Back in June, actress Martha Plimpton sat casually on the stage of Seattle’s Town Hall at an event hosted by #ShoutYourAbortion. Next to her was former Planned Parenthood medical director and self-proclaimed “Christian” abortionist, Willie Parker, who cites his faith as his reason for performing abortions.
Plimpton began the casual interview with Parker by telling the audience that Seattle is near and dear to her heart. She explains, “Seattle has some particular significance for me for lots of reasons. I’ve got a lot of family here, some of whom are here in the audience tonight. I also had my first abortion here at the Seattle Planned Parenthood!”
Seemingly attempting to emphasize her love for abortion, she added, “Notice I said ‘first.’ I said ‘first.’ And I don’t want Seattle — I don’t want you guys to feel insecure, it was my best one. Heads and tails above the rest. If I could Yelp review it, I totally would. And if that doctor’s here tonight, I don’t remember you at all, I was 19. I was 19, but I thank you nonetheless.”
The #ShoutYourAbortion audience laughed hysterically.
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Plimpton then goes on to ask Parker how the hippocratic oath, or in other words, the idea that a physician has the responsibility to “do no harm,” plays into his role as an abortionist.
He responded by saying, “When physicians say as a matter of conscience that they don’t provide abortions, that’s fine because you shouldn’t do anything that you can’t do conscientiously, but if you fail to refer that person on, you’re now doing harm because you didn’t help but now you’re not getting her to the service that she needs.”
This is of course, assuming abortion is both a service she needs and a service that will bring her good, rather than harm–both of these being very dangerous and faulty assumptions.
At a Q&A session at the end of the interview someone in the crowd asked Parker what he would say to convince pro-life people that abortion isn’t murder, to which he responded, “a fetus is not a person” and that “if you really believe that abortion is murder, call 911 and see if the police will come to an abortion clinic.”
For such a well-known spokesperson of the abortion industry, this answer is at best diluted and weak. In fact, it’s really not an answer at all.
The pro-life movement is based on the simple fact that life begins in the womb. Without this fact, the pro-life movement has nothing to argue about. If abortion is not ending the life of a human being, then there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it. In other words, it’s either ending a life or it isn’t, and that’s really the crux of the matter.
Unfortunately, it is the ending of a life. Science continues to prove this and it no longer works to simply say, “a fetus is not a person.”
This kind of widespread misinformation is why Save the Storks believes it is vital for women to truly know their options and be empowered by the facts. There is nothing more powerful than that single moment in front of the ultrasound screen. A woman puts aside the lies she has heard for so long and replaces them with the truth — that the life of her child has already begun and that it has value beyond measure.
