Thursday, April 11, 2013

Serial Infanticide in Philadelphia


The trouble with America is that there are not more liberals like Kirsten Powers.

While Republicans routinely thrash their fellow Republicans liberal Democrats have discovered the political advantages of singing from the same hymnal. Once the correct opinion is established most liberals fall meekly into line.

Liberal journalists are the worst of the lot. Seeing themselves more as propagandists than reporters they have sold their integrity for political power.

Only a few liberals, Kirsten Powers among them, have had the courage to call out the liberal media on its fundamental dishonesty.

This morning, in her USA Today column, Powers raises the issue of media coverage of the trial of accused serial killer Kermit Gosnell. The trial has been going on in a courthouse in Philadelphia since mid March.

Abortionist Gosnell is not being tried for practicing abortion. He is on trial for murdering dozens babies that were born alive, only to be murdered and tossed in the trash. Most of the babies were racial minorities.

The grand jury report described the scene:

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.’

You would think that the story of a Holocaust in Philadelphia would pique the interest of the mainstream media. Not at all. The silence is deafening.

So Powers shames them:

Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A childscreaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations?

It's not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell's former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart.

NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that, Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, "described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body." One former worker, Adrienne Moton,  testified that Gosnell taught her his "snipping" technique to use on infants born alive.

Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified "It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place." Here is the headline the Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100 babies born and then snipped: "Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion clinic."

"Chaos" isn't really the story here. Butchering babies that were already born and were older than the state's 24-week limit for abortions is the story. There is a reason the late Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called this procedure infanticide.

Powers points out that the mainstream media provided extensive coverage when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut.” When it comes to the Gosnell story, not a word:

A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment onMeet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.

The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial's first day. They've been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.

Why the silence of the press? Powers suggests that relates to the debate over late-term abortion.

She responds on moral, not legal grounds:

Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.

For reasons that have nothing to do with reason proponents of late-term abortion believe that laws prohibiting the procedure will threaten a woman’s right to choose an early term abortion, an abortion before the fetus is viable.

The grand jury report, however, makes clear that the babies delivered by these means were viable.

We should add that this issue of what to do about babies that were delivered alive after an abortion was debated during the 2008 presidential campaign. It turns out that Illinois State Senator Barack Obama voted against bills that would have afforded legal protections to a baby born as a result of an abortion.

Obama defended himself on the grounds that the bill would have threatened a woman’s right to choose. The offending passage in the bill reads as follows:

A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.

Since he is nothing if not a master of obfuscation Obama defended his position by confusing a baby who was born alive after a late-term abortion with a “previable fetus.”

He even seems to suggest that a child that is not carried to term, that is born prematurely, should not be guaranteed legal protections.

In Obama’s words:

Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a child, a nine-month-old child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute

Perhaps the media is covering up the case of Kermit Gosnell because does not want to have to return to Barack Obama’s failure to cast a vote to protect the life of a baby, born prematurely as the result of an abortion.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone think that there is 'middle ground' the US Republicans can find on abortion, to market themselves better to wimmyn?

JPL17 said...

The leftist press isn't covering, and will not cover, this shocking story, because neither they nor their readers are willing to face (a) the reality that what goes on outside the womb in Gosnell's office is also going on inside the womb in clinics all over the country, meaning that human beings are being tortured and killed every day in the process of being aborted; and (b) the reality that their moral position -- i.e., "abortion on demand, for anyone, at any time" -- is morally bankrupt and inevitably leads to infanticide.

On this last point -- How could the leftist position NOT eventually lead to infanticide? I think it must. It is based entirely on the legal distinction between "child completely or partially inside the womb = OK to kill," vs. "child completely outside the womb = not OK to kill." Although this legal distinction is clear and should be easy to follow, it is morally stupid. And human beings do not like to obey, and eventually will not obey, morally stupid legal distinctions.

Dr. Gosnell must have realized the moral stupdity of the distiniction between killing a child that's still partially in the womb and killing one that's completely outside the womb. He therefore chose to ignore it. I doubt very much that he's the only one to do so.

This is NOT to defend a monster like Gosnell. It is to indict the leftist monsters who pushed for "abortion on demand, for anyone, at any time" for so long, that they made Gosnell inevitable.

Bobbye said...

Where are the letters to constituates from the anti-abortion politicians? crickets< The american people are uninformed because they choose to be. After 40 years of murder (> 50 million) they have no conscience.

Anonymous said...

No one likes to air their dirty laundry in public, especially when the stakes are so high. Evidently, liberals believe this would confuse the low information voter (their main listenorship) that all abortion is bad.

As Powers notes, the silence is deafening.

CatherineM said...

This is why I like Kristen.

It's unbelievable that this house of horrors isn't on the front page and the first news story on the nightly news every night.

If this story was about puppies or kittens, you know this would be front page news. However, it's about human babies and since the media considers abortion something holy, it must not be discussed.

CatherineM said...

And yeah, the media refused to discuss the Obama Il connection during 2008. In that story, nurses went to the authorities over babies born alive and left to die in supply closets because they were "abortions."

Sam L. said...

I await Veronica's take on killing these future feminists. And the boys, too.

Mark said...

Well said. This is the biggest story in America even without the political implications. Obama's fanatical positions on abortion and infanticide led him to thwart the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois. The only moral difference between Obama and Mengele is that Mengele was intellectually honest by comparison.

Anonymous said...

It is a moral predicament with two views that can't coexist. If you believe late-term abortion is murder, it doesn't matter where the fetus is. If you don't think murder applies to late-term abortions with the mothers consent, then infanticide can't exist in these cases.

Viability is the current legal limit for abortion, somewhere from 24-28 weeks, and it looks like doctor and mothers will legally or illegally push those limits whatever boundary you define, and calling this criminal behavior today, but not yesterday is hopeless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viability_(fetal)

The only good answer is to reduce the demand for abortion, reduce the demand for late term abortion. But where this fails, legal or illegal, I don't even know what criteria should be considered, whether "reducing pain" is the primary one.

Spontaneous abortions can happen before 24 weeks, apparently based on developmental failures, so that's already a medical reality that has to be faced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage

I accept there's real moral dilemmas here, and the law isn't able to make them disappear.

I'd prefer no late-term abortions, but if they exist, I'll go with the rare, legal (noncriminal) and safe defense.

n.n said...

What characteristic distinguishes between inert and living matter?

What characteristic distinguishes between plant and animal life?

What characteristic distinguishes between animal and human life?

What is the common standard for recognizing that death has occurred?

As for legal guidance, there is our national charter that recognizes unalienable Rights from "creation". There is our constitution that recognizes equal protection, which, among other things, codifies into law that a human life cannot be prematurely aborted without cause and due process.

Elective abortion, especially for the purpose of preserving the wealth and welfare of the mother and/or father, is a degenerate cause. It is both a human and civil rights violation to deprive another human being of their life for capricious and petty reasons.

Anonymous said...

reply to n.n:
"What characteristic distinguishes between inert and living matter, ... between plant and animal life, ...between animal and human life?"

E.F. Schumacher expressed this idea of "levels of being" in his book "A guide for ther perplexed", with a good summary on wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed#Levels_of_being

I like his analysis of levels of being as higher dimensions, so the lower exists along with the higher, and each new level adds a new complexity, but greater fragmentation, so humans have the highest (knowable) level of being in potential, but there's no guarantee even when we're ready for the highest level, that we'll take the step.

But whatever we are, potential isn't enough, and part of what we are isn't in our genes but in our life-long development of mastery over ourselves and our socialization, and so "quality is more important than quantity" and parental skill and attention are as important to our budding humanity as our sacred genetic possibility.

Anyway, Schumacher is worth a read, not to say there's clear answers, but directions that don't require that we judge and control everyone else's sins. If God is willing to let people to their own conscience, why must we stand as judges to condemn decisions we've successfully avoided.

Here's a nice summary from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed#Implications
For Schumacher, recognising these different levels of being is vital, because the governing rules of each level are different, which has clear implications for the practise of science and the acquisition of knowledge. Schumacher denies the democratic principles of science. He argues that all humans can practise the study of the inanimate matter, because they are a higher level of being; but only the spiritually aware can know about self-consciousness and possibly higher levels. Schumacher states that "while the higher comprises and therefore in a sense understands the lower, no being can understand anything higher than themselves."

Schumacher argues that by removing the vertical dimension from the universe and the qualitative distinctions of 'higher' and 'lower' qualities which go with it, materialistic scientism can in the societal sphere only lead to moral relativism and utilitarianism. While in the personal sphere, answering the question 'What do I do with my life?' leaves us with only two answers: selfishness and utilitarianism.

In contrast, he argues that appreciating the different levels of being provides a simple, but clear morality. The traditional view, as Schumacher says, has always been that the proper goal of man is "...to move higher, to develop his highest faculties, to gain knowledge of the higher and highest things, and, if possible, to 'see God'. If he moves lower, develops only his lower faculties, which he shares with the animals, then he makes himself deeply unhappy, even to the point of despair." This is a view, Schumacher says, which is shared by all the major religions. Many things, Schumacher says, while true at a lower level, become absurd at a higher level, and vice versa.

Schumacher does not claim there is any scientific evidence for a level of being above self-consciousness, contenting himself with the observation that this has been the universal conviction of all major religions.

Malcolm said...

This is another explanation. Good article


http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/little_anthony_freemonts_twilight_zone_is_our_reality.html

Veronica said...

I don't see any reason for those of us on the pro-choice side of the political fence to avoid talking about Kermit Gosnell. And if the media is truly trying to "cover" for Obama, they shouldn't.

(1) What Gosnell did was murder, not abortion. It was appalling and wrong, regardless of whether these babies were "future feminists" or future "Rick Santorums" (Side note to Sam: "future feminists" and "boys" are not necessarily separate categories.)

(2) Obama was right to vote as he did. Illinois already had statutes that criminalize murder. There was no need for additional language in the abortion bill to clarify that murder is illegal. The additional language was simply an anti-choice artifice to try to conflate abortion with murder.

(3) Pro-choicers in fact should be yelling from the rooftops about the Gosnell case. He is an example of what happens when it is made difficult to life-threatening for reputable doctors to provide abortion services. Women, especially poor women, are left to rely on bottom feeders like this guy.

Anonymous said...

Why isn't the Mainstream Media covering this story? Interesting question. Another interesing question is this: why was it only under a Democratic, Liberal, pro-choice president that the clinic was investigated and eventually, shut down? Why is it Obama's administration, and not Reagan's, or George Bush's (I or II) that did something about it, if they cared so very much about the life of the unborn?

Reagan, Bush I and II did nada, while bemoaning abortion.

Clinton didn't, either, but then, he had a Pro-Choice stance. I'm not saying that's excusable, but you must admit, it looks worse for the conservative ones who profess to hate abortion and care so much about it to be doing nothing.

Meanwhile, it's Obama, he of the mass gonocide, who is prosecuting this guy for murder. Whoops!

Stuart Schneiderman said...

I believe that the case is being tried in a local or a state court, not in federal court.

Besides, if the story was receiving the coverage that it should, the questions you raise would have been brought up.

Anonymous said...

Well, the trial is in Philly, but the indictment was brought by the DEA, the FBI, and the Office of the Inspector General(DHHS). All FEDERAL agencies.

Nice way of deflecting and shifting blame, but the fact remains: it is the great killer himself, Barack Obama, who finally did something about it, not the Pro-Life Republicans.

Stuart Schneiderman said...

I have no problem looking at the different levels of responsibility here. Gosnell was investigated by the Federal government, at first, I believe, for drug charges, but the indictment was brought by a Philadelphia Grand Jury, not a federal grand jury.

For the record, here's a link to the indictment:
http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/pdfs/grandjurywomensmedical.pdf

Kirsti said...

Thanks for the link, Stuart. Looks like the PA Department of Health looked the other way for years, despite several reported deaths and numerous complaints conected to Gosnell.

Again, why isn't this a bigger story? The DOH looked the other way. The same DOH that is supposed to be helping all the poor women Veronica says were forced to go to Gosnell. They weren't even doing routine inspections. Why did the head of the DOH ignore this bottom feeder for so many years? Why were nail salons scrutinized more carefully than abortion clinics? Anybody want to hazard a guess?

And, Anonymous @ 12:19, if you want tit for tat, the governor that is in charge with going after Gosnell is a Republican. The previous Governor when most of the complaints about Gosnell arose, was a Democrat.

Dennis said...

http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/why-dr-kermit-gosnells-trial-should-be-a-front-page-story/274944/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pSRlRR_sA98

This is what happens when one begins to define when human life begins. It does NOT matter what the LAW currently states it is because the law is a function of the society and can be changed.
It would seem that feminists think that it is fine to kill in all situations before birth, and it looks as if outside of birth as well if nobody gets caught, see Planned Parenthood representative trying to justify who was the patient in a botched abortion, but if a woman decides to have a child then it belongs to the state. Before, it is a clump of tissue, an IT, a parasite, et al. Anything but a human being. For those whose think a baby in the womb is an IT. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/254535.php
In the first link is a good picture, of what I thought was a girl baby at first, of a girl who has been aborted. Looks like my daughters and granddaughters when they were born. One must be suffering from a malignant disease of the soul if they can justify any of it. The sad part here is that a significant percentage of these gristly procedures would not happen had people really took responsibility for their bodies. Are there not enough birth control devices that can be effective in preventing pregnancy? Can one not be smart enough to understand that when one puts themselves in not well thought out situations that bad things happen? At some point one has to stop blaming everybody else for their failures.
As the second link denotes many want the state to make others pay for these murders. Now why am I supposed to pay for something that disgust me. It does not provide for the common defense or ensure life liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness.
The modern day feminist will never accept that feminism has a dark side that will be increasingly hard to justly. I suspect that this is why there is a group called Feminists For Life. They understand that one is defined by what they justify and want no part of it.
Closing one eyes, ears and mind to what is happening will not protect one when people finally start asking questions about what they see as a just society that protect the innocent.

Dennis said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3bw1CwOusc&feature=player_embedded

If one is going to be for something then they ought to know what they justify looks like. WARNING These are very graphic images. I know that I just could not make it through the whole thing.

There are a number of videos of the abortion procedures in various stages of pregnancy. I would say enjoy, but I am at a loss how any person who claims to be a human being can even think this is acceptable.
Stuart,
I hope I am not over stepping the rules of your blog, but the truth should not scare those who are interested in it.

Anonymous said...

The Philadelphia Grand Jury Indictment was only brought AFTER the DEA, FBI and other federal agencies finally raided the clinic. State and city agencies had known about it for many years and did nothing. Yes, their initial investigation was for drug violations, but it led to the murder and other charges.

This was in 2010, two years after Obama got into office. Personally, I think he probably ordered the crack down. Why? Because these were poor black women, and he wanted to do something about it.

I think it's pretty clear that it was pressure from the federal agencies involved that finally bright this guy down. That it is being prosecuted in a state court is not very relevant.

Besides, I don't see why you are getting so finicky about details. If you can blame Obama for Newtown ("It happened on his watch"), you can certainly credit him for anything else that happens "under his watch."

Amparo said...

This is cool!