The Gosnell trial illustrates the unsanitary practices that have been in allowed in largely unregulated clinics owing to their politically-protected status; these conditions endanger women’s health in Planned Parenthood’s sleazy mission of providing abortion as birth control and abortion-on-demand anytime, for any reason. Nurses who worked in Planned Parenthood facilities have testified, under oath, about the employment of unlicensed doctors, of instruments that were not sterilized, of unsafe conditions and standard operating procedures that were worse than what might be found in third world nations or the back alleys of imaginative lore.
Kermit Gosnell’s name is certain to be recorded as one of the most ghoulish figures in recent history. The revelations about his abortion “house of horrors” have appalled the nation, earning him the title of “human butcher.” The graphic images of his appalling techniques have horrified, sickened and dismayed people around the world.

Yet, ironies abound in this dismaying case of savagery. Gosnell’s employees are the ones exposing practices that overshadow the purported squalor of back-alley illegal abortions. In the face of unbelievably inhuman actions, the President of the United States joined those with ice in their blood, who continued to defend “choice” even after viewing the reality of savagely “slitting the throat,” “tearing off limbs” or “severing the spinal cord” of newly-born babies. Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion provider is also the largest recipient of federal funding under Title X [fully 45 percent of their total funding is from taxpayer monies, over $500 million] — in a desperate act of cold calculation and sad irony, recently launched a fundraising campaign boldly declaring a “Right to Shoes.”

In light of the public images of babies’ feet — tiny footprints are often used as pro-life logos and the trial pictures from the Gosnell clinics include images of jars containing small baby feet — the Planned Parenthood fundraising campaign is especially repulsive and appalling. No doubt many who see the campaign will recall the Planned Parenthood lobbyist who testified — seemingly without a twinge of conscience — before Florida legislators, declaring that “wanted” babies were the only ones deserving medical care. That Planned Parenthood representative, Alisa LaPolt Snow, repeated several times that all decisions about abortion — even late term or born-alive ones — “should be left up to the woman, her family and her physician.”

Prior to the Gosnell revelations, most Americans had a positive view of Planned Parenthood; after all, their public relations materials create an image of a supposedly non-profit organization devoted to providing poor women with reproductive health care and contraception along with public information and educational programs. That image was exposed as false when Concerned Women for America (CWA) and other organizations exposed Planned Parenthood’s own official reports showing that it is the nation’s largest surgical abortion provider and that far from being caring non-profit institution, it is a heartless, profit-driven enterprise whose cash cow is its abortion operations; their huge annual profits, despite paying Fortune 500 level salaries to its leadership, are both sadly revealing and embarrassing. Life Dynamics explained that Planned Parenthood gets over $42,000 an hour from taxpayers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Clearly, Planned Parenthood focuses on promoting and performing abortions with near genocidal impacts in inner city black communities. [See a new video detailing the Gosnell atrocities.]

The Gosnell trial illustrates the unsanitary practices that have been in allowed in largely unregulated clinics owing to their politically-protected status; these conditions endanger women’s health in Planned Parenthood’s sleazy mission of providing abortion as birth control and abortion-on-demand anytime, for any reason. Nurses who worked in Planned Parenthood facilities have testified, under oath, about the employment of unlicensed doctors, of instruments that were not sterilized, of unsafe conditions and standard operating procedures that were worse than what might be found in third world nations or the back alleys of imaginative lore.

CWA’s report [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.] on Planned Parenthood details the specifics about Planned Parenthood’s distortion of facts and the huge inconsistencies between what they say is their benevolent mission and what the actual facts in their own records show that they do. We show the inherent racism in the placement of Planned Parenthood clinics primarily in minority communities and their willingness to take donations earmarked specifically towards abortion of black babies. The numerous financial irregularities of Planned Parenthood are well-document in our report — upwards of 107 criminal charges, including 23 felony charges, fraud, and other falsification of official documents. There are also numerous instances, documented by Lila Rose in her Mona Lisa Project, of abuse of laws requiring mandatory reporting of rape and/or abuse. In numerous instances, Planned Parenthood coached under-aged girls to lie about their age or the age of the adult boyfriend who was sexually exploiting her. Reports of such age differences are required by law, yet Planned Parenthood employees were routinely and deliberately distorting that information in their reports. Further, Planned Parenthood has programs that encourage teen experimentation with sex and pornography. These programs provide detailed information about sex acts and also undermine or attack parental rights.

The international arm of Planned Parenthood has a major lobbying effort which has enormous influence resulting in Congressional appropriations of over $700 million for promoting abortion abroad — even in countries where this violates the deeply held religious beliefs of the citizens in what I call “modern-day colonialism,” where we arrogantly export unconscionable, immoral Western practices and force them on nations that are dependent upon our foreign aid.

Planned Parenthood offends the sensibilities and principles of faith of millions of pro-life Americans — not just in the day-to-day actions that constitute its mission, but in the driving force and distorted vision that is the motivation behind that mission. The Gosnell trial is exposing the heinous, immoral activities of Planned Parenthood that not only horrify us in their callous disregard for human life, but also for the cold-blooded way in which that disregard is carried out against the defenseless and vulnerable babies as well as against those sadly duped women and girls who thought they could safely trust their health and well-being to Planned Parenthood’s care.

Have we come to the place where Planned Parenthood’s phony ploy of the “right to shoes” trumps Jefferson’s immaculate ideal of the God-given “right to life” in this great nation called America?

Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse is Chair of the Board at the Institute on Religion and Democracy and a senior fellow at the Beverly Lahaye Institute at Concerned Women for America. This article appeared on the IRD blog and is used with permission.