Illustration by Herschel Levin
Sometimes, the good guys win, and last week we saw the Texas legal system work properly.
Last summer, we all heard and watched the news, lambasting Planned Parenthood for profiting from the sale of body parts of aborted fetuses. The alleged proof of this was a video, produced by the intended buyers of this material at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Houston.
Last year, the office of the Attorney General of Texas launched an official investigation into Planned Parenthood following the release of videos that detail the organization’s alleged slaughter of babies to profit on their body parts.
One of the videos, taped at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Houston, shows Planned Parenthood staff members allegedly discussing the sale of fetal tissue for medical research. It inspired Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to ask Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson to initiate a criminal investigation of the organization in August.
Who are these Texas Leaders? These are the same men who are depriving some 12 million of our fellow Texas women of health coverage.
But, back to Planned Parenthood,the primary provider of women’s wealth care in Texas.
Under the leadership of Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas Rangers, our Texas State Police and the Houston Police Department began an investigation and a Republican Prosecuting Attorney presented the evidence to a Texas Grand Jury. Anderson, a pro-life Republican who is endorsed by the Texas Right to Life PAC is going ahead, but warned “we must go where the evidence leads us.”
“We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast,” said Anderson. “As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us. All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case.”
Instead of any finding of wrong-doing by Planned Parenthood, the investigation caused the Grand Jury to indict David Daleiden, Center for Medical Progress founder, and one of his assistants for criminal action for the very crime that he accused Planned Parenthood of committing: the purchase or sale of human organs.
Daleiden and his associate, Sandra Merritt, both from California, face not only that misdemeanor charge, but they are also accused of tampering with a government record, a second-degree felony that carries a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
I am shocked to actually see justice prevail and do not hide my hope that both of these devious criminals, who would go to such lengths to deprive women of their health care, get to serve the maximum time for their criminal activity.
Now that would truly be justice.
However, back in our world, Abbott has reassured his followers, most of whom can be found dangling their legs over the edge of their flat world, that state investigations into Planned Parenthood will continue at the taxpayers’ expense.
In the meantime, our district attorney is being lambasted by the press and by Conservatives with sudden disregard for her political leanings, and I consider her a hero for proving to me that the justice system can work and that justice can prevail.
While all this is going on, our state government intends to continue its thoughtless and stupid fight against the premier provider of women’s health care in our state, Planned Parenthood.
Opinion columnist Ken Levin is a political science senior and may be reached at [email protected]
Hey Old Man? Would you have supported your Mother’s abortion … of You?
Who let Reagan in?
Organite!!! … oooohhh You?
That’s is the biggest complement you can pay a Conservative.
Probably the most entertaining thing to come out of this is clear proof that conservatives don’t really care about whether Planned Parenthood broke the law or not; they just want to see abortion proponents suffer as evidenced by how quickly anti-abortion pundits turned their back on an equally conservative district attorney just because she actually followed the law. The raw, hateful things people have been quoted saying about someone who is on their own side are fantastic.
They eat their own. Look at the Republican debates. All they do is carp at each other, and never discuss actual issues,. It’s like watching a Jerry Springer show. Yuk.
Stereotyping is a habit you’d be wise to avoid in life.
The only thing Planned Parenthood provides is Premier Abortion services.
Good.
Abbott’s targeting PP was only the beginning. Although Abbott’s crusade against Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has damaged it, it was not permanently crippled. A response to that failure by Texas health officials has been its more recent unexplained announcement in late 2015 from the Texas Department of State Health Services that, beginning in 2016, funding for all HIV-supported services – which Planned parenthood had been providing since the 1980s in the form of free HIV testing and condom distribution — would also be de-funded, a loss of some $600,000. This draconian stance, widely reported, has met with outrage since it now puts thousands of Texas lives at risk. Reportedly, DSHS statistics show more than 80,000 Texans are known to be living with HIV; an additional 18,000 are believed to be infected with HIV but are unaware of it. And that’s just one of several ways Abbott has been abusing Texans health and welfare since inheriting and continuing the Perry tyranny. See our fully cited report, “Greg Abbott and a Legacy of Suppression:
A look at the abuses of a Texas public servant.” at http://media.wix.com/ugd/d52d3d_ba02c717ab584199b5671f59602141dd.pdf