In Memoriam of a Calvarium

         I was sliding through my Twitter feed yesterday morning - occasionally braking, but mostly rolling with the momentum. As all the updates from the sports pundits and the theologians and the news folk slid by, one post caused me to slam my left foot to the floorboard.

         WND News - BREAKING NEWS!! Planned Parenthood uses partial-birth abortions to sell baby parts!

         There was a link attached. I hesitated to click it, because WorldNetDaily tends to sensationalize and I’ve been drawn in by overblown headlines before. But this one seemed so outrageous that I had to check it out. In the linked undercover video interview with a Planned Parenthood doctor, I discovered that, if anything, WND had underplayed the story.

        

         The interview was set up by The Center for Medical Progress. They sent two people posing as tissue buyers to meet with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services for Planned Parenthood (PP’s motto - “Care. No Matter What” - you know, some shots are too easy, so I’ll just let that one go).

http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/investigative-footage/ - nine-minute version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4UjIM9B9KQ - the full 2 hour 42 minute raw footage for the news weasels who said that they doctored the edit

Understandably, they went vegetarian.

         As they dined over a nice salad and a fine Chianti, they talked body parts. “A lot of people like liver,” Nucatola said, sliding a fork full of lettuce into her mouth. She has to chew a little bit before she can continue, describing how the doctors performing the abortions often will do so under ultrasound guidance. That way they can “intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not going to crush that part, I’m going to crush below, I’m going to crush above, and I’m going to see if I can get it all intact.”

         All this so they can get $30-100 per “specimen”.

         Take a moment with me and breathe…

         The biggest struggle they face is harvesting a calvarium (a skull cap - heretofore known for our purposes as a baby head). Typically, the baby head needs to be sacrificed, because there is not enough dilation in a normal abortion. Not to worry, though. It is possible if the procedure goes long enough for greater dilation to occur. Then the doc can manipulate the baby (sorry, “specimen”) into breech position, deliver the baby’s body (sorry, “thorax and extremities”), kill the baby (sorry, “terminate the pregnancy”), then deliver an in tact baby head (and they all rejoiced).

         If this sounds like illegal partial birth abortion to you, you’d be right. It sounds like that to Doc Nucatola, too. But don’t worry, according to our doc, “laws are up to interpretation.” She says, “So, if I say on day one, I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter.” Funny, I think that’s why James Holmes’s defense team rejected his “Oops, I just meant to shoot over their heads” defense.

         Sorry, I know that I sound angry and I’m sure I’ve offended some. But if this isn’t a time to be angry, I don’t know what is. We’ve got this publicly funded organization with their army of Mengeles killing babies in the name of medical research. The only differences between Planned Parenthood and Uncle Josef’s Medical Emporium are that the Nazis had to forcibly take the children, and they never found a way to make the same kind of scratch off the process that PP has.

         One of the saddest parts of all this is that Planned Parenthood still seems to be safely tucked within the confines of the law. Yes, my fellow Americans, not only does your government allow the harvesting and "non-profit" sale of aborted body parts, but your tax money is going to support it (cue Lee Greenwood). It’s true that Doc Nucatola might be stretching the law a wee bit wider than its original intent - but, in our nation, “laws are up to interpretation” (Doc Nucatola meet Justice Roberts; Justice Roberts, Doc Nucatola).

         So, what do we do about it? Two things:

         First, we pray. We pray for God to intervene. We pray for Him to change the laws in our nation. We pray for Him to change the leadership in our nation. We pray for Him to work in our hearts to show us what our involvement should be. We pray for the commitment and the guts and the sacrifice to step in to make a difference.

         Second, we love. We love the women who make this destructive choice to sacrifice their children. We come alongside them and strive to show them a better way. We show them through our actions that God still loves them and offers forgiveness to them. In the midst of our anger and disgust, we love Doc Nucatola and others like her. They are sinners following their master. They desperately need a Savior. Rather than condemning them to hell for their sins (that’s a higher pay grade than we’re at), we offer them love and mercy and grace because of our own sins.

         In the undercover interview, I heard the words “specimen”, “thorax”, and “calvarium”. I heard references to all sorts of body parts (by the way, arms and legs are a dime a dozen, confirms Doc Nucatola, although she can’t figure out why folks would need them - “I guess they want muscle,” she speculates). Never once did I hear the word baby - not even fetus. And I certainly never heard the word human.

            No matter what laws are passed in the future, no matter how our Constitution may “evolve” though an activist Court, let us determine here and now that we will never call the unborn anything other than a human baby. We will not mentally (or physically) break a child down to his or her usable and unusable parts. We will not use soft euphemisms to ease our consciences. As has been and always will be, the only difference between an unborn baby and a born baby is location and support systems. Let the words of the great theologian, Horton, guide us, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” Inside the womb or outside the womb, life is life.