Climate Change, Planned Parenthood and Importance of Laudato Si’

It’s a now-infamous video: a female doctor contentedly munches on her salad while describing her method of carefully using “grabbers” to insure that, when she is crushing the limbs of a baby in utero, valuable organs like the heart and liver are not shredded, because people will pay good money for those.

“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know [that they are marketable], so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact…”

“Follow the money” was never such good advice; there’s big money in those aborted late-term babies.

The American Medical Association has confirmed that with the myriad abortion and contraception options before women, and the advent of modern medical know-how, a woman never actually “needs” a partial-birth abortion to save her life.

So, let’s finally put a heinously illogical and unethical lie to rest. If a woman is in so much physical danger that her late-term baby must be taken from her “to save her life”, she would likely be in serious enough condition to warrant real Emergency Room care, where attempts will be made to save both her life, and the life of her child. If she is walking into an abortionist’s office — often one that hasn’t been inspected for a while, and is not required to possess and maintain all of the surgical and life-saving equipment a woman whose life is “in danger” could presumably need — she is probably not in grave physical danger. At least, not going in.

My heart goes out to any women who allows herself to be convinced that she is better off going into one of those offices, and allowing a doctor to reach into her womb, and perpetrate murder and violence deep within the core of her being. If the Gosnell trial is any indicator, these women are usually poor, uneducated, often immigrants who are being directed by more dominant relations. They go in there, they pay money to have their baby destroyed by people who will then sell their baby’s body parts for more money. If any of these impoverished women have ever been offered a rebate for “sellable organs” that are retrieved from their baby’s corpses, I’ve never read about it.

Talk about your greedy capitalists, eh? Oh, I’m sorry. Your whirling humanitarians.

I may have sympathy for the mothers, who are often so frightened and confused that they’re not operating on all cylinders, intellectually or emotionally, but I have nothing but contempt for the trained doctors — do they take Hippocratic Oaths, anymore? — who perpetrate this horror upon them and upon our society. Let’s recall, once again, what is going on during a “partial birth” abortion, shall we?

A speculum is introduced into the woman’s vagina, which gives an abortionist access to her cervix, which is then dilated, opened so that the abortionist can access the uterus. From there, the abortionist uses forceps to haul the baby out of its safe, warm womb, usually feet first. Once the legs, abdomen and upper thorax of the baby has been drawn from the birth canal, but while the head is still within it (and remember, at this point, the baby is usually quite alive) — the abortionist takes a pair of scissors or other sharp instrument, and shoves them into the base of the baby’s skull. Then the baby’s brains are suctioned out, the skull is collapsed, or not, and voila! You have intact baby organs and other parts, suitable for resale.

You can look it up, if you need the pictures.

Of course, as the hungry, hungry female doctor in the chilling video admits, it’s not always that neat. Sometimes, it’s easier to hook the mother up to a sonogram, take a good look at the baby flipping around in there, and just target-crush those arms and legs, and pull them out of the mother, so you can get a clear grab of that organ-rich thorax.

There’s a lot of nice vacations, and maybe a beach house, in them thar kills.

If this all makes you want to puke, it should; it means you’re sane. There are people out there, right now, making excuses for this inhumane revenue-stream, and repeating tired old tropes about shredded infants being mere “tissue.” Others are trying to persuade through pragmatism, “the babies are dead anyway, so we might as well assign some value…”

Pray for those people, in all charity.

Let’s take this further: Now that the story is getting the attention of the masses — to the point where people who are greatly concerned about the environment and climate change are paying close attention, and readily offering excuses and creating distractions — let’s take this opportunity to explain to them how it all really works, and how their savage indifference to this violent destruction of life contributes to the earthly destruction they admit matters, shall we? I think we should!

God’s creation is of-a-piece, in the carbon and the stardust, yes, but also within the intention of the Creator, who willed it all into life and being. It’s all supposed to work together, rivers and trees and flowers and bees — creation co-operates with itself, and that extends to the created creatures called human, within it. Creation itself recoils from that which goes against the intention of the Creator; it rebels against the violence that brings about death, when the Creator desires and sustains life; it roils against actions that advance sterility and nothingness and death over constant, renewing life.

If you think this is theologically suspect stuff, consider the scriptural testimony of the prophet, Isaiah, who said, “the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands”; take the word of the psalmist, who knew that “the rivers clap their hands; let the mountains shout together”.

If these are insufficient, accept the witness of Christ Jesus himself, who declared that if his disciples did not proclaim the Good News, “the stones will cry out!”

Jesus never lied.

And if that is still not enough, consider the testimony of the earth itself, which — upon the death of the All-Good Incarnation — convulsed in objection to the injustice.

Creation cannot help but object to the forces of death, because Creation is alive, and life knows what life needs. Creation has just borne witness to the 20th century — the bloodiest and most deadly-violent one in human history (although it’s still early for the 21st). Violent death, injustice, exploitation, sterility: all of these work against Creation, which will have its justice.

Considered in this vein, one can finally say with real conviction, “the strange weather attributed to climate change, the un-flaring sun, the volcanoes, the earthquakes — yes, it’s all real. And yes, through our sins against life and its Creator, it appears to be truly man-made, after all.

I believe that this reality was the point at the very heart of Laudato Si’. And of the prophetic Humane Vitae, before it.

What do you know, climate change is real, and it’s man-made, and it is intimately bound up in humanity’s continual “no” to the Creator whose every action is “yes.” It is wrought by our injustice toward each other — as created creatures, of-a-piece with the earth — and by all of the ways we destroy life, or, through our actions or our partnerships, prevent it from ever happening.

UPDATE:
Vatican News announces that they’ll host meetings on climate change and human trafficking. I wonder if they’ll say “it’s all of a piece.”

Related:
Rebecca Hamilton: Abortion Apologists Defend the Mothership
Dwight Longenecker: Babies for Sale Equals Slavery
Tom Zampino: Joy is the Salve that Heals the Wounds of the Vulnerable
Katrina Fernandez: Planned Parenthood needs Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti
Simcha Fisher: Serving up Baby Parts, Over Lunch