Yesterday's Sun-Times, the self-proclaimed "Progressive, Independent Conscience of the City," ran an editorial delineating why, despite a judge ruling to the contrary, a proposed Planned Parenthood "health center" should be allowed to open. The following is but a few of the reasons thousands of thoughtful citizens disagree.
First of all, far from being a "progressive, independent" view, the Sun-Times editorial started by trotting out the tired old Planned Parenthood dodges as to why this shadowy show must go on. "Less than 10 percent of the total [Planned Parenthood] services are abortions," the article quotes PP spokeswoman Sara Knaub, and while I personally don't believe, even if her abortion figures are accurate, that 90 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provides are moral (for its gospel of contraception is in fact a deceptive if not dangerous contradiction to the Judeo-Christian teaching of marital love and responsibility), let us for the sake of argument agree that 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is at least not, as most scientists now see it, the killing of innocent life. If I were an exemplary husband and father 90 percent of the time, but the other 10 percent of the time I beat my wife and molested my kids, would not the editors of the Sun-Times (and perhaps even the folks at Planned Parenthood) be outraged?
Next, the Sun-Times makes the point (as does Planned Parenthood) that if the building permit for Gemini Health Center wasn't a "transparent" cover for a PP to the Aurora City Council and its town's citizens, "it certainly should have been." While the annals of Chicago politics are full of such back room deals, and I would be naive to think Aurora Mayor Thomas Weisner and a few of his cronies didn't know what was going on, I am hard pressed to believe that the pro-life city council members, let alone the citizens of Aurora, knew (or were supposed to know) the truth of the matter up front. If they were, why didn't Planned Parenthood just ask for a permit in their name which would allow them the access to perform abortions in the first place?
Finally and most amazingly to me, the Sun-Times editorial seems to not only unwittingly contradict its position, but lends fuel to the passionate pro-life fire.
"Abortion is a sad, desperate act," the editorialist declares. "No woman wants to submit to it." I suppose the writer thinks he or she saves their position later saying, "But when weighing the circumstances, some see it as their best option," but think again. A sad, desperate act is our best option? Could this be America we are talking about? For a second I thought we were in WWII-era Germany or Russia (or the pre-Civil War South), where escaping, with a 90 percent chance of capture and death, or remaining captive, where the chance of torture and death were closer to 100 percent, were the only choices. Since when is America a place where a sad, desperate act is the best choice? Perhaps if the clinic were to open with options that weren't desperate, such as adoption or doctors and case workers who would encourage and guide you if you decided to keep your baby, there wouldn't be any desperate choices at all. To pro-lifers, those who promote some sad, desperate acts, will eventually (like Planned Parenthood's spiritual founder Margaret Sanger) promote them all. Simply turn your eye to China, where state mandated birth quotas (something Sanger often preached) are not only enforced via abortions, but also through infanticide if the offending child hasn't been detected in time. In China, they sell fetal soup (made from aborted babies) in the finest restaurants and though these eateries (like Planned Parenthood with abortion), no longer advertise the soup openly, it has become something of an expensive delicacy, a "selling point" to their clients of ways and means.
Ah, you say, but surely that cannot happen in America, where the majority of what we allow is truthful, and 90 percent of the actions we endorse are moral! …
Do you see a slippery slope? The pro-life people do, and that's why they want to "KEEP ABORTION OUT OF AURORA," and, eventually, Planned Parenthood out of America too.
