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.