Should Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson and her prosecutors be added to the list of Planned Parenthood accomplices across the country? Did she really intend to side with the entire Democratic Party and the abortion lobby at large? Anderson’s Office is the latest player in the insidious game of shielding Planned Parenthood from sanctions for illegal transactions involving fetal tissue traffickingand concealing these crimes.
Failing to hold Planned Parenthood accountable while indicting the whistleblowers is not the first instance of anti-Life corruption in the office of the Harris County D.A.
Douglas Karpen, a Houston abortionist nicknamed the “Texas Gosnell” because he decapitated babies born alive during his abortions, is still committing abortions to this day because the Harris County D.A. did not indict him due to claims of insufficient evidence. The same excuse was proffered in the wake of Monday’s announcement that Planned Parenthood had been cleared of wrongdoing, despite the executives candidly discussing a gruesome and illegal business enterprise on camera.
Both Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts trafficking and Karpen’s crimes have occurred for years. In 1991, sixteen-year-old Nicolette Cormier drove from her home in Louisiana to Karpen’s killing center for a late-term abortion. Staff repeatedly lied to Cormier about the procedure and the price. Because her baby was so far along in development, Cormier’s abortion would require a lengthy cervical-dilation process prior to the delivery of her child.
At each step of the dilation process, Cormier grew more reluctant, changed her mind about the abortion, and grew increasingly hysterical about what was happening to the baby and to her body. Cormier and her mother confronted Karpen, insisting that he reverse the cervical dilation process and release Nicolette. Karpen lied, saying that the process was irreversible and that no other doctor or hospital would admit her. He also refused to answer Cormier’s questions, berating her for taking up too much of his time. Karpen recruited another abortionist to pressure Cormier into completing the termination. Cormier refused that abortionist’s intimidation tactics and was finally released from Karpen’s abortuary. She sought care at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Houston, where she delivered a baby girl weighing less than 2 pounds. Baby Ashley died several months after the abortion attempt. When the case reached the Harris County D.A.’s office, Karpen was exonerated.
Karpen continued his inhumane work with almost no scrutiny. Then, in 2013, three of Karpen’s employees became whistleblowers, leaving his abortion practice to divulge the horrors of working under Karpen to Life Dynamics, a Pro-Life organization. The whistle-blowers appeared on camera revealing the stomach-churning details of working side-by-side with the infamous abortionist. Karpen, they said, routinely killed babies born alive during his botched abortions. They also recounted an episode when Karpen delivered a baby he believed to be dead. The baby opened his eyes and grasped Karpen’s finger. Karpen proceeded to kill the newborn.
And somehow, the Harris County D.A.’s office found:
· Nothing wrong with Planned Parenthood workers cackling over the dead late-term baby they pulled out of the freezer after dismembering him earlier that afternoon;
· Nothing wrong with Planned Parenthood’s Research Director, Melissa Farrell, admitting that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast had been engaged in fetal tissue trafficking for “many, many, many years;”
· Nothing wrong with Farrell’s nonchalant explanation that delivering babies intact (“intact fetal cadavers,” i.e., born-alive babies) for the purposes of organ procurement was “just a matter of line items” in Planned Parenthood’s budget;
· Nothing wrong with Planned Parenthood’s admission that the cost of such procurement is contingent on the amount of time and effort invested in procuring the requested specimens (whereas Planned Parenthood claims – and federal law demands – that no remuneration outside of shipping costs was ever collected by any facility);
· Nothing wrong with the fact that Planned Parenthood did all of this while receiving money from Texas taxpayers.
There’s a saying in Texas about the ease with which an indictment is secured: “In Texas, you can indict a ham sandwich.” And yet a case this sensitive and important, not to mention the clear and convincing evidence, was bungled by the Harris County D.A.’s office, and the two Pro-Life journalists were indicted for exposing the barbarism that occurs at Planned Parenthood every day.
Once could be a mistake, but three times now makes a sordid record of letting the abortion industry operate unfettered in Harris County. These three failures to protect innocent Life bespeaks a muddled conscience at best. Was the D.A.’s office careless, calculating, or corrupt? Either way, the Harris County D.A.’s office is culpable for the thousands of women and children whose lives will be lost because of such shocking ineptitude.