Emotional fury displaces sound discourse on video

Much of the stridency surrounding the controversy centering on Planned Parenthood has recently focused on an incendiary video clip alleged to represent an aborted fetus awaiting dismemberment for the sale of its body parts.

Despite the admission by the makers of the original inflammatory films that it is stock footage and not filmed at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and the objections of the woman whose miscarriage was on display, these claims have not diminished.

In fact, presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has insisted all the more forcefully that it proves the original claims of criminality, and she is seconded by a chorus of backers.

It is easy to dismiss the endurance of these assertions as insincere posturing by those wishing to win political office or to criminalize abortion, and this may sometimes be the case.

Linking this upsetting image with Planned Parenthood performs the same magic of illogical association that advertisers have long employed.

We clearly understand that drinking a premium brand of vodka will not supply us with a luxury home or a handsome partner, yet our positive feelings still become associated with that brand.

The same unfounded transference occurs with negative imagery.

But there is a far a more troubling aspect to this stubborn insistence on the clip’s veracity, because it uses our emotional reactions to a general tragedy (in this case a miscarriage) as proof of a specific and unrelated crime (murder for the sale of tissue).

The danger of this process for the integrity of our criminal justice system has been proven.

In the early 1980s, what can only be described as a national panic caused hundreds of individuals employed in day care centers across the country to be accused of sexual molestation and the satanic ritual abuse of children in their care.

The wave had subsided by the end of the decade, when many of the convictions were overturned, but not before hundreds of lives had been destroyed and millions had gone into the investigations and trials.

A common characteristic of the prosecutions was substituting expert witnesses’ general descriptions of horrific acts they had encountered for any forensic evidence of the specific crimes being tried.

In a California case in which four defendants were given a combined sentence of over 1,000 years, judge Gary Friedman reiterated his confidence in the sentencing by saying he had personally seen photographs of the abuse showing “every perversion imaginable.”

However, no photographic evidence of any kind had ever been produced at the trial.

No doubt, Judge Friedman was sincere in his horror of harm to children, and tragically he applied that outrage to the particular case at hand.

The two convicted couples in question lost custody of their children and spent over 10 years in prison before being released on appeal.

It can only be hoped that despite the coming year of political carnival, remembering the injustices of the past can help anchor our discourse, redirecting emotional fury into a more productive exchange of fact as well as opinion.

This story was originally published October 6, 2015 at 6:37 PM with the headline "Emotional fury displaces sound discourse on video."