The cardinal archbishop of Houston last week released a statement calling for formal federal and local investigations into Planned Parenthood. The cardinal’s call comes in the wake of the videos that have been released this summer by the Center for Medical Progress, revealing the abortion giant’s use of fetal tissue.
Here is Cardinal Daniel DiNardo’s statement:
Twenty years ago, Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) that “whatever is opposed to life itself… whatever violates the integrity of the human person … whatever insults human dignity … are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator”. Abortion, like other acts of indignity against the human person, is opposed to human life and is a violation of the law of God. Pope St. John XIII warned that those who violate [God’s] laws not only offend the divine majesty and degrade themselves and humanity, they also sap the vitality of the political community of which they are members”.
These Papal pronouncements leave one with an ominous feeling in the light of the recent videos that were released by the Center for Medical Progress, in which some executives from Planned Parenthood Inc. were shown to be discussing the sale of fetal organs, tissues, and body parts that were harvested from abortions. One such video included staff at a Houston clinic discussing the relationship between altering abortion procedures to obtain the most intact organs and their associated costs.
That Planned Parenthood Inc. claims that these atrocities are permissible under federal law is indicative of a moral breakdown in our society and shows “the immoral depths to which some segments of our society continue to fall”. We implore on well-meaning individuals everywhere to unite in our denunciation of these horrendous acts and call on the federal and local government not to pay a blind eye to these allegations, but to launch formal investigations into “the organ harvesting claims” against Planned Parenthood in light of these videos so that evil may not prevail.
