Rhetorical context
It seems hard to believe that the undercover videos coming from the Center for Medical Progress could keep getting worse. Still the fourth video is worse.
What struck me most was the language they used. In public you hear Planned Parenthood and supporters of abortion use euphemisms for the unborn child.
- Product of conception
- Blob of tissue (or cells)
- Uterine contents
- Pregnancy tissue
- Goo
Any word that dehumanizes the child is fine and calling the child a parasite also does not cross some imaginary dehumanizing line.
Yet when you see transcript of the latest video you don’t see the doctor or medical assistant talking about tissue blobs or a product of conception. You hear “Another boy!” and talk about kidneys, adrenal glands, stomach, heart, and eyeballs. There is human specificity. Besides no research lab will pay for an unspecified blob of cells.
I once wondered how the evil of Nazi Germany could have come about? Unfortunately I now understand this much better. The first step is historically always dehumanization. Using language that moves from a defined reality to a more abstract concept. Once that is done you can intellectualize your reaction. To develop a purposeful blindspot as a callus hardening against conscience.
The conversations in these videos shows the “banality of evil”. No maniacal laughs like movie villains. Calmly discussing the parsing of unborn children for parts as if it is the most mundane task. Like they were playing the battery-operated game “Operation” with a comic likeness of an unborn child.
This type of evil is not the evil of the psychopath. It is not that they are hardened to all evil. They can still react quite naturally to other evil acts. It seemed quite hypocritical to many when both Planned Parenthood and NARAL tweeted about the murder of the black driver by a University of Cincinnati officer. Yet I am sure they saw this as the horrific act that it was and that there was a natural reaction to the murder of a person. Their developed blindspot makes them so that they have zero self awareness. Planned Parenthood still names an award (the Maggie Award) after their racist eugenist founder Margaret Sanger. They can tweet the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter with no sense of irony.
Those who are pro-abortion must maintain a rhetorical separation not only to convince others, but to continue to convince themselves. Yet as objectively evil as this attitude is, it is always a good reminder for us not to dehumanize the abortion supporter. To wipe them off the moral slate as if they are incapable of any moral growth. This is why groups like And Then There Were None (ATTWN) started by ex-Planned Parenthood manager Abbie Johnson are so important. Why loving contact between abortion protesters and clinic personnel is always required. It is so easy to be outraged concerning abortion and the knee-jerk reactions by abortions supporter defending selling baby parts. Yet outrage without followthrough in prayer is like hashtag activism achieving nothing.
