June 9, 2010

By Dave Andrusko

Remember the old Philosophy 101 enigma, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well, sometimes I think that for a segment of the "educated class," nothing really exists until it's confirmed by a story in the New York Times.

If that be the case, check out this headline in yesterday's Times: "Abortion Drugs Given in Iowa via Video Link." It is confirmation that Planned Parenthood, already a billion dollar enterprise, is expanding its capacity to kill unborn babies. By using videoconferencing to dispense abortifacients, the abortionist need not even be in the same room as the pregnant woman.

We've written about this before. For example, "Abortions on the Cheap-- Financially, Medically, Ethically" (www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/May10/nv051910part2.html) and we do again in the June issue of National Right to Life News. But the Times has a massive audience which gives it enormous cache and influence.

Among other things, here's what Monica Davey reminds her readers today.

·An abortionist can be hundreds of miles away but he can ask the pregnant woman "one final question: Are you ready to take your pill? Then, with a click of his mouse, a modified cash register drawer pops open in front of the woman seated next to a nurse in a clinic -- perhaps 100 miles from this city -- with mifepristone, the medicine formerly known as RU-486, that is meant to end her pregnancy."

• While only PPFA is currently making abortion "available in far-flung, rural places and communities where abortion providers are unable or unwilling to travel," others are beginning to inquire whether they can "replicate" what "Planned Parenthood of the Heartland" is doing.

• "Abortion opponents say they are alarmed, fearful for the safety of women who undergo abortions after consulting with doctors who have never actually been in the same room with them." Well, yes!

• None of this makes a smidgeon of difference to the leading provider of abortion in the United States. "I don't feel like something is lost or missing," Dr. Tom Ross, one of Planned Parenthood's doctors, said."

• The reporter gets caught up in the supposed similarities---the ordinariness of the death dealing--until the very end. "In the Planned Parenthood offices here, a demonstration of the abortion procedure by teleconferencing reveals a process that feels not unlike any ordinary doctor's office visit, but for the doctor appearing on a computer screen on the desk and the unexpected sight of a cash register drawer eventually flinging open with the needed drugs."

Is it not perfectly appropriate that the drawer be likened to a "cash register"? These people have no shame.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Part One
Part Two