Wednesday night, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) delivered the first in a series of speeches that he will deliver from the Senate floor over the next several weeks about the ongoing Planned Parenthood scandal.
After a series of undercover videos revealed many of Planned Parenthood's abohorrent practices, including the sale of fetal body parts, Congress is debating whether to continue funding the controversial organization. Excerpts from the speech can be found below:
Last month, before the August recess, the Senate took up legislation – introduced by my friend, Senator Ernst – that would have ended federal funding for Planned Parenthood, transferring its subsidies to other women’s and community health clinics.
Unfortunately, the bill failed on its first vote. But the questions raised by the Planned Parenthood scandal – and the challenges it presents to Congress and the American people – have only grown since then.
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And yet, if you open a newspaper, click on the legacy media sites, and turn on the news… nothing. The major networks have gone dark on the videos over the last month. And major newspapers have scrubbed the scandal from their front pages.
Why the silence? Simple. They know it’s true, too. The media looked for the facts, and they found them, and they turned away. In the case of the Planned Parenthood undercover videos in the court of public opinion (as they taught me in law school), qui tacit consentire videtur: the media’s silence indicates their consent.
Everyone who has watched these videos knows that they have the power to change minds – and only in one direction. So the pro-abortion news media is doing everything they can to suppress the videos’ exposure.
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As I make the case against using taxpayer funds to facilitate, protect, and promote Planned Parenthood’s deceptions and violence, I hope my colleagues on the other side of these questions will join me from time to time. A good debate is always more fruitful than a monologue.
But as long as Planned Parenthood’s friends remain mute, I will endeavor to improve upon the silence, and in time, hopefully, to help improve upon our inadequate legal protections for the dignity of human life.
