Thomas Peters and company seem to have gotten under our skin a bit lately. By including us in the ranks of the major progressive Catholic voices on the internet who ignored the latest LiveAction subterfuge success, they have already got 3 responses (M.Z., Morning’s Minion, and Nate Wildermuth) from us. Make it 4.
I can’t speak for why the others felt the need to respond to a rather weak argument from absence (in Bowman’s case compounded by the inexplicable suggestion that our perceived lack of interest in the latest LiveAction bust stems from our dissidence on Humanae Vitae, a dissidence of which I have not seen any evidence – ever). What I can say is that my reason for responding is because I genuinely care about ending abortion. And I care about dishonesty in the blogosphere.
My initial reasons for not writing on this issue were two-fold. First, I was staying with my ailing brother and had little internet access and second, I wasn’t sure I had much new to say that hadn’t already been said. I try to say something original in my posts, including my posts about abortion (that comparatively few people read, by the way), rather than parroting the things everyone else is already saying. I was happy enough with what I read over at Fallible Blogma, for instance, that I didn’t see much need to repeat it here at VN. That has since changed. The flurry of accusations, defenses, and counter-accusations has conspired to give me some (I hope) more original thoughts on the issue.
First off, when I watched the video, what impressed itself upon me right from the start, when I saw the two actors walking towards the clinic, was the guts such an undertaking requires. I would be scared stiff of blowing my assigned role. The total nonchalance of the PP employee when confronted with a pimp involved in not just prostitution, but human trafficking and child abuse, is not something I would be confident assuming. (As the employee herself suggests, others in her office would not be nearly so accommodating.)
I would be entirely terrified that the jig could be up at any second. And that got me thinking at least two more things. First, what is LiveAction’s plan when things do go wrong? I mean, really, things can’t go this good all the time. Do they ever get called out for this? What do they do then?
And this led to my second thought: How many attempted videos are there for every big bust? Does PP usually pass with flying colors, while incidences like this are the exception, or do most PP clinics and employees operate with little regard for the law? I honestly don’t know. Has LiveAction ever commented on this aspect of their work? I’d love it if someone would post a link to such information.
The other thing that got me thinking were the claims of Matt Warner (whom I quite like) and Thomas Peters that this could be the final straw in getting PP defunded. I wasn’t sure exactly what that would look like legally, so I asked Matt. He explained that his view was mostly that such a video could galvanize the electorate in an anti-abortion direction prior to some important elections in 2012. I wasn’t sure if there was any way that evidence of illegality could directly compromise PP’s funding (you break the law, you lose money!), or if such evidence would just be useful in getting pro-life politicians elected. Matt emphasized the latter. Is there anything I should know about the former?
And that also got me thinking, how useful are such videos in galvanizing the electorate? Very, I would hope. Complicity in human trafficking and child abuse is a pretty big deal. On the other hand, I suspect we would need a veritable flood of such videos in order to avoid being brushed off with a simple, “In such a huge organization there are bound to be a few bad apples.” I’m not sure one video, however damning, is gonna do it.
But this brings up another problem. Does every successful video make PP more and more cautious? Does our success in this video make future videos of the same ilk more difficult to make? Is it possible to get a veritable flood of damning videos before PP gets wise to it all? We have a bit of a catch-22. What we need is notoriety, but notoriety makes our job tougher and tougher.
I, for one, celebrate videos like the latest LiveAction bust. They make it more and more clear what an evil organization Planned Parenthood is. But I am less optimistic than some of my fellow pro-lifers about their potential impact. It seems to me that there are a variety of complicating factors. I hope that I am wrong, and would be happy to have my reservations debunked in the comboxes below. I make them with sorrow, not glee.
In other news, and despite Bowman’s caricature of VN, I think our best bet, long-term, is to maintain the connection between sex and babies by the use and promotion of NFP, to have relatively large families, and to raise our children in a counter-cultural way. I also think that part of such a counter-cultural witness must include the rejection of violence to solve problems in other spheres and the rejection of the consumerism that destroys our self-control, limits our capacity for delayed gratification, and reinforces a Satanic individualism that makes us incapable of identifying with the poor and vulnerable, born and unborn. It’s not nearly so sensational as a LiveAction video, with which it can certainly co-exist, but I think has better prospects for ending abortion.
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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