If you have not yet watched the series of videos released by the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress, I urge you to do so. While I have no interest in causing any of you grief or suffering (and watching any one of the six that have been released so far will absolutely cause you both), I cannot understate the importance of their message.

Planned Parenthood, a so-called “women’s health provider” that enjoys taxpayer-backed subsidies in amounts that could have sent quite a few kids to medical school, has engaged in a systematic program of murdering and dismembering babies in order to sell their organs for profit. Whether you watch CMP’s original video releases, which were edited for time but not content, or the full-length editions, the truth is as clear as the fact that Hillary Clinton ought to be looking into which rest homes will accept convicted felons. To be honest, the full-length recordings are far more damning than shortened releases. What they reveal is an organization operated with a chilling lack of humanity. Whether they’re discussing baby-organ prices over a nice salad and glass of wine or angrily smearing someone who objects to that kind of blasé evil, they function with a casual disregard for life that makes Jeffrey Dahmer seem like a nursery school teacher.

Since the release of CMP’s original video, Planned Parenthood and its leftist accomplices have engaged in an ongoing campaign of disinformation and outright dishonesty in an effort to protect their macabre enterprise. Beyond continuing to perpetrate the lie that killing 94 percent of the babies they meet somehow qualifies as “healthcare,” they’ve also opened fire on the CMP and the videos themselves — even going so far as to claim the videos themselves are “hoaxes,” presumably hoping that we’ll believe them instead of our “own lyin’ eyes.”

There’s not another species on the planet in which the mothers kill their own children as a matter of convenience. Even dolphins and whales — which Greenpeace insists are every bit as smart, if not smarter, than gun-toting, Bible-thumping conservatives — get rather agitated when their offspring are threatened. And if those cetaceans are as wise as the eco-loons say they are, then I expect they’d be mortified by the fact that not only do some of the noisy, hairless monkeys murder their own children, but others have turned it into a growth industry.

In the interest of full disclosure, the abortionistas view people like me the way I view the guys who spent too much time around playgrounds and ended up on a “registry.” I am seriously pro-life, and I’m seriously not apologetic about it. Not only do I consider abortion a crime against nature, I consider it a direct affront to God. The sacrifice of His Son was an almost unbelievable gift, and I worry about how He reacts every time he watches one of us squander it because we’re “not ready.” What really chaps the abortionistas’ hides is my refusal to qualify my pro-life stance with the political dodge “except in instances where the life of the mother is in jeopardy.” And while I understand the need for protections of victims of rape and incest (sometimes the psychic cost has to all involved has to be weighed), I remain enormously uncomfortable, mostly because the child is essentially being victimized twice.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve even wandered away from support for capital punishment, a stance that puts me at odds with fellow conservatives who think that some crimes are too monstrous to allow the criminal to infect our world for another moment. While I will acknowledge that war is sometimes unavoidable (say, if a failed art student with a bad haircut gets together with a guy who thinks everyone else in Asia exists to serve him), I will also suggest that our behavior often strikes me as suicidal. And while defending yourself and your loved ones from some onrushing thug might be unavoidable, executing one under the aegis of the state seems more like vengeance than justice. Some people don’t deserve to spend another moment among the rest of us. But that’s why we have penitentiaries.

As this week draws to a close, a new CMP video has revealed that Planned Parenthood’s insistence that it obtains patient consent for all dismemberments and subsequent sales is as bogus as “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Even worse, there are rumored to be as many as 13 more of these videos to come. For their part, Planned Parenthood is digging in; and the Democrats and their media henchmen are helping.

And that begs the question: Do we really want to offer our support to people who view our children, but not their own, as commodities? For my part, I consider it one of the most important litmus tests for anyone seeking my electoral approval — more important than any economic or social attitude. If you “stand with Planned Parenthood,” I will never stand with you. If you won’t rise in defense of the most defenseless, then I will never rise in defense of you.

–Ben Crystal