For many thousands of Americans the debate over abortion rights is a very real and very important issue. Like most issues there are two distinct and legitimate sides and debate has often become angry. This is to be expected when issues are seen as life and death or even more contentious when they involve religious beliefs and points of view.
The shooting at the Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic a while back was an example of the debate gone off the tracks. This kind of thing happens when rhetoric leaves the path of truth and goes overboard often for reasons that have nothing to do with the issue itself. When Robert Dear attacked the Colorado clinic and killed three people he was spurred on by lies and exaggerations spoken by people who were as much involved in other issues as they were in the actual abortion fight.
Such a circumstance was the outright lies told by presidential candidate Carly Fiorina along with the presentation of a phony, photo shopped video that created fully false concepts about what Planned Parenthood was actually doing with regard to abortions and to the transfer (it was never a sale) of fetal parts to outside laboratory facilities for research. Dear took these deliberately false messages, imbued them in his mind with truth and ended up killing three people. He was not the first to fill this role and will not be the last. There are always weak-minded people among us who are easily led by those with a craftily formed agenda.
Fiorina and the people at The Center for Medical Progress provided the false testimony that drove the lie. Dear picked it up and ran with it and people are dead. And yet neither Fiorina nor those at Medical Progress have been charged with the crime that their lies drove this simple man to perpetrate. Why? In any other crime, those that drove, paid or hired the killer are considered most to blame. If I hire a killer to murder my wife, I am the one most to blame and I pay a higher penalty than does the man who pulls the trigger. So why isn’t that true in this situation? Both Fiorina and Medical Progress should be charged, Fiorina for knowingly lying to promote her political agenda and Medical Progress for creating false material that led to the murders.
My office gets any number of surveys and polls, none of which do I ever participate in but as I was writing this piece one crossed my desk that was so apropos to this blog that I couldn’t help but include it in my diatribe.
It comes under the heading of U.S. Catholic Opinion Research Survey and under the sub-heading of Planned Parenthood’s Crimes Against Humanity. It includes a “Prayer to End All Taxpayer Funding for Planned Parenthood,” bookmark, which is included free and with many pictures of its national director, Father Frank Pavone, with various Popes and Bishops. We do have to get our creds from someplace, and since Father Pavone doesn’t seem to have the name of any religious order attached to his title, a form of identification normally found in such circumstances he creates a status by getting photographed with religious celebrities.
When one looks at the survey, one immediately finds that it, like many others, is the most blatant form of hyped proselytizing possible. The questions are all set-ups for directed answers. The very first:
“….videos released by the Center for Medical Progress have exposed Planned Patrenthood’s multi-million dollar baby torture, killing and internal organ harvesting business… often using tools to tear the baby apart while the baby’s feet are still kicking and the baby’s heart is still beating…” This guy should be writing horror movie scripts.
He then goes on to ask the question, “What is your reaction?” He gives you four answers to choose from including: Complete horror, Concern, Support for PP or Not Sure.
The rest of the survey, is about the same only worse. It keeps identifying as fact, lies that various interested parties have made up. It keeps setting up fantasy horror scenarios as actual situations. It quotes the sarcastic reference by one doctor to the fact that they are vastly underpaid: I’ll buy a Lamborghini with the money from this,” as a boast about how much he was making.
The survey is short, only about a dozen questions, deliberately kept to a length that won’t strain the thought processes of the simple folk at whom it is aimed and then at the conclusion comes the pitch. First it’s for a $10.00 survey processing contribution and then, not satisfied with that, a second pitch for as much as he can squeeze out of the now, outraged, frothing at the mouth, furious Catholic who sees himself, if not as the shooter Robert Dear at least as a crusader bent on saving the fetus’s of American from mutilation and worse.
A check with Charity Watch, the highly respected donation fact checker reveals no legit charity under any of the names suggested in the survey which leads one to believe that “Father” Pavone’s request for funds is more in line with paying his rent and car payments than any of the anti-Planned Parenthood uses suggested in the survey. Yes, he’s a hoax, and a particularly dangerous one because it’s people like him that influence people like Robert Dear to commit the senseless violence that they perpetrate in the name of helping humanity. If “Father” Pavone is actually a priest, Holy Mother Church, would do well to see that he is removed from the priesthood and his dangerous hobby, no matter how much he is in agreement with the Church’s goals of ending abortion. Maybe, just maybe the Church might be more interested in providing birth control to those that need it, than railing against abortions that are in many cases brought about by it’s sanctions against contraception.