Missouri Lawmaker Suggests Planned Parenthood Should Be Required to Build Memorial to Fetuses

This past Wednesday, Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, brought up some special plans in the House committees on Children and Families and Ways and Means. Evidently, Brattin wants Missouri to require Planned Parenthood to build a memorial to fetuses.

The idea took shape as part of a larger discussion about how the Missouri House was going to respond to the deceptively edited and discredited videos put out by the speciously named Center for Medical Progress. 

In speaking to KBIA, Brattin said, “We have (since 1973) 56 million babies that have been lost in the abortion service and industry, (so) I think maybe requiring that Planned Parenthood set up some type of memorial, like a Vietnam Wall type (memorial). I know that sounds crazy, but by state law (fetuses are) given human status, so should there be a human memorial attached to that human life?”

Aside from the fact that abortion is legal, can we just stop for a second to appreciate that he is equating adult people dying in war with pregnancies being terminated? Not to mention, what would such a memorial look like? I shudder to think.

Additional problems I came up with when thinking about this idea: 1) Planned Parenthood isn’t the only abortion provider in Missouri, and 2) the money Planned Parenthood would have to use to create the memorial could be put to better use preventing unwanted pregnancy. And did I already mention that abortion is completely legal?

His brilliant plan wasn’t the only ridiculousness on display at the meeting. Rep. Diane Franklin, R-Camdenton, made it clear she did not understand how fetal tissue is donated, despite having heard testimony from a pathologist on the subject.

“The pathologist can be a key in that, because if they receive one of the aborted babies and there is something that should be there that’s not there, we want them to be sure to flag that. Then we need someone at the Department (of Health) that is paying attention (and sees) that it is flagged, so we can go back, trace it right back, just like you’d trace a package from Amazon, ‘my package has gone missing,’ and be able to identify what happened.”

Rep. Stacy Newman, D-Richmond Heights, summarized the meeting aptly, saying, “I am perplexed. I know that this is a witch hunt hearing, in terms of trying to find some type of legislation for the majority to file next year, which we know is a presidential election year."

As KBIA notes, “Last month, Attorney General Chris Koster release a report stating that the Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis is properly disposing of fetal tissue and that there is ‘no evidence whatsoever’ that the clinic ever sold tissue.”

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