Pro-life advocates continue to be disappointed with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump– who has shifted from taking a consistently pro-life stance on abortion and opposing Planned Parenthood funding to opposing funding but praising the nation’s biggest abortion company.
In an opinion column today, Christian writer Michael Brown makes the case that people don’t praise the Nazis for the good work they did while committing horrific acts of genocide. So, Brown figures, why should anyone praise the supposedly good work Planned Parenthood does at it annually takes the lives of more than 324,000 unborn children?
Some pro-life advocates don’t care for the comparison between the killing of hundreds of thousands of unborn children in abortion and the genocide of Jews, disabled people and other minorities in the Holocaust. Without endorsing that comparison, which Brown acknowledges is “extreme,” here’s what Brown has to say:
Allow me to make an extreme comparison.
Along with their murderous, barbaric policies and practices, the Nazis engaged in serious medical research, and some Nazi doctors, like Prof. Dr. Julius Hallervorden (1882-1965), a famous neurologist who became head of the Neuropathology Department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in 1938, continued to advance their medical research after the Holocaust.
Yet no person in his or her right mind would say: “I hate the fact that these Nazi doctors were involved in torturing and slaughtering so many people, but they helped a lot of people too, so I’m going to be balanced in my criticism.”
Put simply, can anyone who is in any true sense of the word “pro-life” praise the nation’s largest and most aggressive abortion provider, despite other services they perform?
In the same way, it is absolutely ludicrous that Donald Trump would once more sing the praises of Planned Parenthood (with the exception of their abortion industry) at his Tuesday night, widely televised, national press conference, despite all the innocent baby blood on their hands.
More absurd still, he called those who criticized him on this “so-called conservatives.”
What, Mr. Trump? Will you say that to the people who, as true moral conservatives, have sacrificially invested dozens of years of their lives to fight against Planned Parenthood? Would you say that they are “so-called conservatives” and you are the true conservative because you recognize all the good Planned Parenthood has done?
Brown concludes that Trump isn’t truly pro-life because of his praise for the abortion business.
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“If you need proof that Donald Trump isn’t a true pro-life candidate, his continued qualified praise of Planned Parenthood – coupled with the vilification of his conservative pro-life critics – tells you all you need to know,” he writes.
Brown isn’t alone in his feelings.
Like some pro-life voters, Susan B, Anthony List president Marjorie Danenfelser has had enough. She’s tired of listening to Donald Trump, who had ostensibly run a reliably pro-life campaign up until recently, praise the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
“Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that, as President, he will defund Planned Parenthood so long as they continue to do abortions. We applaud him for this stand, but ask that he reconsider his repeated assertion that the group does ‘wonderful things’ beyond abortion. According to the group’s own annual reports, this could not be further from the truth. Planned Parenthood is a profit–driven, abortion-centered business – and a bad investment for taxpayers,” she said.
Dannenfelser continued: “A new Center for Medical Progress video released this week showed once again that Planned Parenthood’s highest executives are willing to engage in the harvest and sale of the body parts of aborted children. We ask Mr. Trump to watch this video series and urgently take off the rose-colored glasses he wears when talking about Planned Parenthood. Mr. Trump’s silence on this horror at the core of Planned Parenthood needs to end.”
