When I woke up yesterday and checked Facebook (not the best morning routine, I’m sure), I wasn’t expecting to read that the senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood, America’s leading provider of affordable healthcare for women, men, and young people had been caught on film speaking openly about selling the body parts of aborted foetuses.
What now?
Is this even real?
How? What? Why?
Seriously, why?
The video goes into the details of how they harvest particular body parts, including the liver and the head. It is not for the faint-hearted.
As the news cycle has unfolded, we learned that there is, indeed, a trade in the body parts of aborted babies. A trade, by the way, that is illegal in the U.S. and punishable by up to ten years in prison and fines of $500,000.
In a statement Planned Parenthood insists that, “patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, such as treatments and cures for serious diseases. Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different.”
It will be easy for Christians to channel our rage, gather our metaphorical pitchforks and placards, and turn on Planned Parenthood and any other abortion provider we can think of.
Before you grab that placard, let me just say: now is not the time to protest against abortion. We need to keep having difficult and fraught conversations about a woman’s right to choose and the place of abortion in our society.
But not today.
Today is a day for weeping.
This devastating news will shake some of us more than others. For some who have had abortions, it might bring back a series of memories you had pushed out of your mind. For those who’ve lost children through miscarriages or stillbirths, this might be the trigger for an evening’s worth of tears. For those with children, it might cause you to hug them just a moment longer than usual.
When vulnerable people (both women seeking abortions and the foetuses themselves) are exploited for monetary gain, we must always weep, and then pray for justice.
Only time will tell what justice will look like in this situation. There will, almost certainly, be a protracted legal investigation into the ethics of these actions, but the final word on justice will not be left up to the U.S courts, which at its best can only ever be a shadow of the perfect justice that God will bring.
The commercial trade of human organs and body parts diminishes our collective humanity, putting vulnerable people at risk of exploitation, and putting greed squarely on the agenda of every doctor. There are some things that money shouldn’t be able to buy.
There is nothing pure about selling human organs, even when there’s a need.
Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/telemax/
