Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) made an emotional argument on the Senate floor, questioning how Planned Parenthood places value on human body parts but not the life of the child, “You can't say in one moment that's not a human and then sell it for the next moment as a human organ and say now suddenly it is. It was a human all the way through.”
Lankford made the comments on the Senate Floor Thursday in reaction to the viral undercover video of a Planned Parenthood official discussing the organizations abortion practices to harvest body parts.
The following is an excerpt Lankford's comments:
“Now, the challenge that we have on this as a nation is, the argument is for that baby. That baby's really not a baby, it's just a fetus, it's tissue. That's not a human baby is what everyone is told.
"That's just tissue and it's up to the mom to determine what happens to that tissue. And then on the flip side of it moments later they take that tissue and then sell it because it's human organs that are needed for research. You can't say in one moment that's not a human and then sell it for the next moment as a human organ and say now suddenly it is. It was a human all the way through. There was never a time that wasn't a child, never a time that wasn't a human, and it seems the ultimate irony to me that we spend time talking about humane treatment of animals being put down like in horse slaughter - and we completely miss children being ripped apart in the womb and their body parts being sold.
"So, here's how it happens. A mom comes into a facility, gives consent to have an abortion, makes that request. After that request is made, to some moms - and we don't know exactly how they choose which moms - to some moms they then ask consent for their child, after it's aborted, to be used for research purposes.
"From the video that was put out this week, they said that was actually comforting to some moms that they would know how traumatic the abortion is, at least some good would come out of it, that those body parts would then be used for research to hopefully save other children, which again comes back to this ultimate irony that we would literally tear one child apart in an abortion with the assumption that hopefully would help some other child in the future, missing out on the significance of the child that's right there that could be helped by protecting their life.
"And then the doctor in this particular video gives the details of how once they get that consent from the mom, they would be careful to reach in and actually crush the head of the child to kill the child in the womb so they could preserve the rest of the organs because the kidney has value, the liver has value, because the lungs have value, because the muscles in the legs have value. I would tell you that child has value.”