Thomas
Garrett’s Legacy: A Modern Day Abolition Issue
Subversive Hero
Thomas Garrett helped an estimated
2,700 slaves find freedom via the Underground Railroad when the scourge of
slavery marred our land of the free and home of the brave.
Garrett began these “subversive”
activities while residing in Pennsylvania, a free state, but remained committed
to his illegal operations after relocating to Delaware, a state which had
codified into law the enslavement of humans.
Garrett paid a steep price for his
involvement. He was attacked in the press, tried in court, and found guilty by
none other than then Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, whose later rendering of the
deplorable Dred Scott decision
was one of the final straws that propelled the United States into civil war.1
Garrett’s legal costs, fees to the tune of $5,400 (a king’s ransom, even for a
prosperous iron merchant like Garrett), and being forced to neglect his
business to attend to his legal troubles, left him penniless.
But the grace of God through
sympathetic friends enabled him to rebuild his shattered life, and ultimately African
Americans, for whom he sacrificed his own wellbeing, dubbed him “Our Moses” and
carried his body to its final resting place.2
A fitting end to a life finely
lived.
Prayer Vigil
Recently, I had the privilege of
attending a prayer vigil on a street which bears Garrett’s name. Amnion
Pregnancy Center on Garrett Road in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania serves the
community and country in ways which would make the former Delaware County
native proud. I learned from Amnion’s Executive Director Melanie Parks and
Board Vice President Louann Rodgers that Amnion operates on only $325,000 per
year, none of which comes from federal or state government. This small agency
stretches every dollar to counsel expectant mothers, outfit and diaper babies, and
dispense ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, prenatal vitamins, and parenting
coaching. They hope in the future to add STI testing and treatment to their list
of services.
In addition, Amnion offers adoption
and housing referrals, and links low-income clients to physicians that serve
the uninsured and underinsured, as well as to community resources like WIC.3
Not least, Amnion feels a responsibility to serve
women who have had abortions. Roughly one in five women in the United States is
post-abortive.4 The Amnion
chapter of “Surrendering the Secret” offers group support and counseling5
to deal with the guilt and shame that many report as aftereffects of the
procedure.6
The cost for all these services?
$0.00.
That’s right. Amnion and other agencies
like it, such as AlphaCare (whose annual budget is $586,000 according to
Executive Director Karen Hess7) and Delaware County Pregnancy Center
(which ekes by on $135,000 per year, per interim Executive Director Helen
McBlain8), charge nothing for their assistance. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Relying on fundraising and donations, these agencies build bricks with
virtually no straw on a regular basis. While some pregnancy centers receive
state funds9, others, such as the aforementioned three, receive not
one penny of government funding. Nor do they want any. As Hess explains, “No
government funds ever. So we can keep sharing the Gospel.”10
Make no mistake: pregnancy centers
have an agenda, and they’re not trying to hide it. They make no bones about their
huge concern for unborn children, and that concern extends to the spiritual
welfare of prospective parents who walk through their doors. While taking care
not to thrust a religious world view on their clients, if and when the
opportunity arises to offer spiritual hope, these agencies would sooner do
without government grants than risk being beholden to its whims and
shots-calling.
Another Vigil
As I pondered all this information,
my mind flashed back to another Saturday vigil I used to attend. This one took
place in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic located in Media, Pennsylvania. My friend and I used
to pray regularly with a group of like-minded individuals outside this branch of
the organization that performs more abortions than any other health care provider
in the United States.11 The Media office does not itself offer
abortions, but regularly refers clients to practitioners who do.12
I began to wonder about Planned
Parenthood’s budget in comparison with the small purses of the pregnancy centers
I’d been interviewing. Shockingly, this massive body rakes in almost four
billion dollars a year
13, which it doles out to approximately 650
clinics in the U.S.
14 This works out to about $6 million per clinic
per year, nearly half of which it receives from United States taxpayers.
15
One might well wonder what Planned
Parenthood does with all this cash, considering it happily accepts payments
from insurance companies, Medicaid, and individuals, as well as enjoying
non-profit tax exempt status.16 While there’s no denying that
Planned Parenthood performs a variety of cancer screenings – not including
mammograms, despite claims to the contrary by certain notable figures – and a
hefty percentage of STI tests and treatments, their most recent annual report also
reveals that they perform 324,000 abortions per year, which constitutes almost
50% of abortions done annually in this country (30).17
Boasting of “foster[ing] the sexual and
reproductive health and rights of individuals, families, and communities,” Planned
Parenthood’s website also contains an “Info for Teens” page which offers
everything from advice about sexual orientation/gender experimentation to glib
videos about masturbation and precum.18 What they do not do with Uncle Sam’s tax exempt
dollars is deliver virtually anything in the way of prenatal care; in fiscal
year 2015, this champion of reproductive rights reported less than 0.2% of its business
coming under this category.19 Adoption referrals made up an even
tinier fraction of services rendered by this “family planning” giant – .02% .20
So when my friends and I prayed in
front of their offices, we prayed for parents-to-be who made their way into
that facility looking for help, and for preborn children who couldn’t speak for
themselves. We prayed also for young people, whose world views are still up for
grabs. We knew the counseling they would receive inside those doors would focus
on contraception (women ages 15 to 24 account for nearly half of contraceptive
usage in this country21); prevention and treatment of STIs, half of
which occurs among that same population22; and pregnancy termination,
12% of which occurs among teens.23
Ultrasound Usage
Expectant moms who step across
Amnion’s threshold are offered the opportunity to glimpse their developing
children on an ultrasound screen. This is an unapologetic effort to allow
mothers to see their developing children prior to deciding their fates. Many pregnancy
centers have found that this simple step allows clients to make a more informed
decision as to whether the tissue they’re carrying is a “bundle of joy” or
merely a “product of conception.”
On the other hand, not all
abortionists use sonography. Some physicians go into the birth canal blindly,
without consulting sonograms to illuminate their path. Those who do employ the
technology do so to guide cannulas which locate the fetus prior to tearing it
limb from limb, or to inject lethal doses of digoxin or other death-inducing
drugs into fetal hearts. Ultrasound, if used at all in Planned Parenthood
clinics, is utilized primarily for one of two purposes: either to assess fetal
age to determine abortion cost – the older the fetus, the higher the fee24
– or to guide a probe/clamp to dismember the fetus inside its mother’s womb,
then crush its skull to facilitate exit through the birth canal.25
Either way, their mission is the same: search
and destroy.
The Other Side of the Discussion
Attacks have been leveled at pregnancy
centers by such auspicious publications as Time
Magazine and Cosmopolitan, claiming misleading advertising and one-sided
agendas. Any organization stands to benefit from constructive criticism,
self-examination and reshaping, and pregnancy centers are no exception. Judging
from the websites encountered in the research for this article, it would appear
the Fourth Estate has caused pregnancy centers to clarify their mission and
objectives so as to ward off any misunderstandings right out of the gate.
Interestingly, though, the
aforementioned periodicals haven’t seen fit to denounce any of Planned
Parenthood’s peccadillos like, oh, say, sale of fetal body parts, overbilling of
insurance companies, dubious consent forms, disregard for HIPPA regulations, and
violation of the Hyde Amendment which bars them from underwriting abortions
with federal funds. Rather, both magazines robustly defended the abortion
giant; Cosmopolitan went so far as to
give the cat bird seat to Planned Parenthood’s President, Cecile Richards, by
running her op ed, in which this leader and spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood reveals the
organization’s “liberated” philosophy:
Women's
ability to realize their goals requires them to have control of their
fertility. If we
want women to have fulfilling careers and economic stability, we have to give
them full access to the full range of reproductive health care, including
abortion.
Above
and beyond any practical, economic reasons to respect the right of women to
control their own reproductive system, abortion rights are a matter of autonomy
and equality.
Condoms
break. Birth control pills are not infallible. Intrauterine devices and
implants, even, have failure rates, miniscule as they may be. When these things
happen, women have to make a whole host of decisions. No member of Congress
should interfere.
Women
deserve healthy, fulfilling, positive sex (no matter how many times misogynists
say it, "keep your legs closed" will never be a valid argument). And
they deserve access to reproductive health care and information to make the
best choices about sex.26
Government Conclusions
Despite Richards’ noble motives and
the accolades and apologist efforts of her media friends, the federal
government did not shy away from objectively considering the troubling
questions raised by the release of 11 videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s
unlawful trafficking in fetal parts and other unethical activities. In 2016 the
House of Representatives released its 427 page Final Report by the Select
Investigative Panel of the Energy and Commerce Committee, validating all the
aforementioned allegations.27
The panel included in its report the
following further observations about Planned Parenthood and quotations from its
founder, Margaret Sanger:
Planned Parenthood executives who spoke
with the Panel noted that 2016 is the 100th
anniversary of [its] founding … A closer
look at the history of the organization, however,
leaves little to celebrate. [It] was
founded by eugenicists who believed in limiting the rights
of people to form families and have children
if they had mental or physical disabilities or
were of the “wrong” race (xxxvi).
Among
the founders … were a group of eugenicists, including … Margaret Sanger, who
sought to reduce and control population growth, including among the African
American community. Sanger saw the eugenics movement as a chance to rid
civilization of “racial, political and social problems… Our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly
increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependent.”
She calls those
with mental disabilities a “dead weight of human waste” and a “burden of
unthinking and
indiscriminate fecundity.”
Sanger
wrote that “negroes present the great problem of the South …” (299-300).
Final
Considerations
In light of the facts
revealed by the House panel and its unabashed disdain for Planned Parenthood’s
practices and philosophies, one might wonder why taxpayers are still supporting
the organization. No one is disputing that Planned Parenthood serves women and
families in numerous ways that pregnancy centers do not and cannot because of
their largely unsubsidized budgets. What is up for debate is whether the
former’s activities ought to be bankrolled by the federal government. The real
question is, is it right for a country founded on “Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness” to embrace one of those objectives at the expense of the
other two?
As we progress through our 45th
year in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade – 59 million abortions and counting28–
the action required of the new administration and Congress is clear: defund
Planned Parenthood. The
House of Representatives took a major step in this direction this past week by
approving the American Health Care Act, which will withhold Medicaid payments
from Planned Parenthood for a year unless it stops providing abortions.29 Now
it falls to the Senate to continue the job its legislative counterpart has
started. Concerned citizens can find contact information for their senators at https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm, to apprise lawmakers of their views on the bill.
Abortion has been rightly
called the slavery issue of our time. Countless African American lives were
lost due to the institution of slavery, but among those who survived and
managed to thrive in the midst of this national disgrace were the likes of
Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Booker T. Washington. How much more
genius was left unrealized in the name of slaveholders’ rights and servitude to
cotton and tobacco we will never know this side of heaven. Likewise, how many
scientific pioneers, politicians, and great artists’ lives (Andrea Bocelli
tells a poignant story of how his mother refused physician’s counsel to abort
him30) have we snuffed out in the name of women’s rights and
convenience?
Thomas Garrett saw
through his generation’s national lie a century and a half ago, and history has
proven his convictions right. He didn’t pretend to have all the answers as to
how to integrate masses of uneducated victims into an unwelcoming society. Lincoln
himself surely couldn’t have dreamed when he issued the Emancipation
Proclamation how many decades would go by before equality would become less a byword
than a reality. After years of hacking away at unfair laws and
institutionalized racism, our country is still paying the price for
dehumanizing an entire segment of the population. What was clear to
abolitionists was that every life they spared gave the recipient an opportunity
to bestow on society the gifts that person was born with. That hope was reason
enough for their crusade, and an end in itself.
Likewise, this author
doesn’t purport to have solutions to the child abuse crisis or the glutted
foster care system that many raise as justification for abortion. Logic would
seem to dictate that we make adoption as affordable and simple to obtain as
abortion. That we return to the moral codes that used to bind us as a nation,
with or without Scriptural underpinnings, which in theory would make
organizations like Child Protective Services less needed in the first place.
That we start rewarding the commitment of stay at home parents with tax dollars
– perhaps the same tax dollars we pull from the abortion industry.
One way or the other, we
will answer for all the unborn blood we’re spilling, just as we continue to reap
the repercussions of slavery. The question is, will future generations view ours
as being on the right side of history – or the convenient side?
Endnotes
3Melanie
Parks and Louann Rodgers. Email interview. 23 January 2017.
7Karen Hess. Personal interview. 11
November 2015.
8 Helen McBlain. Email interview. 25 January
2017.
10 Hess. Email interview. 22 January 2017.
13 “Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. and Related
Entities Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Information June
30, 2015 and 2014,” Planned Parenthood,
19 2014-2015 Annual Report, 29.
20 Ibid.
Relevant
excerpts from the House panel’s report:
“First, the
clinics have a checkered history of overbilling Medicaid and of improperly
billing items to cover the costs of abortion services, in violation of the Hyde
Amendment.
“Second, the
clinics did not follow PPFA guidance about compliance with federal criminal
statutes that govern the terms of fetal tissue donation. Accounting documents
from middleman tissue organizations showed that several PPFA affiliates made a
profit from the transfer of fetal tissue.
“Third, PPFA
failed to secure compliance with the requirement that doctors who perform
abortions certify in writing that the method of abortion has not been changed
to facilitate fetal tissue donation. The PPFA executive in charge of this
requirement admitted that she regularly changed the method of abortion to
facilitate intact fetal specimens …
“Fourth, PPFA
guidance on patient consent and the affiliate practice violates federal consent
regulations.
“Fifth, the
affiliate clinics routinely violated HIPAA privacy regulations to facilitate
the harvesting of fetal tissue for which the clinics were paid on a per
specimen basis” (309).
“The Panel found a significant history of flawed and
unlawful management of federal funds … through audits performed by the Office
of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and by
state-level family planning agencies. Of particular concern is the clinics’
false designation of abortion services as family planning services. This
practice misallocates federal funds designated for family planning to underwriting
abortion procedures … (310).
“First, local
affiliates regularly and with little accountability substitute billing codes
for approved reimbursements for prohibited activities that violate the
prohibition against use of federal funds for abortion services. Second, the
affiliates operate with disregard of accepted accounting procedures. Third, the
local affiliates that seek to increase Medicaid payment through false billing
practices also require close scrutiny about compliance with federal law on receiving
valuable consideration for the transfer of fetal tissue” (319).
“The CMP undercover videos revealed a ‘wink and a nod’
attitude by PPFA executives who seemed to communicate that fetal tissue
programs help with revenue but don’t get caught because the headlines would be
a disaster” (322).
This was the text I sent out to my loved ones after being a
control freak the day before. My two sisters and I had planned a special
birthday gathering at a restaurant for our eldest sister, Jane, who usually isn’t
in town to celebrate on or around the appointed day. Last weekend, however, she
had flown in to witness the graduation of our dear nephew from college, so we
hatched this party plan for the following Saturday.
