Yesterday David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were indicted by a grand jury. They are the investigative journalists of The Center for Medical Progress behind the sting operation who procured secret video footage of Planned Parenthood’s executives admitting to fetal part sales from abortions and many other ethically egregious (though legally ambiguous) admissions.

Meanwhile, an entire industry based on the killing of babies in utero is left untouched. We have an entire field of doctors turned legal murderers and few are even willing to consider whether our legal system should be changed to prevent this. Not only do we look on as they continue this practice under the protection of the law, but we have moved to penalize those who are exposing how truly dehumanizing their practice is (for mother, child, and doctor).

History seems doomed to repeat itself indeed.

During the rise of Nazism there was a group of students who boldly denounced all actions of the Nazi party. They were known as The White Rose, and put out several leaflets condemning the Nazi party as criminal, and urged Germans to take a stand against Hitler and his regime instead of taking part in collective guilt whether by action or apathy. They proclaimed in one such pamphlet, “We will not be silent. We are your bad Conscience. The White Rose will give you no rest.”

Similarly Daleiden and the CMP have been the collective American conscience, forcing us to look directly into the fire of the abortion industry that for so long we have avoided out of fear of being burned.

But instead of putting a halt to it, America has attempted to silence the conscience.

I’m sure there are many reasons contributing to this collective silencing.

Some may be shouting with legalism that Daleiden and Merritt are in fact law-breakers, and whatever “good” may have come out of it, the bad they did should be punished.

I suppose the same could be said of the students of The White Rose, who broke German law with their pamphlets, they must have deserved their resulting beheading for breaking the law, whatever “good” they accomplished.

Some may simply be pushing their heads further into the sand, ignoring the war that wages over the life of children and the well-being of their mothers, and leaving the fight to others. Perhaps they even resent Daleiden for bringing such a distasteful subject to America’s attention. It certainly doesn’t make for good dinner conversation.

I imagine the “euthanasia” project made for awkward small talk over German tables too.

Then there are those who continue to stand by Planned Parenthood, who see Daleidan and CMP as nothing more than an extremist group trying to shut down an organization that aims to help women.

Though there are similarities between Nazis and Planned Parenthood, they are not identical. Planned Parenthood isn’t knocking down doors to arrest people or reenacting Kristallnacht. Most people in Planned Parenthood clinics believe they are doing something good for the women who enter their doors. Most of them don’t hate babies: they just want to be sure that babies that are born are babies that are wanted. Most abortionists truly believe they are doing a good thing, that what they do is merciful and helps bring about a better tomorrow. Planned Parenthood doesn’t seem like an evil, tyrannical establishment seeking to annihilate an entire people group.

Unless you’re one of the babies they deem unwanted.

The thing is, Nazism seemed like a good thing to most Volk-loving Germans too. It seemed like a benevolent establishment who wanted to help the working class, to bring jobs to the poor, and strengthen a nation that had been decimated by a lost war. And the Nazi doctors truly believed in what they did, too. They really believed that by getting rid of the unwanted, or those who were “unfit for life”, they were being merciful and making the world a better place in the process. For most Germans, the rise of the National Socialist Party seemed like a good thing.

Unless you were one of the people they deemed unwanted.

In the mind of Planned Parenthood (and abortion supporters) a woman cannot reach her full potential (or progress) when she is under the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. For Nazis the German people could not reach their full potential (or progress) because they were under the burden of unwanted peoples. They both believe a human ideal can only be achieved if we stratify human value based on external, measurable definitions, and then rid ourselves of those who don’t measure up.

But what if our potential is not reached by forcing someone to die on our behalf, but by being willing to die (figuratively and literally) on their behalf instead?

What if our hope is not in progress but a person?

What if the human ideal is not Nietzsche’s progressive Superman, but Jesus?