Are the Planned Parenthood videos a game changer?

Watching those undercover videos of Planned Parenthood employees picking through the parts of aborted babies chilled me to the bone. I wondered how those people slept at night, how they looked themselves in the mirror. They’d become desensitized to the horror of what they did for a living. Indefensible, even in the name of science.

Planned Parenthood executives casually discussing the sale of aborted babies’ body parts and haggling over prices, and employees coldly selecting intact, recognizable limbs and organs (and making jokes) should bother even the most strident abortion advocates. Perhaps the gruesomeness will touch the hearts of people who have supported a woman’s previously unknown constitutional right to kill her own children.

Some women have multiple abortions, using the procedure as a form of birth control and killing their babies for the sake of convenience. I’ve read post-abortion stories and glimpsed the pain some of these women feel after being misled about their baby’s development and the regret they grapple with years later. Our tax money goes to an organization that boasts of serving the “healthcare” needs of women, but what about their psychological healthcare needs? How many Planned Parenthood facilities offer post-abortion psychological counseling?

But there is eternal consolation for the repentant: Christ’s forgiveness.

The videos—the latest of which was released this morning—have prompted Daily Beast columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. to reconsider his pro-abortion stance. (His pro-life wife believes it’s “ridiculous” and “cowardly” of him to defer to women and their choice to abort because he’s a man.)

“At least I thought I was [pro-choice] until recently,” he wrote. “These days, each time I express concern, outrage, disgust, or horror over another video—which should come with warnings that they may produce nightmares—some supporter of [Planned Parenthood] responds by attacking me and insisting that I was never really pro-choice to begin with.”

Calling yourself “pro-choice” might sound good, but actual human beings die when these “choices” are made. And to think we live in a country where people pressure lawmakers to remove a Confederate flag and consider digging up the bodies of Confederates, but we can’t get Congress to block our tax dollars from funding the organization that causes these deaths.

We have a chance to pressure our lawmakers to defund Planned Parenthood and place more restrictions on abortion. After all, there are lives at stake. If the videos don’t start to work on the conscience of abortion advocates, what will? Must they see video evidence of people bidding over tiny, intact human beings laid out on a table? Perhaps they need to see people bidding over parts while the babies are still alive.

What will future generations think of us if we allow this to go on? What could we say or do in our defense? People like Abby Johnson, a former director of a Planned Parenthood location in Texas, witnessed babies in utero via ultrasound trying to avoid the abortionist’s instruments used to kill them. But today she opposes abortion. Pray for many more changed hearts, Christians, knowing God can and does forgive even those who do the killing.