The Big Lie

 1937 - The party told folks that the Jews were a
 corrupt and wicked race.  People believed it.

Why would people believe something just hugely false?

It's not uncommon, and we've all fallen for it.  Remember when we were told that black people were a less developed species than whites?  Remember when women were said to be less intelligent and rational than men?  Our culture was warped by such large-spectrum falsehoods.

It's difficult to clean up the mess from such wrong thinking.

We're two centuries along in dealing with race issues.   We banned the importation of African slaves in 1808, but the remnants of such wrong thinking are still visible in our culture, and will likely take generations more to die out completely.  Appropriate equality and respect for women are similarly slow in arriving.

There are two parts to the problem of wrong thinking.
The first is the ambiguity of an issue.  The second is the advantage that it provides.

In the racial question, for example, Africans were different than Europeans, and it seemed perhaps reasonable that they were in some way inferior.  It was ambiguous, lacking science and validity, it was not accurately understood.  The advantage for rule and wealth (African diamonds and gold) followed quickly, and the easily resolvable question was politically sustained for the benefit of the wealthy and influential of the period.  They're all dead now, fortunately.

Today we're dealing with an issue that began similarly, and is now less ambiguous.  We began the discussion on abortion and law around 1800.  Over the years, advances in science and medicine let us see problem pregnancies and begin to consider the issue of the mother's safety separately from the child's life.  Abortion to save the mother's life was legalized, and the debate moved on to issues of preference and timing.

It was a political and philosophical battle in the U.S. until legalization in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, and defined by law as an issue of privacy.  You could abort up to viability as determined by the doctor.  The issue of viability was a marker for the debate.

We didn't have the scientific clarity in the 19th and 20th centuries that we have now.  When Winston Churchill was born two months early and survived, he was a rarity.  Viability of preterm births has improved over the years.  Today, a 24 week preemie will usually go to the neonatal unit with a chance of survival, but the threshold of viability is not that precise.  A few successful 22 week preemies have now entered the scene.

Cecile Richards - President, Planned Parenthood - 

compares abortion to a colonoscopy and considers

both to be 'health care'.
One detects cancer early and can legitimately
 be considered health care.  The other terminates a
life and is unrelated to health care except
 by deliberate misrepresentation.

When Sarah Capewell gave live birth at 21 weeks 5 days gestation, her son was denied treatment at the hospital, and died within two hours of birth. According to the mother, he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat, and was moving his arms and legs.  If he had been born two days later he might have received treatment.  

So the questions of privacy, viability, preference, and ethics are all on the table.  The early distinction of fetus vs. baby is less useful than was hoped by abortion advocates.

The 'born alive' laws are quite clear, but the abortion industry appears to violate that criteria.

“So you know there are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating”         - Dr. Ben Van Handel describing post-abortion condition of the 'fetus'.

Lucas Moore, born a at 23 weeks, is celebrating his first

birthday, healthy and whole.  He was legally abortable,

just a 'fetus', a tissue mass, a product of conception, 

according to Planned Parenthood, and a good candidate

for organ harvesting and sale. 

Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow was asked point blank: “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?” She replied: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”  Asked again by stunned hearers, she repeated her answer.  

She was testifying against a Florida bill that would require abortionists to provide emergency medical care to an infant who survives an abortion.  Planned Parenthood later issued a clean-up statement that in the unlikely event that a baby were born alive it would “provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.” That is of little credibility, since a Planned Parenthood counselor has been caught on tape admitting that the organization leaves infants born alive by abortion to die.

Federal law requires appropriate care for an aborted child with a beating heart just like any other newborn.  The magic transition from fetus to baby occurs upon emergence from the mother.  But ...

'It's still a fetus until birth.'  The Big Lie is almost lost in the debate.  If we call it a child, it's a problem.  We can call it a fetus until it is born, and for the law, that defers the problem.    

At some point, however, we are aborting a human child. A born-alive child is legally recognized as such upon emergence from the womb, even before its first breath.  Pre- or full-term, it is legally a human being once it is outside its' mother.

That child is the same, however, whether in the doctor's hands two seconds after delivery or in its mother in the seconds just prior to birth.  And the hours prior, the days and perhaps weeks prior. Calling the child a fetus doesn't change that reality.  It's not an easily resolved question, but such deliberate misrepresentation is political, not objective science or reason.

The big lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

The centerpiece of Pro-Choice and of Planned Parenthood is abortion built on the big lie.