Planned Parenthood and Progressive Hypocrisy
In America, you don’t need real moral authority for your social cause, all you need is the warring and irrational indignation of a hashtag. And that brings us to Planned Parenthood’s 100th anniversary brought in full force by hashtag activists celebrating an organization that has overseen millions upon millions of deaths. Full stop.
I want to leave aside the evil perpetrated by Planned Parenthood and the racist, eugenicist views of its founder, and for a moment focus on the underlying moral authority at stake in what organizations like Planned Parenthood have done and continue to do under the banner of “reproductive justice.”
Consider as a perfect example a tweet sent from President Barack Obama’s account on Sunday:
This is a deeply hypocritical tweet coming from our nation’s chief executive. Why? Planned Parenthood is in the business of snuffing out unborn life before it begins. They are the unrepentant architects for America’s greatest human rights atrocity. These are serious accusations, but how else does the moral calculus compute? Millions of lives are gone as the result of Planned Parenthood’s marketing. Planned Parenthood peddles the delusion that it offers “self-determination” all the while making sure that unborn lives are not given the equal right to self-determination. Said differently, an organization celebrating its 100th birthday is in the business of making sure that innocent humans never celebrate a first birthday.
What strikes me about this tweet most of all is the absurd levels of progressive hypocrisy on display in it. Under the banner of justice and an unquestioning media giving cover to it, politically-correct injustice is permitted. Progressivism bills itself as the arbiter of social justice. But there can never be social justice when innocent life is systematically targeted by legal regimes. It is never right to celebrate self-determination when it means determining that others must die.
This is why progressivism will never be palatable for orthodox Christians. Everyone with an ear to hear and eyes to see can observe the hypocrisy of Planned Parenthood and the progressive mindset that underwrites it. Progressivism is comfortable with its own internal contradictions. But celebrating life while giving death cannot co-exist. Planned Parenthood and progressivism are comfortable living while breaking the law of non-contradiction. Living in A and Non-A is where progressivism has set-up shop. And hence, organizations like Planned Parenthood and world views like progressivism are inherently irrational. And irrational worldviews lack real moral authority. It lacks a moral seriousness because there is no consistent ethic of life. It lacks real moral authority because it undoes the very thing it supposedly offers.
I read recently in a book that “when the Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of reason.” Planned Parenthood and abortion will either continue on and America’s moral fabric will continue to deteriorate; or, we will be awakened to see the good news that living in contradiction cannot subsist. The reasoning creatures we are, we will either correct this grave injustice as we see the truth about human life emerge (which is happening with each passing generation), or else we will devolve into further delusion and moral emptiness. But let me be clear, America will not be an authentically just and righteous nation while the incoherencies and grave injustices of organizations like Planned Parenthood are made moral exemplars.
The sentiment expressed in President Obama’s tweet (surely made by a staffer and not the president himself) is more evidence that even in a year where political realignments occur because of atrocious political options, orthodox Christians will not turn to progressivism as the answer.