Planned Parenthood's director of medical research, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, was captured on tape describing, in a most matter-of-fact way, these gruesome activities as she sipped wine and forked salad at a fancy Los Angeles restaurant. She discussed how doctors use ultrasound to guide their deadly hand such that valuable tissue is not destroyed as they kill the unborn child.
It is sad commentary on the dismal state of the American soul that we need revelations like this to wake up the nation to what so many now accept as part of American life -- the butchery and dehumanization of legal abortion-on-demand.
But the issue is not where we are, but understanding how we got here, and deciding where we are going.
And here we must talk about education.
In my travels I hear so many people express disbelief that this nation, which they still see as free and under God, is willing to allow hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to flow annually to Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. They are in disbelief that so many accept Planned Parenthood calling what it does "reproductive health" and that its president can, in the same breath, talk about ethics while referring to her organization's trafficking in body parts of destroyed children.
So many are incredulous that fellow citizens are comfortable with the shattering of traditional values that sustained us for so many generations. They wonder how a large percentage of our population see no moral problem with redefining marriage; the collapse of the American family; the fact that almost half our babies are now born to unmarried women.
Many Americans are asking, "What happened?"
One answer to that question is that attitudes so prevalent today, particularly among young Americans, reflect what recent generations have been learning in school.
Most teachers in our public schools belong to the large teachers unions -- the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Looking over the websites of both these organizations, it is readily apparent that their idea of education goes well beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. They view "values" as part of education, but not what many churchgoing, God-fearing, Christian Americans call values.
Both these big teachers unions promote abortion and same-sex marriage, support Planned Parenthood politically and financially and engage actively in legal proceedings supporting these "values."
The president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, is an open lesbian. She, of course, is free to live as she chooses. But Ms. Weingarten doesn't support the same freedom of choice for parents who don't share her values -- parents whose children attend schools where her union members teach.
Her organization fights, and has fought, bringing education choice and charter schools to low-income minority communities where her union has a stranglehold on public schools.
With today's obsession regarding race and crime and violence in poor minority communities, most do agree that this is traceable to the collapse of black families. And the collapse of black families is traceable to the massive intrusion of government into the lives of these communities.
Minority children, 70 percent of whom are born into single-parent homes, must have the choice to go to schools where traditional values are taught. But the teachers unions do everything to make sure this cannot happen.
No Child Left Behind is now being re-authorized, but without a provision to allow parents to choose to send their child to any public or private school they want. This is an enormous mistake.
America's future, and restoration of the morality and decency on which freedom depends, requires school choice and ending the power of teachers unions over our children.