I do not normally talk about abortion: it’s a difficult subject, and while my opinions on it have progressed to the point where I am definitely pro-life it is not my top domestic policy issue. But upon reading this post on the failure – no; the systematic refusal – of pro-choice individuals and groups to stop Kermit Gosnell, I feel that I should point out three things.
- Kermit Gosnell confirms every single dread that the pro-life movement had about abortionists. If he was in a book, his habits, methods, attitudes, and hygiene would be widely derided as being inflammatory. But it all happened.
- The current visible reaction by the pro-choice movement confirms every single prejudice that the pro-life movement has about pro-choicers. Gosnell has defenders. Defenders who want unrestricted abortion – who we kept getting told earlier didn’t actually exist. Well, they exist… and they’re not being sat upon by less radical members of their side.
- The media’s non-coverage of this atrocity confirms every single suspicion that the pro-life movement has about the media. Eight formal counts of murder, thirty-three formal counts of illegal abortions – and I had to go to the grand jury document itself in order to find that latter number*. Ace of Spades – who is also somebody who doesn’t normally talk about pro-life issues – waxes wroth on this and related subjects; I’ll add that there’s every indication that a cover-up by officials in the state government (including appointees from pro-choice Republican former Governor Tom Ridge**) is going on… which is apparently not newsworthy, either.
Put more simply: there is nothing in this case that does not support pro-life arguments – including the ones that pro-choicers have been prone to denigrate as being silly, paranoid, and/or outrageous. There have been widespread late-term abortions, in flagrant violation of the law. The laws are not preventing this from happening. The people doing the abortions can operate with impunity. Pro-choice officials c0nnived to let ideology trump respect for the law. Minority women were disproportionately victimized here.
And pro-lifers are right to be infuriated by all of the above. I certainly am.
Moe Lane
*Here’s Gosnell’s Wikipedia page. More accurately, here’s Gosnell’s lack of a Wikipedia page.
**Who should probably forget about future public service in Republican administrations, by the way.
It’s not my top issue either. From where I stand, the official Democrat, pro-choice position that abortion should be legal as long as a toenail still lies in the womb is clearly wrong. But considering that from what I’ve read, many, many pregnancies end before the woman even knows she’s pregnant, the position that absolte protection needs to be given as soon as the egg is fertilized, the official Republican position I can’t really agree with either, because that would turn women who, say, do vigorous exercises and lose their baby into criminals. But having said that, I would guess in sheer numbers while neither the Republican nor the Democrat position is held by a majority of he population, there are probably more people who hold the Republican one than the Democrat one. And also, having said that, since we have to draw a line, I’m comfortable with erring where the line is drawn on the side of life.
We cannot prevent abortions. We can prevent abortion atrocities like this. Let’s require that any facility that offers abortions be inspected every thirty days. It can be paid for by required such facilities to pay $100, 000 a year to operate and the doctors who perform such surgeries to pay a fee of $50,000 per year to do so. The doctors should also be required to carry malpractice insurance of at least $100,000,000.
Any clinic failing inspection would be shut down for 30 days for the first violation, one year for the second and permanently for the third. Any doctor not in compliance would lose his license for one year.
Abortion is a specialty and the its practitioners should pay for its proper regulation.
“Abortion is a specialty…”
So is being a contract killer, but I don’t see the DNC enshrining support for that in its platform.
Skip, the term for a miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion. An induced abortion is the purposeful taking of a life.
While some pregnancies end spontaneously, I’ve never heard of anyone accusing an pregnant women who exercised of being a criminal. That’s really a bit of hyperbole.
I am glad that you are on the side of the line of life, but I wouldn’t consider it an error.
Ken, those are great suggestions, but the abortion industry (and it is an industry) would fight them tooth and nail. Abortion is not so much a specialty as it is a cash cow; hence, we have men like Gosnell.
I’m inclined to be pro choice for concerns about women’s health, but all the dehumanization of fetuses by other pro-choicers might push me into life territory.
See, I’m strongly Agnostic. And the thing about the “it’s-just-a-clump-of-cells” argument that bothers me from a materialist standpoint is that, well, everybody’s just a clump of cells. There is no argument from a non-religious standpoint that can justify saying a fetus isn’t human. We’re all mere collections of tissue. Assuming there’s actually such a thing as a soul, it seems arbitrary to say an embryo doesn’t have one, and assuming that the soul DOESN’T exist, again, there would seem to be no justification to treat a fetus differently from any other flesh-and-blood person.
Abortion ends a human life, and that should be solemnly acknowledged. I think that sometimes it’s the lesser of two evils if the mother’s life is also in danger, one person dying instead of two. But we can’t just treat people as if they were meat.
A point. The women who came to Gosnell’s clinic didn’t wander in off the street they where referred there by people who were aware that he was breaking the law. To my mind they are as guilty as he is, they don’t need to just prosecute him they should hunt down and remove the people who referred the women to him.
INC, it draws from the premise. One the baby is in a protected state, allowing that baby to come to harm via inaction would clearly be negligence. Actively doing something which harms the baby would be treated similarly. Both would necessarily draw sanction in law in a consistent system. If you don’t think they should, then you’re agreeing with the premise that the baby should have less protection at that stage of the pregnancy. Life begins at conception – that I have no problems with, but treating that life legally the same way you treat it nine months hence has consequences, which I’m not sure you’ve thought through.
Inc, you can deny it all you like, but back when I was a young man, it was not uncommon for a girl who had missed a period or two to do strenuous exercise until the “problem” had been “eliminated.” No matter what you believe about life and morality, any attempt at making first trimester abortions illegal will fail. The battlefield should be over the second trimester, or something less arbitrary, like viability. After that, we are talking about murder.
Physicians have been encouraging women to exercise during pregnancy for quite a while. I have never heard that a healthy young woman could miscarry through exercise in the first trimester.
BTW, I graduated was in college during the early 70s and even considered becoming a nurse. I took maternal-infant nursing as a junior.
Hi, Moe, great post, I linked to it over at my place:
http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/01/other-victims.html
Catseye — read about some of Gosnell’s victims, and their stories of changing their mind once they saw the “dazed and bleeding” women “recovering” in the waiting room. They were strapped down, injected with sedatives — and woke up un-pregnant, because Dr. Gosnell “didn’t have time for” second thoughts.