It’s been a while since anyone chatted as matter-of-factly about repurposing human body parts as Planned Parenthood officials did in those undercover videos captured by David Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress. In the words of one doctor caught on film, “I’m gonna basically crush below — I’m gonna crush above” certain desired morsels such as “heart, lung, liver.” No, most people probably hadn’t heard such candid talk for years now — decades, even. Not this side of Birkenau, anyway.

Organ tallying, boasts about efficiency, persnickety attention to detail, niggling over “transport costs” for the dead: Given the unfortunate historical associations triggered by all that, it’s no mystery that much of America has gotten a bad case of the creeps. The real wonder would have been if Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards hadn’t had to appear on a Sunday talk show, complaining about “entrapment” and “sensationalism” and “militants” and “smears.” So powerful are the videos that some people are already talking about them as a turning point in the public perception of abortion — as the pro-life movement’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as Noemie Emery has put it. Everyone who thinks that 58 million deaths are enough already devoutly hopes that she’s right.