Physicians accused of callous attitude towards foetal body-part trafficking

The US Senate failed to advance a bill that would have stopped grants to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider, writes Michael Sean Winters.

The vote came after undercover videos showed Planned Parenthood physicians discussing the harvesting of foetal organs, fees for those body parts, and how doctors can perform an abortion so as to keep body parts intact.

Cardinal Seán O’Malley, chairman of the US bishops’ pro-life committee, had urged Congress to pass the defunding measure. “Pope Francis has called abortion the product of a ‘widespread mentality of profit, the throwaway, which has enslaved the hearts and minds of so many’. The recent news stories concerning Planned Parenthood direct our attention to two larger issues involving many institutions in our society,” the cardinal said in a statement. “The first is abortion itself: a direct attack on human life in its most vulnerable condition. The second is the now standard practice of obtaining foetal organs and tissues through abortion. Both actions fail to respect the humanity and dignity of human life.”

Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, in an article in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday, wrote that the “outrage” at the physicians’ “callous and flippant” attitude towards trafficking in human body parts showed that “American hearts have not been irreparably hardened by the steady devaluing of human dignity in our society”.

He continued: “This awakening of our conscience gives hope that deep within the hearts and souls of Americans there still resides the truth that an unborn child manifestly is a human being, entitled to rights and respect.” Archbishop Cupich called for a “consistent ethic of life” that valued the human dignity of the poor and the immigrant as well as the unborn.

Senate Republicans promised to renew the effort to end funding to Planned Parenthood this autumn, with some calling for it to be made a top priority.