Planned Parenthood's moral disconnect

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

The latest video about Planned Parenthood from the Center for Medical Progress highlighted the complete moral disconnect of providers in the abortion business. In the video, Amna Dermish, an abortionist from Austin, Texas, explains that a co-worker who handles the so-called “products of conception” is “really into organ development.” In other words, this person likes to dissect the remains of babies after they are aborted.

Dermish describes the fully formed heart of an unborn child aborted at nine weeks gestation.

“Well, it’s cute. It is cute!” a colleague remarks as Dermish talks.

“It’s amazing, it’s sort of—I have so much respect for development, it’s just incredible,” Dermish then says.

John Stonestreet pointed out the moral disconnect between being amazed by human development, but thinking it’s OK to end a human life.

“The moral inconsistencies are just thoroughly embedded in the American experience when it comes to the definition of life, particularly of the unborn,” Stonestreet said.

He gave other examples, such as how a woman can legally abort her own child, but if a reckless driver injures a pregnant woman in a car crash and the baby dies, it can be considered homicide. And a mother has complete control over whether to end her baby’s life, while the father has no say and must pay child support if the baby is born.

Stonestreet said such inconsistencies arise when society tries to ground human dignity in something other than the image of God.

“The scientific, technocratic way of seeing the world sees it as a total of parts,” he said, and leads to the belief that certain individuals can control other individuals in the name of science.

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