Samson and Daleiden

Reed JolleyCommunity News

Do you remember that story in the book of Judges? The one where the big strong guy was taken down by the persistence of a beautiful siren? This powerful Samson, you see, could tie together three hundred foxes by their tails, lift city gates, and turn a donkey’s jawbone into a weapon of mass destruction, but the charms of a clever seductress reduced this mighty man to a blind grain grinder in the land of the Philistines.

I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t seeing a replay of the strong being brought down by the weak. Only this time it is Samson and Daleiden, David Daleiden. Samson, in this modern-day parallel to the familiar Bible story, is the mighty Planned Parenthood, the non-profit organization that profits greatly from the abortion industry and receives roughly a half-billion dollars in taxpayer money each year. David Daleiden parallels the Old Testament Delilah.

Do you know the name David Daleiden? He is the charming, 27-year-old pro-lifer who just might cut the hair off Planned Parenthood. Daleiden calls himself a citizen journalist. He is the one who made the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress. These videos, easily accessible on Youtube, expose Planned Parenthood’s selling off various body parts of the unborn to medical groups seeking to use those organs for stem-cell research. The CMP video released on July 15 was shot with a hidden camera over lunch with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood. In the video, Nucatola famously sips red wine and pokes at her salad while talking about what her organization might offer to a group she believes to be medical researchers. At one point she says, chillingly and casually, A lot of people want hearts these days… We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, [and] liver because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.

The sale of human tissues is illegal, but did you know that it was David Daleiden who was arrested? In January, a Texas grand jury, assigned to investigate a Gulf Coast chapter of Planned Parenthood with regard to the sale of fetal tissue, instead indicted Daleiden on a felony charge of tampering with government records and presenting a fake driver’s license. If convicted Daleiden could spend twenty-two years in prison.

On February 4, Daleiden turned down a plea deal that would have kept him out of prison, smiled at reporters, and turned himself in at the Harris County criminal courthouse. In a press conference Daleiden said, They are sending a message that the state of Texas right now is open for business in baby body parts.

David Daleiden’s legal troubles will have to play themselves out, but I can’t help but wonder if his videos are seducing a nation. Our nation has seen with her eyes what previously was only heard with her ears. As we finish the first quarter of 2016, it strikes me that we are talking about the value of unborn life more than ever. Individual states are increasingly aggressive in passing laws restricting abortion, and the gravitational pull seems to be moving away from the abortion-as-birth-control mentality that has dominated our national consciousness for the past four decades. Numerous states have either put forward or passed bills that defund Planned Parenthood, require that abortion clinics have hospital admitting privileges, and punish those who coerce a woman into having an abortion. Alabama legislators are considering a constitutional amendment that would recognize human life at the moment of conception. The implications are not difficult to imagine.

I write this the day after Utah’s governor Gary Herbert signed into law a requirement that abortionists give unborn babies 20 weeks or older anesthesia before they are aborted lest they feel the pain of their own dismemberment. Last week the governor of Indiana signed a bill that would prohibit a woman from aborting her child solely on the basis of the fetus’s race, gender, or disability. In other words, the law of Indiana will state that a mother cannot abort her baby boy just because she was hoping for a baby girl. Surely both Utah’s law and Indiana’s bill will be tested in the courts, but—to quote the old Buffalo Springfield song—Something’s happening here… what it is ain’t exactly clear.

There is much happening here. Louisiana’s House of Representatives recently passed two bills favoring the unborn, including one that requires a 72-hour waiting period before an abortion may be performed. And did you see the now-famous Doritos commercial during the Super Bowl where an in utero baby competes with his father for snacks in a delivery room? Even Batman has entered the conversation in defense of the unborn. Well, not really Batman, but Jeremy Irons—who plays the role of Batman’s butler in the recent Batman v. Superman movie—went out of his way in a recent interview with The Guardian to say, I think the church is right to say [abortion is] a sin. Abortion harms a woman: it’s a tremendous mental attack, and physical, sometimes. But we seem to get that muddled. In a way, thank God the Catholic Church does say we won’t allow it, because otherwise nobody’s saying that it’s a sin.

Of course, all the news is not on the side of life. Our courts overrule laws restricting abortion rights almost as quickly as they are ratified; NARAL Pro-Choice America derided the Doritos ad in a tweet for antichoice tactics of humanizing fetuses & sexist tropes of dads as clueless & moms as uptight; and Jeremy Irons has been called things on the blogosphere that are unmentionable in Community News. David Daleiden may go to prison, and we may continue to have federally funded abortions. But still… something’s happening here.

Who would have thought that Delilah would bring down Samson? He was, after all, so very strong. And who would have imagined that Daleiden could bring down our nation’s leading abortion provider?

When the allied troops defeated the Nazi powers at the end of WW2, General Eisenhower was incensed at what he saw in the various death camps. He saw the evidence of thousands of dead Jews, exterminated like insects. He saw the starving survivors, reduced to skin and bones. Eisenhower was so angered by what he found and so troubled that the German people allowed this to happen that he gave an order forcing the people in towns near the prison camps to walk through them and see what they had allowed to take place.

Daleiden’s videos are our walk through the camps. They reveal the hard heart and the calloused conscience of a culture of death. Have you seen them? As one commentator writes,

Planned Parenthood and the abortion industrial complex are funded with our tax dollars. Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist openly committed to eugenics. Millions of unborn babies have died in its facilities. The group thrives because Americans allow it to thrive.

It is a good time for those of us on the side of life to keep talking with our neighbors about the value of all life, to keep praying to the God who gives life, and to keep encouraging our politicians that all life matters. All life is a gift to be welcomed in society and protected by law. God help us.