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The timing is unbelievably uncanny.

During an appearance Monday at the Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., President Obama was asked by an attendee about the practice of killing human beings in Africa with albinism and harvesting their body parts for “ritual purposes.”

The devastating irony of the president's answer, coming at a time when the United States' attention is focused on the macabre reality of what is happening in Planned Parenthood's clinics, is impossible to miss. 

The question was asked just one day before the release of the fifth – and most gruesome yet – video in a series of videos exposing Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting and selling the body parts of aborted babies.

This latest video includes graphic footage of lab technicians sorting through the body parts of a 20-week-gestation unborn baby – “It was a twin,” states one of the workers helpfully in the video – in which are clearly visible a tiny clenched hand, and legs and feet.

It's unfortunate that the question, and Obama's response, had absolutely nothing to do with the Planned Parenthood scandal – an issue that the president has assiduously avoided.

But the devastating timing of the question, and the irony of the president's answer, coming at a time when the United States' attention is focused on the macabre reality of what is happening in Planned Parenthood's clinics, is impossible to miss. 

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“Mr. President, persons with albinism in Africa are being killed and their body parts harvested for ritual purposes,” Obama was asked at the event. “My request to you is to raise this issue with the heads of states from African countries to bring these atrocities to an end, for the benefit of for us in this room, and our brothers and sisters back in Africa.”

“That's tomfoolery. That's craziness. It's cruel,” the president responded. He decried the idea that anybody would kill another person because of their pigmentation and urged his audience to resist the practice.

The president went on: 

Societies evolve based on new understandings and new science and new appreciation of who we are. And so we can preserve great traditions — music, food, dance, language, art — but if there’s a tradition anywhere in Africa, or here in the United States, or anywhere in the world that involves treating people differently because you’re scared of them, or because you're ignorant about them, or because you want to feel superior to them, it's a bad tradition. And you have to challenge it. And you can't accept excuses for it. 

If only Obama had taken that thought to its logical conclusion!

After all, if it's crazy to kill and harvest body parts from someone because of their skin pigmentation, it's obviously equally crazy and cruel to kill a person and harvest their body parts because of their age or location.

But my guess is that the president won't be making that connection publicly any time soon.

But we can, and should.

Indeed, we can and should use Obama's own poignant words to indict him for his silence and complicity in the face of Planned Parenthood's massacre.

Yes, Mr. President, what you said is true. Societies do indeed evolve based upon new understandings and new science. At one time it might have been excusable to deny the humanity of the unborn child. After all, we didn't know. We couldn't see the unborn child. We could only guess.  

But when you can watch a child sucking her thumb on a crystal-clear 3D ultrasound, with her heart beating and feet and legs kicking, then you no longer have any excuse. We no longer have any excuse.

When you can watch a Planned Parenthood worker picking up a fully intact hand, gently clenched into a fist, attached to a dismembered arm, from a 20-week-old baby, then you longer have any excuse.

We will take you up on your challenge Mr. President. When we see that unborn human beings are being treated differently because people are scared of them, or ignorant about them, or because they feel superior to them, we will declare that to be a bad tradition.

And we will challenge it. And we won't accept any excuses for it.

And that includes your own increasingly flimsy excuses.

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John Jalsevac is Web Strategy Director of LifeSiteNews.com. He has a bachelor's degree in philosophy with a minor in theology from Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. He has published hundreds of articles in publications including Crisis Magazine, Catholic Insight, The Wanderer, and of course, LifeSiteNews.