Dear Planned Parenthood,

With great interest I watched your apology in response to the undercover video of your Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, discussing the sale of human livers, hearts and lungs.

“Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide,” said Cecile Richards, your president. “In the video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion. This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.”

Planned Parenthood apologizes for a lack of compassion. What do you mean by “compassion?

This is the way Dictionary.com defines it: “Compassion: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.”

Compassion is always directed at another person. Please clarify: Whom do you think deserved compassion but didn’t receive it?

Most people watching Dr.Nucatola feel deeply uncomfortable that she is talking with such an offhand, disdainful tone about human body parts. They feel compassion for the little human being that’s being treated like a commodity. Like Hannibal Lecter’s murder victims. Like Dr. Joseph Mengele’s Jewish subjects for experiment.

So…are you apologizing that Dr. Nucatola did not show “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow” for a human being who has been “stricken by the misfortune” of an abortion?

Planned Parenthood has always made the case that a fertilized egg is a product of conception, not a human baby. You have made the case that it is a clump of human tissue, with no more value than an unwanted appendix. Or an extracted tooth.

You have maintained your consistency on this point with extraordinary, laser-like focus, advocating for…

…late-term abortions. Throughout pregnancy you contend that women should always have “every medical option available.”
…partial-birth abortions. You have criticized the 2007 law against partial-birth abortion.

Are you now acknowledging that a human being, who can feel pain at twenty weeks, might just be due a little compassion? Because that would be welcome news indeed!

If not…who else in the conversation between Dr. Nucatola and the undercover journalist had been “stricken by misfortune”? To whom should Dr. Nucatola have shown compassion? How should she have shown it?

My heart goes out to Dr. Nucatola. She speaks with the same indifferent tone toward an unborn human being that Planned Parenthood has always used. And you have thrown her under the bus.

Millions of us are moved with compassion for a woman who has so damaged her own soul that she has become completely desensitized to the value of a human life. What must it be like for her to spend her days applying her vacuum and graspers to little bouncing two-month old boys like this?

How sad that she cannot see the image of God in each and every life he knows and knits together in its mother’s womb.

On the other hand, if Planned Parenthood has no compassion for these little human beings…

…then, Cecile Richards, are you engaging in 1984-style doublespeak: “evasive, ambiguous language that is intended to deceive or confuse?” (Dictionary.com)

…are you manipulating your audience with carefully crafted language that deliberately omits the object of Planned Parenthood’s compassion, acting like you empathize with our outrage and sorrow, when you do not?

…are you invoking the word “compassion” to mask Planned Parenthood’s lack of pity for the 300,000+ human beings that your doctors like Nucatola “strike with misfortune” every year, without a thought of “alleviating their suffering?” (Honstly, your apology video offends worse than Nucatelo’s. At least the doctor was unaware she was on camera.)

If this is the case, in the face of such deceit what are we prepared to do?