Sens. Ernst, Paul, and Lankford: Stop the Inhumane Treatment of Human Life

“Another boy!” Typically, we think of these words from a sonographer or an expectant mother during an 18-20 week checkup, or the voice of parents announcing the birth of their son to the world.

This week though, we heard these words come from the mouth of a Planned Parenthood employee as they sifted through a dish of body parts from an aborted baby boy as they worked to isolate organs for sale.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s single largest provider of abortion services. Through a series of videos that have been recently released about Planned Parenthood’s callous harvesting operation, the realities of abortion have become public. Polite company does not want to discuss what really happens to children in an abortion clinic. For those brave enough to watch the videos, they have been horrified by the utter lack of compassion shown for these women and their babies. Even Hillary Clinton rightly acknowledged last week that the images are “disturbing.”

Tiny arms, legs and organs are placed in dishes and picked apart with tweezers. Unborn babies are seen as valuable – not as a new life, but as the source of parts eligible for sale. One employee haggles over prices and another discusses the benefit of selling individual organs rather than whole children because, “Per item works better so we can see how much we can get out of it.”

The videos also depict sterile discussions with Planned Parenthood employees raising questions about whether they may be altering the method of an abortion to increase the chances of keeping baby organs intact to make them more appealing to buyers. Intact, because human organs have value.

As one Planned Parenthood employee said, “You try to intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

If they are human organs outside of the womb, they had to be human inside the womb. It is disingenuous for Planned Parenthood to say in one moment that it is just fetal tissue, but in another moment acknowledge that it is human baby organs to be harvested and sold for medical research. Children in the womb are still children.

The Senate will soon vote on a bill to redirect federal taxpayer money from Planned Parenthood to women’s health care at places like community health centers and hospitals, which have almost fifteen times more facilities nationwide and provide more comprehensive health services. Our focus remains on ensuring that taxpayer dollars are utilized to protect federal funding for health services for women, which may include diagnostic laboratory and radiology services, well-child care, contraceptives, prenatal and postnatal care, immunizations, cervical and breast cancer screenings and more.

These videos are hard for anyone to defend, and they pull back the curtain on Planned Parenthood’s callous actions that strike the moral fabric of our society. The American people have just cause to be horrified by the actions of Planned Parenthood. Protecting the most vulnerable in our society is an important measure of any society.

We disagree on many issues as a nation. However, there comes a point at which we must determine who we are as a people. We should not watch as unborn children of our nation are being callously rummaged for parts and sold at a price, nor should taxpayers be asked to contribute to Planned Parenthood, which has illustrated a stark lack of compassion for children. Surely we can all agree that this practice is not reflective of American values.

Senators Joni Ernst, Rand Paul and James Lankford represent Iowa, Kentucky and Oklahoma, respectively, and are the authors of S.1881, a bill to redirect federal funding from Planned Parenthood to community health centers. The U.S. Senate will vote on the bill Monday afternoon.