By Rita Diller
Recently, National Public Radio gave anyone who would listen a chaotic audio tour through hell, airing an 11-minute segment of pieces of interviews from an abortion facility interspersed with commentary and brief audio clips of a surgical abortion that was recorded live.
The report was like a list of excerpts from Planned Parenthood’s talking points to defend abortion—coaxed out of the mouths of weeping women, some facing daunting crises.
The reviews of the abortion center in Sterling Heights, Michigan, where the abortion was perpetrated, show that this is a place where Planned Parenthood refers women for abortions up to 24 weeks instead of helping them find the real help that they need to carry their babies to term and to thrive.
Women who accessed the abortion center website as late as November 8 were greeted with a political message to vote for Proposal 3 to “restore Roe in Michigan” using false claims as scare tactics saying, “If we fail, Michigan may become like many other states where abortion is illegal, banning treatment for miscarriage management, ectopic pregnancies, IUDs, morning after pill, contraception, and even forcing doctors to delay lifesaving treatment.” The banner also contained a QR code to register to vote.
The NPR audio was presented against the backdrop of the midterm election, specifically in Michigan where abortion was on the ballot as Planned Parenthood and its allies attempted to codify the right to the grisly killing of the preborn in the state constitution. (Reports as of Wednesday morning show Proposal 3 passed.)
Tugging at heartstrings, the NPR report features several interview clips, including one with a woman who says she is in an abusive situation and has not been able to get help and one with a woman who is fine but does not want more children. This is followed by audio clips of an abortion being committed at this facility.
When the abortion vacuum machine is quieted, the woman who was moaning and weeping begins profusely thanking the staff and saying she hopes she didn’t do too badly. She is told she did great, she is okay, and she should never again tell herself what she can’t do—a reference to her prior comment that she could not continue to breathe through the pain.
The recording and airing of the taking of her child’s life for political and monetary gain on behalf of the abortion industry is bizarre and unconscionable. Help is available for women in crisis. Women who are intentionally led to distrust faith-based help centers that offer real help at no cost are thrown into the money-grabbing hands of Planned Parenthood and its cohorts in the abortion industry. After women pay hundreds of dollars, their children are dead and they are sent out the door, often alone and without help, into the same set of crises and abuse they were experiencing before, but now with the agonizing and lingering mental and physical scars of abortion heaped on top of their problems.
Abortion always involves the grisly taking of an innocent, defenseless, precious, and unrepeatable life. Killing one’s child never solves problems; it only multiplies them. Direct, intentional abortion is always morally illicit and an unspeakable crime against humanity. Not helping women access the assistance they need and then falsely affirming after the abortion that “all is okay,” they are “okay,” they “did great,” and it was the “best and the moral choice” for them is unbelievably evil and cruel. We can do so much better. It’s time to stop the exploitation. And it is time to stop proposing and supporting legislation that endorses abortion at any age and under any circumstances.
As St. John Paul II said in 1987:
Every human person—no matter how vulnerable or helpless, no matter how young or how old, no matter how healthy, handicapped or sick, no matter how useful or productive for society—is a being of inestimable worth created in the image and likeness of God. This is the dignity of America, the reason she exists, the condition of her survival—yes, the ultimate test of her greatness: to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.