Earlier this year, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) began releasing a series of videos. Mostly shot on hidden cameras, some of them show Planned Parenthood executives discussing baby organ sales and partial-birth abortions. One features a tissue procurement technician recounting how she was told to harvest brain matter from a fetus whose heart was still beating. In the installment bellow, you can hear a Planned Parenthood doctor mention the “baby” laying out on the counter in front of her.
She aborted him.
There are plenty of people who won’t watch this footage (a lot of them seem to work in the Obama White House). Recently though, I spoke to someone who says she can’t watch it.
My friend is a nurse who has “seen my share of the gruesome and grotesque.” However, sitting though the videos is something she can’t bring herself to do. According to her, they conjure up memories of “the most profound experience” she’s ever had. It was one she was nice enough to share with me:
Life was good in December of 2012. I had recently started a new job, my husband and I were remodeling our tiny bungalow, and I was carrying an unplanned but VERY welcome surprise–a surprise that we agreed to keep from the world until Christmas day. This news was going to be the ultimate Christmas gift for both our families.
As I neared the 12 week mark of my first and only pregnancy, I was happy that the morning sickness had started to subside. I was also relieved to know the risk of miscarriage would decrease each day that our little “blueberry” grew. Five days before Christmas, that relief turned into a nightmare.
I was enjoying dinner with my new co-workers when I that felt something was very wrong. My friend Patrick would later say I looked as white as a ghost when I came back from the restroom. I’m not surprised: finding a blood clot the size of a deck of cards will do that to you.
Within minutes, Patrick took me to our local emergency room. We cried together in the hallway until my husband arrived. I kept saying that if I was losing the baby then nothing could be done, but I had to know one way or the other. The hospital staff didn’t have a lot of compassion at first, behaving as if I either wasn’t actually pregnant or was simply over-reacting. That changed when they saw the blood.
The wait was agonizing. We were praying for a miracle, crying in grief, and uncertain over how our lives would change. And then the first spark of hope: my labs looked good, my HCG levels were high, and my cervix remained closed. Cautiously hopeful, we waited another hour for an ultrasound. What would we see?
The technician took her time, scanning my abdomen for any other potential issues before looking for the baby. You could have heard a pin drop as we waited in anxious anticipation.
I swear my heart stopped for a moment when this wiggling life appeared on the ultrasound screen. I will never forget that moment. For the very first time, I saw my baby.
This little baby, this very much ALIVE little baby, responded to the pressure of the ultrasound probe and turned to face us, almost as if to ask, “What are you looking at?” The sight of those waving arms and kicking legs was indescribable. In that moment, something about me had been transformed.
Later, I would tell my husband I didn’t understand how anyone could support abortion. I didn’t know how anyone – especially another mother – could look at me and say that my baby wasn’t alive and didn’t have a right to stay that way. That’s why I can’t watch the Planned Parenthood footage.
When I hear about organs being sorted through and sold for profit; when I hear abortionists chuckling over the little bodies they’ve pulled apart, it takes me back to that night in the emergency room. I remember my son, at 11 weeks and 4 days, and how very unique and very alive he was. I look at the happy, active toddler he is now, and I know he was just as alive then. Not in some vague, theoretical sense, but a real, living person.
Just like the children in those videos.
She went on to say her “heart aches” at the crimes that Planned Parenthood staff laugh about. You can help put a stop to them by demanding that Congress redirect funds from Planned Parenthood to community health centers. You can also tell the presidential candidates that the next administration needs to hold Planned Parenthood to account.
My friend said she got a special gift that night in hospital: “I got to see the truth about life.” It’s a gift we need to pass on.
