Women's Rights Activists, You're Whiffing the Ball

Women’s rights activists, where are you? Frankly, I am disappointed. You have a high hanging ball right over the plate, and you are whiffing. It’s embarrassing. 

Does a woman’s right to choose only extend to an abortion procedure or does a woman also have the right to choose (or have knowledge of) what happens to said “fetal tissue” after the procedure? Does she have the right to the knowledge of its sale for illegal profiteering? Does she have the right to consent of such use? 

Does it violate a woman’s rights for a women’s health organization to illegally sell her donated "fetal tissue” for profit?

Planned Parenthood’s mission is “to provide comprehensive reproductive and complementary health care services in settings which preserve and protect the essential privacy and rights of each individual.” The great champion of a woman’s rights and her right to choose has effectually denied her exactly that. The hypocrisy is palpable. 

If I am a women’s rights activist, I am angry. Angry that an organization I have put so much energy behind and held up as the great defender of women’s rights has jeopardized it all over illegal activity while simultaneously violating women’s rights. 

If you are going to be about women’s rights, then be about women’s rights. If women are consenting for research that follows federal law and then that consent is being abused by illegal activity, then women are being victimized. They should be able to choose whether they want someone to profit from the sale of their baby. They should also have the confidence that their procedure is being done in the standardized way-- not illegally altered for the sake of profit.

I wonder how many women have watched the video of the baby parts in the petri dish and wondered…is that mine? Is that my boy? There may be thousands of women out there wondering if the baby donated from their womb was chopped up and sold for profit or maybe even sold “fully intact” (not all women who get abortions believe it is merely fetal tissue). Sadly, they may never know. 

The question is, do they have a right to know? This is a separate issue altogether from whether the "tissue" should have been extracted in the first place. This is not just a pro-life battle. 

If Planned Parenthood’s self-imposed conundrum was not so closely related to the abortion issue, feminists and women’s rights activists everywhere would be crying, "foul!" Instead, they are standing by Planned Parenthood, illegal activity and all, while losing ground for women they fought so hard to gain. The extreme left would love nothing better than to spread the misinformation that Planned Parenthood’s illegal sale of fetal tissue is another pro-life/ pro-choice war. That is a war they believe they can win. 

Is the pro-life issue a part of it? Sure it is. Depending on which side you are on, it’s a huge part of it. But while pro-lifers are reeling in horror at inhumane feticide, at the very least pro-choicers should be outraged by the empty promises of an organization which claims to stand for women's rights yet profits by illegally taking advantage of them. Aside from the moral issue, there is the looming legal one. And that one transcends party lines. 

We corporately laud these same ethics requiring a financial institution that fraudulently misuses our money to be held legally responsible and punished accordingly. Why have we lost our gusto on this one? What supporters of Planned Parenthood are effectually saying is: We give women rights up to a certain point as long as we can keep them ignorant. As long as they don’t really know what we are doing. 

It’s like the civil rights movement saying— hey, we are fine with equal rights in practice as long as we don’t have to become intellectual equals. Let us use the same restrooms and sit where we want on the same buses, but you don’t have to give us equality in education. Heck, we don’t even need to vote. It’s beyond absurd. 

If you are selling women’s rights, shouldn’t those transcend the physical practice of what she does with her body? Shouldn’t she be allowed to know? Shouldn’t she be consulted? 

Planned Parenthood is happy to keep her in the dark. Give her rights…but not enough freedom to interfere or to have a say about what monster her donations are feeding. And apparently, the majority U.S. Senate and President Obama support her oppression.  

Don’t for one second make this only about the moral issue of abortion. Whichever side you are on, make Planned Parenthood accountable for the legal boundaries they have crossed here. Stand up for the women whose rights are being trampled under the false banner of protection.

And choke up on the bat already.


(And if you don’t believe this is factual, go watch the series of videos put out by the Center for Medical Progress. Hear it from the mouth of Planned Parenthood’s Mary Gatter haggling over the price of aborted baby parts because she wants a Lamborghini, haha. This isn't about covering the cost of research, friends. The cost for research plus travel expenses is a fixed cost, not one to haggle over).