The Political ‘Science’ of Planned Parenthood

Obama, not noticeably shy about weighing in on controversial subjects, is steering clear of this one.

‘When the science is inconvenient, when the facts don’t match up with the ideology, they are cast aside.”

So charged Sen. Barack Obama in a Planned Parenthood speech in 2007. The line was a dig at George W. Bush for his approach to abortion and reproductive rights. Eighteen months later, the new president repeated his snipe in his inaugural vow to “restore science to its rightful place.”

Today President Obama is the one finding the science inconvenient. In the past, the president hasn’t hesitated to weigh in on other controversies while they were in progress—from an altercation between a black Harvard professor and a local white cop to more recent comments about the rape allegations against Bill Cosby. Suddenly, however, he has nothing to say about two secretly recorded videos that include one Planned Parenthood doctor talking about a “less crunchy” abortion technique that would leave fetal organs intact for harvesting.

Now we have two Planned Parenthood docs on film talking about the value of human organs in a fetus whose humanity they would deny. In private the euphemisms disappear. “When they talk to the public or to women about to get an abortion they talk about ‘tissue,’ ” says Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life. “But when they talk to someone buying body parts, it’s about intact hearts, livers and lungs.”

Ditto for another inconvenience: Shouldn’t a decent respect for the facts include some presidential acknowledgment that Planned Parenthood is America’s largest abortion provider?

It’s an odd indifference for a president who likes to scold his critics for subordinating science to ideology. At a time when many in the pro-choice camp are saying how repelled they are to see Planned Parenthood reps joke about selling embryonic livers and buying Lamborghinis, the president remains unperturbed.

This is the abortion culture of Planned Parenthood. In that same 2007 speech where Mr. Obama first played the science card, he also endorsed its absolutist stance: “On this fundamental issue, I will not yield, and Planned Parenthood will not yield.”

That’s not science. That’s pure political allegiance. And a grubby one at that.

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