Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic reports.
The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I’ve read. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors,” it states. “The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.”
Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate’s coverage includes testimony as grisly as you’d expect. “An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions,” the channel reports. “Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, ‘literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.’ He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, ‘it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.'”
One former employee described hearing a baby screaming after it was delivered during an abortion procedure. “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” she testified. Said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its coverage, “Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell’s idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania.”
…
The grand jury report includes an image of a particularly extreme case (the caption is theirs, not mine):
That photo pertains to an unusual case, in that the mother had to seek help at a hospital after the abortion she sought at Gosnell’s office went awry. The grand jury report summarizes a more typical late-term abortion, as conducted at the clinic, concluding with the following passage:
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.
There’s plenty more to this story, but I expect by now you’ve heard and seen more than enough.
Bloggers are asking why this story has received only scant, sanitised coverage in the MSM.
To sum up, this story has numerous elements any one of which would normally make it a major story. And setting aside conventions, which are flawed, this ought to be a big story on the merits.
The news value is undeniable.
Why isn’t it being covered more?
I think the answer is
The mainstream media won’t cover this trial because it makes their pro-abortion views look bad. Plain and simple. They are advocates for their own pet causes. NOT objective journalists.
Mark Steyn says
Relatively few people wish to commit mass murder on the scale of Gosnell – that’s the good news. The bad news is that the vast ranks of newspaper publishers, TV executives, editors, news producers, radio assignment editors, and reporters somehow reached an instant, near universal consensus that a man who may well be America’s all-time champion mass murderer isn’t a story at all, never mind one to hold the front page for – because they didn’t see him as a murderer; they saw him as a “choice-provider” who got a little out of hand.
Cameron Slater calls this The Abortion story that the MSM won’t cover and asks
If the media won’t cover this story, what else aren’t they covering?
There’s nothing original in today’s blog post, but … well, I think that you should know.
[Hat tip: Whale Oil]
This is an atrocity… and it stems from the belief that unborn children don’t have rights.
Yet may I suggest to you, a Bitter Irony…. What he did was *not Legal* even under current Pro-abortion Law, and what is worse is that If abortion was to be banned completely… more woman would die in Illegal clinics run by monsters like this… and these sorts of Horror stories *would increase*… not Decrease.
It’s a bit like saying Prohibition of drugs does not ‘work’… though of course *some people* will not do drugs because it’s illegal and will be ‘saved’ from the problems of addiction, and overdose, and other health and social problems which can arise from using…. Yet still the evils of Prohibition greatly outweigh the harm they are supposed to alleviate.
So it is with the Abortion issue.
Prohibition will not magically solve such problems as this one in this story.
Really this is a testimony to the depravity of Mankind in that there will always be psychopaths willing to ‘cater’ for almost any demand… the Love of money…etc.
This also highlights the only real hope of reducing these sorts of evils is via a spiritual enlightenment… via preaching the full spectrum of Godly values regarding the virtues of Sex as a sacred thing between Married couples… that God created Mankind… and that therefore unborn babies have rights… and that Doctors ought to know better than to believe unnecessary Abortions for convenience sake… are anything less than murder.
Thus it will take a Cultural revolution reversing the current ‘acceptability’ of having a family Dr whom looks after your Daughters cold on Monday’s… but then pays for his sports car and Batch by Mass murder Tuesdays and Friday.
This Revolution is completely voluntary and will really work because it gets to the heart of the problem.
which is spirtual darkness and a lack of personal ethics.
Thus I am unmoved away from my Libertarian position as stated in ‘Saturn’s Children’… here.
http://blog.eternalvigilance.me/2012/01/saturns-children-libertarianism-and-abortion/
There is a hell awaiting the slayers of the innocent.
Tim
There is no parallel between drug use and abortion/murder – unless you think that murder should be legalised. Murder should be illegal – even a penalty of death is justified.
You consider the doctor to be a monster and the mothers to be victims. That makes no sense. The mothers and the doctor are both committing the same murderous acts.
Tim, if that was meant to be an argument …
… I think Reed just shot it down in flames. (Natural justice.)
Ummm. I dont think so. Two wrongs dont make a right.
You are saying woman whom want abortions ‘deserve’ to be exposed to butchers…
Got your bag of stones ready.
I must say I dont like to go down ‘Pragmatism street’. I dont believe that pragmatic reasons are the Real basis of morality, yet when we are dealing with trying to form a peace treaty with unbelievers, we need to appreciate that such pragmatic considerations will help. This whole problem of abortion only comes about because no where near everyone believes ‘God created mankind and endowed us with certain inalienable rights’
If We were on a desert island and everyone was a Christain we could form a free sociery which constitutionally protected the rights of unborn children. Yet as things go we are negotiating our own liberty with the children of Darkness… whom we hope to convert via preaching… not Legalistic oppression.
Tim
Are you saying that it is wrong to punish people for murder as part of the justice system?
I have thought about this some more and changed my reply.
I do believe in retribution, yet I dont see the arguement that exposing woman whom want abortions to butchers as a good arguement.
Having said that I dont like abortion fullstop, so I dont like to be in a postion where I am making arguements which appear that I support it.
I dont like making arguements which look like I support Prostitution, Islam, cigarettes, suicide, etc.
I must confess that The repugnance of Abortion is so great that I am on the verge of admitting that it ought to be not negotible ….a crime. This does create massive problems for me in respect to limiting the power of the state, and though it is damnable, so too are the lies of atheism, islam, etc, thus showing that the Damnable nature of a thing cannot be the justification of legal prohibitions… according to the Christian position of grace
I would wash my hands of the whole business and let the world go to hell… unfortunately thats not an option.
To resolve matters between man and God we have Jesus’ sacrifice. The old system of resolving matters between man and God has been done away with (dispensed).
To resolve matters between man and man we have justice. Justice has not been done away with.
Making/supporting laws to punish people for being sinful is unchristian.
Making/supporting punishment for people that commit an unjust act against another person is Christian.
It’s not the repugnance of abortion that means it should be a crime – it’s that the act of abortion is someone committing an unjust act against another.
No, all I’m saying is, “Put up again thy abortionist into his place …” (Matthew 26:52)