It’s often said that numbers don’t lie. Sometimes, though, they just don’t add up.
Since Stephen Paddock murdered 58 people and injured hundreds in Las Vegas last Saturday night, Democrats and the mainstream media have worked themselves up into a predictable lather about guns, gun control and the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
The Washington Post’s Aaron Williams put together a graphic showing how the NRA has contributed $4.2 million to current members of Congress, primarily Republicans, since 1998. But then The Federalist’s Sean Davis came up with some very different numbers.
It seems Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion seller and recipient of half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding every year, spent $38 million on the 2016 election alone. Democrats were the recipients of the majority of that largesse, despite Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards’ laughable assertion that her organization is “non-partisan.”
I can hear some people now, complaining that we’re comparing apples to oranges, and that the Second Amendment, which spells out the right of private citizens to bear arms, is not nearly as important as the 14th Amendment, which seven white men in 1973 interpreted to mean that women can legally kill their own unborn children right up until the day they are born. The right to privacy is paramount, more important than the right to life, ruled the misguided Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.
Those of us in the pro-life movement are often told that Roe v. Wade is “settled law” – despite not actually being a law — and we should just fold up our tents and go home. Yet today, there are calls for the Second Amendment – adopted in 1791 and certainly settled from a historical perspective – to be repealed.
Has the NRA’s $4.2 million bought some influence over the last 19 years? Certainly. But it pales in comparison to the influence Planned Parenthood’s blood money has purchased.
Let’s look at some other numbers.
The ten worst mass shootings in the United States have claimed the lives of 265 people since 1984. These are senseless, tragic losses. Many of those killed were young people: First graders in Connecticut; college students in Virginia and Texas. While we mourn every lost life, somehow it always hurts more when those killed are young people. So much potential wasted, so many families left in tatters.
Now consider the lives lost, the potential wasted, thanks to legalized abortion. Since 1973, some 60 million children have been killed before their due dates. In recent years, Planned Parenthood has accounted for up to a third of the annual carnage. The potential wasted is incalculable. The numbers of families missing members is in the tens of millions. The shockwaves of abortion are felt all over our country.
And yet Planned Parenthood continues on, opening mega killing centers in our cities, reaching into its deep pockets to fight every abortion restriction passed on the state or federal level, collecting $1.5 million in tax money every single day.
We can’t pretend mass shootings are not a problem for our nation, but neither should we continue to overlook an organization that takes the lives of more than 320,000 human beings a year and pays lawmakers to look the other way.
Perspectives expressed in op-eds are not those of The Daily Caller.