OPINION

Planned Parenthood: Tear Down This Wall!

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored Bob Morrison.

President Reagan went to West Berlin in 1987 and called upon Soviet Communist ruler Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear Down this Wall.” The President was also working against a near-total blackout of Western media coverage of the Berlin Wall. As former PBS news anchor Robert MacNeil said at the Newseum in 2009, the only time mainstream reporters covered the Berlin Wall was when U.S. Presidents—JFK and Reagan—went there. Then they had to.

No wonder President Reagan also endorsed Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s first film of an actual abortion, Silent Scream.Because he believed in the power of truth, Reagan sent a copy of this powerful video to every congressional office.

Today, we have another Berlin Wall. It’s the wall that keeps the media from covering stories about Planned Parenthood’s activities. A series of sensational videos have been released by the investigative journalists at Center for Medical Progress (CMP). These videos clearly demonstrate that Planned Parenthood has been trafficking in the organs of unborn children after they have been killed. Hearts, lungs, livers. “It’s a boy,” says one of the abortionists as this slain child’s mutilated body is dissected on a lighted dish.

But Planned Parenthood tells frightened young women it’s only a “mass of tissue.” It’s only “products of conception.” Even their own abortionists know that’s a lie.

“We look forward to the facts coming out,” said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards to ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. But does she? Is that why she hired a top flight PR firm to suppress media coverage of the scavenging of babies’ organs?

As the online source, The Federalist, notes, liberals are boasting about Planned Parenthood’s high priced PR flacks. These slick managers of the news will discourage media outlets “from airing the story.” Well, they have a lot of experience in suppressing the truth, don’t they?

But there are cracks appearing in the wall. What is Camille Paglia saying on Salon but “Tear Down this Wall”? She is an honest liberal. We need more people willing to stand up and speak out like this:

Now let me give you a recent example of the persisting insularity of liberal thought in the media. When the first secret Planned Parenthood video was released in mid-July, anyone who looks only at liberal media was kept totally in the dark about it, even after the second video was released. But the videos were being run nonstop all over conservative talk shows on radio and television. It was a huge and disturbing story, but there was total silence in the liberal media. That kind of censorship was shockingly unprofessional. The liberal major media were trying to bury the story by ignoring it. Now I am a former member of Planned Parenthood and a strong supporter of unconstrained reproductive rights. But I was horrified and disgusted by those videos and immediately felt there were serious breaches of medical ethics in the conduct of Planned Parenthood officials. But here’s my point: it is everyone’s obligation, whatever your political views, to look at both liberal and conservative news sources every single day. You need a full range of viewpoints to understand what is going on in the world.

What Camille Paglia probably does not know is the history of racism and eugenics that Margaret Sanger brought to her work at Planned Parenthood. As our Family Research Council colleague, Arina Grossu has written in the Washington Times, Planned Parenthoods founder Sanger was an early suppressor of the truth, she told her cohorts in 1939: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…”

Why should Americans’ tax dollars go to paying slick PR firms that help suppress media coverage? Why should we be paying for abortionists who dissect the bodies of their victims? Federal law prohibits direct payment for the actual abortions, but skilful accountants could easily cover up the cold-blooded negotiation of fees for the organs of Planned Parenthood’s victims—as documented by CMP’s videos. They could label this encounter “staff training” or “continuing education” and get it paid for by unsuspecting American taxpayers. Why should we support an outfit that can afford to pay Cecile Richards’ $523,616 annual salary?

It’s time to stop funding this evil enterprise. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) has a bill to do just that. Killing is not charity. And death is certainly not educational. Stop paying for Planned Parenthood’s lies now. Tear down their wall of silence.