It looks like there’s a whole lot to see, and at this moment, Planned Parenthood is gearing up for more legal scrutiny than it has seen in years. This is a good thing. But for hard-core abortion advocates, interestingly, it also might be the lesser of two evils. After all, legal arguments are a fantastic distraction from the video’s most important lesson, and the reason it went viral: Abortion, when you’re forced to acknowledge the reality of it, is an obvious moral horror. It involves killing little humans, many with lungs and hearts—not just “clumps” of “tissue”—and it happens every day. But hey, don’t worry: It’s legal! 

What can we make of a culture, growing in prominence in America, that seems to draw its moral guidelines from what is legally permitted—or endorsed—by the state? In this view, the law does not follow from a higher moral authority; the law is the higher moral authority. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of history should know that this is nonsense, that the law is capricious, and that the past 200 years alone are filled with “legal” atrocities. So why do certain people fall for this approach again and again?

Perhaps a statist God is easier to deal with than a real one. Perhaps, on a deeper level, we think we can control the former, or justify certain actions. If you watch the entire video of Dr. Deborah Nucatola’s Nightmare Lunchtime Roundup, you’ll witness her amazing willingness to push, pull, and twist her organization’s abortion practices—abortions past 20 weeks, “partial birth” abortions by another name, and more—to the outermost edge of the law.