Patricio Hilario da Silva’s life was headed in the wrong direction. As a homeless child living in Rio de Janeiro, the nine-year old had no education and little hope. All that lay in store for him were more hard years on the street. Or at least that’s how it seemed, until one day in 1989, when someone decided to take action, and reached out to young Patricio–with a bullet. His body was found with a note that read, “I killed you because you didn’t study and had no future.”
Patricio’s fate was not unusual. Brazilian death squads have murdered thousands of impoverished children, an activity known as “social cleansing.” Young boys and girls in low income areas are frequently “gunned down without question, as if they were wild dogs.”’ The logic behind this violence is simple: by killing a homeless child, the death squad ensures that he or she won’t be a drain on society.
If this line of reasoning sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve probably heard it from supporters of the abortion industry. According to them, abortion is the only way many women can avoid raising unwanted children under difficult, harmful circumstances. But whereas Rio’s cleaning staff are facing something of a crackdown from the Brazilian government , Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, has comparatively little to worry about. In fact, the organization is not only allowed to pursue its own version of “social cleansing,” but actually gets government funding to do so. Part of this is thanks to an odd (but evidently effective) claim: aborting a child is an act of altruism.
At first glance, child killing seems like a practice that even Don Draper would find difficult to sanitize. Whether it’s shooting a preteen orphan, or dismembering a 20 week old fetus who can apparently feel pain, snuffing out kids strikes most people as distasteful. One way to overcome such queasiness is to explain that while you may be killing children, it’s really for their own good. Planned Parenthood advances this argument in their list of “9 Reasons Why Abortions are Legal.” . Under the heading, “Every Child A Wanted Child,” the group explains that:
“If women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, the result is unwanted children. Everyone knows they are among society’s most tragic cases, often uncared-for, unloved, brutalized and abandoned. When they grow up, these children are often seriously disadvantaged, and sometimes inclined to brutal behavior toward others. This is not good for children, for families or for the country. Children need love and families who want and will care for them.”
So there we have it: in order to stop “tragic” cases of children being “brutalized” and “abandoned,” it is sometimes necessary to pull them apart and then dump their remains in a vat labeled “Medical Waste.” To be effective, of course, this argument requires the belief that these children are truly unwanted. The fact that there is currently a shortage of adoptable infants must therefore be kept obscure, as must the long waiting lists for aspiring parents, and the network of pregnancy care centers who help with bringing unplanned pregnancies to term. All of this would demonstrate that so-called “unwanted children” actually are wanted, just not always by the people carrying them.
Members of Congress will be confronted with a myriad of arguments the next time they re-consider funding for Planned Parenthood. One that should be dismissed out of hand is the myth that the abortion industry does any favors for its victims. Far from sparing the unborn from a life of suffering, Planned Parenthood violently deprives wishful couples from the chance at parenting; the time has come for Congress to do some legislative cleansing and defund it.
