Outrage Over
ACORN, But Not Abortion
By Star
Parker
The ACORN scandal shows that if Congress wants
to act, it can. Within weeks of Fox airing videos of a couple posing as a
pimp and a prostitute being advised by ACORN ‘community organizers’ on how
to evade taxes and set up a prostitution ring, our stalwart Washington legislators
voted to cut off federal funds to the organization. But similar publicized
abuses at Planned Parenthood -- workers agreeing to cover up rape or earmarking
funds to abort black babies -- all captured on video and audio 
-- produced
no similar action in Washington to cut off funds. Why?
Of course, the scope of taxpayer funding to
Planned Parenthood is many times greater -- a few hundred million dollars
per year versus a few million. But that’s no explanation.
A hint of the problem is evident in a new
abortion survey released by the Pew Research Center.
The good
news for “pro-lifers” is that sentiment continues to move against abortion.
Forty-five percent now believe abortion should be illegal in most cases, up
four points from a year ago, and 47 percent believe it should be legal, down
seven points from last year.
But less encouraging is a drop in the
percentage that sees abortion as a ‘critical’ issue. Fifteen
percent, down from 28 percent a year ago.
I think this is why Planned Parenthood, the
largest abortion factory in the country, continues annually to get hundreds of
millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, under both Democrat and Republican
leadership. It’s why, despite opposition from Republicans
and some conservative Democrats, we have healthcare bills moving in both the
House and Senate that will allow federal funds to subsidize purchase of
insurance that will pay for abortions.
The outrage is not great enough. Too many
still turn a deaf ear or a blind eye.
Young women prepared to abort largely change
their mind when they see an ultrasound image of the live child moving inside of
them. If somehow a whole nation could grasp this experience, things would
change.
Or perhaps if they saw the
picture of the beautiful young woman, recently given to me by her mother, who
died in an abortion clinic.
Or if they heard the pastor spontaneously
give testimony, as I recently heard, about his pain knowing that one of his
grandchildren is a twin -- the one who survived a morning-after pill.
Or the young man who had nightmares when his
wife became pregnant. Before he changed his life and got married, he
impregnated two women who aborted their babies.
I hear these stories all the time as I
travel around the country speaking at Crisis Pregnancy Center events.
People all over our country are hurting and
we are in widespread denial. A great lie has found its way into our national
culture -- a lie that has deadened our senses -- that
we can contend with life’s challenges in a morally relative way. That we can
live, produce, compete, and deliver healthcare while we pretend that hard
issues about life, about the unborn, are above our pay grade.
There have been other times like this. Like
the many years we felt we could continue as a nation while denying the humanity
of our black slaves.
If we want to insist that a culture of
responsibility means taxing one American to pay for another’s abortion, we have
a long way to go. But this is where we seem to be today.
C.S. Lewis said “pain is God’s megaphone to
a deaf world.” It appears that even today that megaphone is still not big
enough.
Star
Parker (parker@urbancure.org) is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban
Renewal and Education, syndicated columnist, and author of three books..
