A compassion lecture from Cecile Richards turns hypocrisy into an art form

Cecile Richards is either the least self-aware person on the planet, or she’s got a really sick sense of humor. Those are the only possible explanations for the following tweet she made over the weekend:

Cecile Richards

@CecileRichards

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Reflecting on this week, it has been appalling to watch leaders of this country turn their backs on people in need of compassion and safety.

4:16 PM · Nov 20, 2015

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A lecture from the CEO of Planned Parenthood on compassion and safety from those in need is really too much.

To hear Richards tell it, restricting or regulating abortion and defunding her organization is “turning our backs on” America’s women.

• Tell that to Jodia Peters, who had an abortion as a teenager and now supports the informed consent laws that Planned Parenthood fights against to warn other girls about the depression she endured afterward.

• Tell that to the taxpayers of states where Planned Parenthood has been caught overbilling Medicaid, essentially stealing money meant to help others in need due to illness and poverty.

• Tell that to those in need of the cancer screenings Planned Parenthood is doing less and less of, which could be more than replaced if the hundreds of millions of tax dollars they receive each year instead went to the real health centers that vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood centers.

• Tell that to the young girls brought to Planned Parenthood by their rapists, whose abuse was prolonged and healing delayed because Planned Parenthood chose to look the other way.

• Tell that to the women Planned Parenthood has lied to about their pregnancies and denied the courtesy of seeing their babies on ultrasound, all to make the lucrative abortion business look as appealing as possible.

So the people in need Richards was invoking are neither well cared for in Planned Parenthood’s hands nor abandoned by the pro-lifers she denounces. But that hypocrisy pales in comparison to playing this card when you run an organization that exists for the express purpose of actually exterminating “people in need of compassion and safety.”

No, Ms. Richards, exterminating them before they’re born doesn’t mean they don’t count. Most people instinctively understand, as Live Action’s Susan Michelle said the other day, we consistently call preborn babies “babies” in every other context, and “the ‘baby bump’ holds an actual, living baby, one that can even be cut from the womb and survive”—so what entitles your business to a special exemption from what everybody knows deep down?

Nor can you even claim those are the only babies you let suffer. When legislation came before Congress in September to require abortionists to provide basic medical care to newborns who survive attempted abortions, your organization denounced it as an attempt “to block safe, legal abortion.” When the time came to live up to your posturing and show some of that compassion and safety to just a few of the children involuntarily brought into your doors, you chose to turn your back.

Among the many shocked and disgusted reactions to Richards’s comment collected by Twitchy, a few understandably commented simply, “I have no words.”

But there is a word.

Evil.