toward increasing 
     liberalization. While the legalization of drugs, the 
     redefinition of marriage and other assertions of individual 
     autonomy have advanced, some with astonishing rapidity, 
     abortion attitudes have remained largely static. The country 
     remains evenly split.
       What will be the reaction to these Planned Parenthood 
     revelations? Right now, to try to deprive it of taxpayer 
     money. Citizens repelled by its activities should not be made 
     complicit in them. But why not shift the focus from the 
     facilitator to the procedure itself?
       The House has already passed a bill banning abortion after 
     20 weeks. That's far more fruitful than trying to ban it 
     entirely because, apart from the obvious constitutional 
     issue, there is no national consensus about the moral status 
     of the early embryo. There's more agreement on the moral 
     status of the later-term fetus. Indeed, about two-thirds of 
     Americans would ban abortion after the first trimester.
       There is more division about the first trimester because 
     one's views of the early embryo are largely a matter of 
     belief, often religious belief. One's view of the later-term 
     fetus, however, is more a matter of what might be called 
     sympathetic identification--seeing the image of a 
     recognizable human infant and, now, hearing from the experts 
     exactly what it takes to ``terminate'' its existence.
       The role of democratic politics is to turn such moral 
     sensibilities into law. This is a moment to press 
     relentlessly for a national ban on late-term abortions.

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