There Can Be No Planned Parenthood Funding Compromise

In an interview on last week’s Meet the Press JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called the coming threat of a government shutdown “just bad management.” The managers he was referring to were, of course, were the Republican leaders of Congress.

He added; "A democracy is a compromise by its nature. It's not a dictatorship."

I have a long history of challenging people, unschooled in a given discipline, from instructing professionals in that discipline. That statement by Mr. Dimon is a perfect example of why.

AFP Photo/Karen BLEIER

For starters, we are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic. Our founding documents are not points to be negotiated and decided by majority vote.

The 10 Amendments that comprise The Bill of Rights are not suggestions. They are absolute proscriptions against federal power.

To put Mr. Dimon’s pronouncement in context it is important to note that he was talking about the coming threat of a shutdown due to conservatives wishing to stop the funding of Planned Parenthood.

The president has promised to veto any spending bill that does not fully fund Planned Parenthood even if it shuts down the government.

The president, though, is not the one being accused of "my way or the highway." No: It’s Republicans who must get more reasonable and not be so uncompromising.

Dimon went on to say, “So anyone who says, ‘my way or the highway' on one issue, isn’t necessarily thinking about the United States of America.”

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd immediately interrupted him and asked, “Are you referring to the president’s ‘my way or the highway’ on immigration?”

(No. He didn’t really say that. I was just checking to see if you were paying attention.)

For Jamie Dimon and Chuck Todd, and for most in the mainstream media, to deride "my way or the highway" refers to Republicans who refuse to be more accommodating.

Frankly, compromise is not always a virtue. Nor will it always get us to a better place.

I once had a doctor friend whose wife was confused and angry about the failure of Congress to compromise with President Obama on healthcare. He brought her to my office to confront me directly.

Bill’s wife was an emotional basket case. “Why can’t you just do what is best for our country?” she asked shakily.

I told her that we had a serious disagreement over what we believed was best for our country.

“What if you and Bill were planning on moving?” I asked her. “Bill, here, wants to move to the last frontier and live and work and hunt in Alaska. You, on the other hand, want to move to the sunny beaches of Florida’s gulf coast.

“Do you compromise on San Francisco? How about New York City? Charlotte?

“Or do you continue to try to persuade the other as to which location would be best for both of you?”

That is where we are on funding for Planned Parenthood and the possible government shutdown. There are two diametrically opposing positions. There is no middle ground.

The videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the best way to abort the baby in order to harvest baby hearts and livers and kidneys and other body parts, and then further discussing the pricing of those body parts, illuminated the gruesome nature of our abortion policies.

That it occurs at all is a sad saga in the life of a free society. The fact that we are facilitating this practice with taxpayer’s dollars is an organized governmental attack on God’s order.

It is stunning that the defense of this barbaric practice has become a litmus test for Democrats.

Curiously, in the same year that the Supreme Court decided that unborn babies could be destroyed at any time for any reason the Endangered Species Act was passed making it a criminal offense, punishable with up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine, to destroy the eggs of sea turtles.

Democrats overwhelmingly support the protection of the unborn baby turtles, reminding us that a nation that puts people in jail and fines them for destroying the potential life of unborn turtles, and pays people for destroying the potential life of unborn babies, is a nation that has lost its way.

We can begin finding our way by ending the funding of an organization with a rapacious appetite for killing unborn babies and marketing their organs. It is not an issue that lends itself to compromise. It is a principle that must be fought for, whatever the cost.

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