Opinion

Unjust Indictment Can’t Hide The Realities Of Big Abortion

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John-Henry Westen Co-Founder, LifeSiteNews.com
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On Monday, a grand jury indicted pro-life investigator David Daleiden and his compatriot Susan Merrill. As the grand jury allowed Planned Parenthood to go scot-free, Daleiden and Merrill face up to 20 years in prison for using a fake ID and for offering to purchase aborted babies’ body parts as part of their undercover work.

Pro-life advocates are rightly infuriated by the jury’s decision, as evidenced by a LifeSite petition backing Daleiden that has more than 70,000 signatures in just 40 hours. But as the lawyers gear up for what will likely be a tremendous battle in court, the indictment is a chance to remind the public exactly what the abortion industry is all about.

Last summer, Daleiden and his allies exposed how Planned Parenthood profits off of the harvesting of baby parts. Horrifying and illegal as these practices are, they just scratch the surface of what else goes on behind the scenes. Indeed, these practices are not limited to Planned Parenthood or even the U.S., and include protecting rapists, defrauding taxpayers, and using body parts for beauty products and incinerators.

Planned Parenthood received $554 million from the public in 2014, ostensibly for enhancing and increasing the health of America’s women.

However, according to a comprehensive report from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), these hard-earned public dollars are often misused. ADF’s report identified 105 “limited audits [that] have found a total of more than $129.7 million in waste, abuse, and potential fraud in federal and state family planning funding programs, the lion’s share of which goes to Planned Parenthood.”

ADF Legal Counsel Catherine Foster explained more in an e-mail. “Our report compiles all the known public audits of abortion industry billings,” she explained. “We found that government audits have uncovered hundreds of thousands of unlawfully billed claims related to abortion, and Planned Parenthood has been the source of at least $8.5 million in waste, abuse, and potential fraud. Additionally, a Texas Planned Parenthood affiliate settled fraud claims for $4.3 million.”

Foster also pointed to a recent 8th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood employee turned whistleblower, “‘pled sufficiently particularized facts to support her allegations’ of fraud” against Planned Parenthood in Iowa.

In addition to misusing tax dollars, Planned Parenthood — legally, a non-profit organization — has made about three-quarters of a billion dollars above their expenses in the last 10 years.

The problems don’t end there.

In November 2014, Alabama officials discovered a 14-year-old girl had two abortions at a Planned Parenthood clinic in four months, but contrary to state law, the clinic had not reported the girl’s condition. In a conversation with a reporter from my outlet, LifeSiteNews, a state official protected Planned Parenthood, saying the violation of state law was not done intentionally. That same official asked a LifeSiteNews reporter to put the discovery and the subsequent wrist slap in a positive light.

Planned Parenthood officials are also accused of covering up a child rape in Arizona, and breaking Philadelphia law by not reporting the rape of a minor. Abortion clinics in at least seven states, as well as internationally, have been found helping rapists use abortion to hide their crimes, something a clinic worker told Live Action is a regular practice.

Horrifying practices are not limited to Planned Parenthood, or even the U.S. In early 2014, Canadian officials admitted they were sending aborted babies to Oregon as a source of energy for incinerators. The babies were officially qualified as “medical waste.”

Babies in Britain and Indiana have been treated likewise, with abortion clinics profiting first off the abortions and then again through the incineration process.

In the Netherlands and Ukraine, abortion clinics harvested babies at 12 weeks’ gestation for beauty treatments for wealthy British  and Russian women, respectively. And in 2010, pro-life groups raised the alarm about possible medical experimentation with aborted babies at the University of Wisconsin, while in Ukraine prematurely born babies may have been sold for parts.

Disturbingly, the worst practice of the abortion industry isn’t protection of rapists, or its potential theft of public resources. It is, rather, the deaths of unborn babies, described by modern medical science and the world’s most important religious and philosophical text as just as human as you or me.

Since its fetal harvesting program was exposed, Planned Parenthood has relied upon misdirection and, now, a legal travesty to hide the abortion industry’s true nature. However, the cat’s out of the bag, folks — and those who destroy life for profit are on the wrong side of history.

John-Henry Westen is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of LifeSiteNews, and founder of the Rome Life Forum. He is on the Executive Committee for the Canadian March for Life.