(Wikimedia Commons)
USA (MNN) — Planned Parenthood will soon be under the microscope of Congress.
Following a swell of controversy and media coverage, conservatives and right-wing presidential candidates demanded Congress take a closer look.
Several officials, from the House of Representatives and at least two states, vowed to launch formal investigations.
Partial-birth abortion has been illegal since 2007. Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Research, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, is on video — at approximately 12:46 — describing how she has used partial-birth abortion to preserve the organs of babies for research.
And, she’s not the only one.
“For that reason [preserving organs for research], most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps,” she says on undercover video captured by The Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
Women may choose to donate their aborted babies for research purposes, but the procedure cannot be altered because of that choice.
20 weeks from conception. (Image courtesy Life Issues Institute)
As observed by the Washington Post, U.S. law “prohibit[s] anyone from altering the timing or method of an abortion for the sole purpose of later using the tissue in research.”
“They’re looking at a fully-formed, 18- to 24-week-old baby. They can distinguish the heart and the lungs and the liver, and whatever else they’re looking for,” explains Michele Shoun of Life Matters Worldwide.
“It’s a human being, and they know it! The baby that is born is the same individual as was in the womb. And, it’s a person made in the image of God.”
Petition Congress to investigate Planned Parenthood here.
Rethinking abortion
Life Matters Worldwide advocates for life at all stages, including life in the womb. One way Life Matters helps women reconsider abortion is by introducing them to their unborn child.
“We have to show them the humanity of the unborn,” explains Shoun.
Using ultrasound equipment, workers at partnering pregnancy care centers show women the life growing inside them.
“It’s not a ‘non-human’ at one point and then becomes a human being. It’s a human at every stage,” Shoun says. This revelation is unexpected to those expecting to see a clump of cells and nothing more.
Missionary Lori Smith operates ultrasound machine on a new mom in Papua New Guinea.
(Photo, caption courtesy LMW)
Interactions like this often provide believers an opportunity to share about the God who created the little life and the Savior who died to save both mom and infant for eternity.
Women begin to understand that their “unplanned pregnancy” wasn’t really so accidental after all.
Life Matters Worldwide began in 1984 “in response to the horrors of abortion.” They’ve started dozens of pregnancy care centers in the U.S. and abroad, beginning with the Alpha Women’s Center of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
God is far bigger than any attempt to take over His Role and dethrone Him. I pray for an awakening — and salvation — for those who try.