‘Reproductive health’ is one of those odious Orwellian euphemisms

“It would be more accurate to speak of promotion of the right to cause death”, writes Breda O’Brien

The idea that you can gather 100 people together over a number of weekends and that they will come to independent conclusions that are better than those arrived at by elected representatives is an interesting one. It probably reveals the low level of trust in elected representatives rather than any faith in a Citizens’ Assembly, as Dr Eoin O’Malley of Dublin City University wryly noted.

It is also representative of the irrational idea that humans are primarily rational and individual. In evolutionary terms, we evolved as members of groups.

While early interpreters of Darwin might have favoured the idea of the survival of the fittest, Darwin, in fact, argued that we are a profoundly social and cooperative species.

That is the good news. The bad news is that those same instincts make it difficult for us to upset others by expressing ideas that go against the established consensus in any group.

Groupthink

Any Citizens’ Assembly that takes its task seriously, would therefore be constantly on the alert to prevent groupthink developing. It would be constantly working to prevent framing the issues in a way that makes dissent difficult.

Yet what is happening instead? Incredibly packed agendas, with some very dubious choices of speakers, including, for example, Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute, and a way of framing matters that accepts terms like ‘fatal foetal abnormality’, offensive though the term is.

The Guttmacher Institute is named in honour of Dr Alan Guttmacher, former president of Planned Parenthood, and former vice-president of the American Eugenics Society. The institute proudly proclaims on its website that although “now in its fifth decade, the Guttmacher Institute remains committed to the mission and goals that led to its creation”.

For most of those five decades, it was deeply entwined with Planned Parenthood, although it says that the last core donation from Planned Parenthood was in 2007. It is fair to say, however,  that even though there may not be a direct financial link, the Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood are as one in terms of ideology.

The Guttmacher Institute declares that its purpose lies in the provision of “a factual basis for the development of sound governmental policies and for public consideration of the sensitive issues involved in the promotion of reproductive health and rights”.

‘Reproductive health’ is one of those odious Orwellian euphemisms. In fact, it would be more accurate to speak of promotion of the right to cause death for one of the parties during the reproductive process.

These are the ‘rights’ that the Guttmacher Institute exists to push.

Its former affiliate, Planned Parenthood is currently under investigation because it may have been involved in illegally providing foetal parts for research in a way that violated consent and allowed third parties to make gigantic profits.

Planned Parenthood allowed technicians from foetal tissue procurement businesses, one of which was StemExpress, to be embedded in some of its facilities. There has been a US House Investigative Committee Report on the matter, which concluded that the embedded StemExpress technicians’ workflow went something like this.

A customer placed an order for tissue, perhaps a heart, lungs, brain or liver, or in one case, the skin of a foetus with Down Syndrome.

The technician received information about the next day’s scheduled abortions.

The next day, he or she checked the medical records, and obtained consent on Planned Parenthood forms, which implied that this was for life-saving research, not mentioning the question of profit.

Nor did the form specify that it might be a baby’s brain, skin, organs or limbs. It only mentioned tissue. The technician obtained the remains and filled the order for the customer, packaging and mailing it. The clinic was then paid.  As Irish journalist, Phelim McAleer pointed out, in one case StemExpress donated $55 to Planned Parenthood for a foetus’s brain, but sold it to a researcher for $3,000.

Detail

Two of the House investigators referred to StemExpress as the ‘Amazon.com of baby body parts’. They obtained screenshots of a dropdown menu on the StemExpress site, listing in gruesome detail everything from spleens to female reproductive systems and ovaries.

The ‘Amazon of baby body parts’ has since changed its website entirely, and virtually the only foetal parts it now has on offer publicly are liver stem cells.

But Planned Parenthood had no ethical dilemma about allowing StemExpress carry on its lucrative trade right inside their clinics.

And the Citizens’ Assembly had no problem with allowing former close affiliate of Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, to address it.

The Guttmacher Institute is not under investigation for alleged trade in foetal body parts, but it does promote the idea that legal abortion is an unqualified good, and it still was welcomed as an impartial witness. Strange times we live in indeed.