The Kermit Gosnell Story Demands Answers

By: American Decency Staff

 

 

As many of you know, On New Year's day of this year, I held my wife's hand and watched as she gave birth to our Reagan Cassandra. It is hard for me, having that experience, to read about Kermit Gosnell's "clinic" without imagining the monster taking an infant – just as precious in God's eyes as our Reagan is – and stabbing her in the back of the neck with a pair of scissors.

I cut my daughter's umbilical cord moments after birth, signifying the beginning of  her life outside the womb, but to imagine those scissors first put to the hellish use of cutting the spinal cord is unspeakable.

There has been nearly unanimous uproar to the Gosnell story from both sides of the abortion debate, because nobody likes to think of these things happening to what are known as "viable fetuses." The fact that the difference between a "viable fetus," in this case, and a "baby" is whether or not the mother has pushed the child's head all the way out of her uterus is most likely something that many pro-choicers would rather not consider.

In case you haven't heard of Kermit Gosnell, which is entirely possible because it only finally began to get some coverage over the weekend, he's a Philadelphia abortionist who, after 17 years of horrific killing – not only of babies in the womb, but of second and third trimester infants who had already been delivered, and of at least one full-grown woman – is finally on trial to pay for his abhorrent crimes.

A 2011 Grand Jury report described Gosnell's practice, (this includes graphic descriptions of the procedures.)

 "When you perform late-term "abortions" by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women's Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it "ensuring fetal demise." The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that "snipping." 

Over the years, there were hundreds of "snippings." Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the "snipping" was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. 

But all the employees of the Women's Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn't murder at all. Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files. Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant — seven and a half months — when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal. The doctor joked that this baby was so big he could "walk me to the bus stop." Another, Baby Boy B, whose body was found at the clinic frozen in a one-gallon spring-water bottle, was at least 28 weeks of gestational age when he was killed. Baby C was moving and breathing for 20 minutes before an assistant came in and cut the spinal cord, just the way she had seen Gosnell do it so many times. And these were not even the worst cases."

Gosnell's trial began on March 18, and until this weekend, most people knew nothing about it. Last Friday, I saw a picture going around Facebook of the media section at the Kermit Gosnell trial. The rows were empty, save for the journalist taking the picture. Apparently no one considered a doctor who kept severed body parts in the refrigerator, reused unsterile disposable instruments (leading to the spread of venereal disease) , reserved special treatment for white women, had unlicensed and untrained assistants administer dangerous narcotics, purposely distorted ultrasounds, and, in at least one instance, allegedly forced a surgical procedure against the patient's will, is not newsworthy when the "medical facility" is an abortion clinic. Of course, it is also not worth reporting that several state organizations had at least partial knowledge of the atrocities committed by Gosnell and his employees (including a fifteen-year-old-girl) and yet, in seventeen years, never bothered to try to shut the place down.

Today, the liberal media is brimming with excuses for why they didn't consider this horror story to be news. In fact, The Atlantic has a roundup of "14 Theories for Why Kermit Gosnell's Case Didn't Get More Media Attention," some of which are laughable and some of which may have merit. Whatever reason each individual reporter or editor may have had, those empty chairs condemn the media to a detestable bias.

As the Grand-jury report pronounced, “We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."

The fact is, now that the story is out and more and more people are hearing about it, it begs for certain practical questions to be asked. How many other "clinics" operate in similar circumstances? There's already a report of a similarly unsanitary abortion mill in Nevada. Are abortions really as safe as advocates claim? What effect does legal abortion really have on a culture when it results in a media hesitant to report on such horrific activity and state agencies afraid to inspect their facilities, at least in part, due to a protective nature for the institution?

Even more so, the story forces ethical questions. Is there any difference between a late term abortion and the murder Gosnell is accused of when the only difference, as Kirsten Powers points out, is the location of the baby? Is it more conscionable to tear a baby apart inside the womb, than it is once it is outside of the womb? If a baby can't scream because it hasn't yet filled its lungs with air, is it still a baby?

These answers are obvious. Every abortion in this country is equally as horrific as anything Kermit Gosnell has done and it must be stopped.

It is also worth noting that during his time in the Illinois Senate, now President Barack Obama supported legislation that would have legalized Kermit Gosnell's atrocities. Senator Obama voted twice against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act which stated that, "alive child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.”

The legislation eventually passed at the federal level, but had Barack Obama gotten his way, Kermit Gosnel would be guilty of nothing but having a dirty clinic – and, of course, killing an adult woman.

If you want to read more about the Gosnell story and the lack of response by the state and the media, start with this article by Conor Friedersdorf.

Do you have doubts about abortion or are you wondering why we are pro-life? Check out the video below:

 

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