The case of Kermit Gosnell reached the newspapers just a few days before the 38th anniversary of Roev.Wade. President Obama did not mention Gosnell in his official statement celebrating the anniversary. But the case sheds more light on Roe’s import than the statement did.
Obama did not refer to the word “abortion,” preferring instead to discuss “reproductive freedom” and the “fundamental principle” that “government should not intrude on private family matters.” The stories about Gosnell were a little less abstract. They told of a clinic where dirty instruments spread venereal disease, cats roamed and defecated freely, and some patients died. The state government conducted essentially no oversight; administrations of both parties wanted to keep abortion as free from governmental intrusion as possible.
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Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic’s lack of hygiene is not the detail that has captured the most attention, or inspired the most outrage. It turns out that Gosnell frequently, perhaps hundreds of times, fully delivered intact fetuses and then used scissors on the newborn. In his words, he engaged in “snipping” to “ensure fetal demise.” In many cases, the fetuses were in the third trimester.
This procedure, sometimes called a “live-birth abortion,” is illegal. But not thanks to President Obama. As a state legislator in Illinois, he argued that the law should offer no protection to neonates if they had been delivered before viability. He said that protecting them would violate Roev.Wade and undermine the right to abortion. What looked like infanticide to most people was for him, it must be inferred, a “private family matter.” When Gosnell applied his scissors to pre-viable children, he was, on Obama’s terms, merely exercising a cherished freedom.
Credit Obama with a real insight: The physical location of a human being conceived five months ago may mark the difference between whether he is considered a “fetus” or an “infant,” but it cannot mark a moral difference. Nor can it make a moral difference whether this being is partly inside the womb. When Congress moved to ban partial-birth abortion, most liberals took the view that any prohibition had to include a health exception: If in the judgment of the abortionist the safest method of . . . ensuring fetal demise . . . was to partly deliver the fetus, crush its skull, vacuum its brains, and then deliver the rest, then he had to be free to do so — at any stage of pregnancy. President Obama favored this health “exception.”
A few liberals — notably Supreme Court justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg; also the celebrated intellectual Richard Posner in his role as a judge — made the moral point as well: What difference could it possibly make whether the fetus was partly out of the birth canal when its life was ended? Start with the correct view that location does not matter; add the liberal view that partial-birth abortion is justified whenever an abortionist says so; and it is hard to escape the conclusion that a live-birth abortion is justified whenever an abortionist rules it the safest method of killing.
We don’t know that Gosnell has closely followed the Supreme Court’s opinions or the president’s statements. We can say that his actions perfect the logic of the mainstream of the pro-choice movement. He has followed premises shared by the president and by four Supreme Court justices to their unavoidable conclusion.
In the academy, as well, liberals have been notoriously unable to articulate defenses of abortion that do not justify infanticide, and not particularly eager to try. Still less can they justify prohibitions on abortions late in pregnancy. The culpability of someone involved in an abortion may vary with the stage of pregnancy: The later it is, the less excuse there is for not recognizing the humanity of the unborn child. In gauging the immorality of an act we may rightly consider these subjective elements. But the objective injustice of abortion lies in the deliberate killing of a human being acting peaceably, and that injustice is identical regardless of the being’s age.
Concluding his statement, President Obama said, “I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.” Let us commit ourselves to ensuring that our sons and daughters have the opportunity to live; an opportunity cruelly snatched away from more than 50 million human beings since the day the president commemorated.
To know this in detail is ALL one needs to know about the far left. They are barbarians who view life through a prism of utilitarianism. The healthcare bill and the view that death panels are in the offing is reinforced when one realizes the barbarism of this act in and of itself. And as usual it is wrapped up in the packaging of personal freedom. Hell is a particular destination for those who persist in this evil.
How long before we have "South Park" come to fruition. A campaign for 40th trimester abortions.
I think that what frightens me more then even these barbaric procedures is the fact that there are people, claiming to be intelligent and also claiming some sort of moral high ground, who will be more then willing to defend this monstrous process.
If it would have been practiced in a chicken farm, it would have made it to the first page of the NYT and PETA would have staged protests in
Washington.
"Obama did not refer to the word “abortion,” preferring instead to discuss “reproductive freedom” and the “fundamental principle” that “government should not intrude on private family matters.” "
If my wife wants to have an abortion its a "private family matter". If my wife needs a hysterectomy its a "government matter" because of Obamacare.
Isn't ones own healtcare a "private family matter" and the GOVT should stay the hell out.
Anything to fulfill their eugenics dream. These are the same people who will makes decisions about your health care. Wrap your mind around Kermit or those like him deciding on the correct course of care for you, your child, your mother.
If, as an adult, one can forever forswear Absolute Truth, watch with side-looking eyes as the umbilicals of morals and ethics quiver and dissolve, and make the falsely serendipitous step of seeing less value in life as the sheepish arrows of rights and ontological vagueness fall at one's feet, then one can de-construct and devalue anything. Country, family, anything.
We have to judge society by the extremes that are tolerated or ignored. Fascism could not be morally justified because the ideology made the trains run on time. Most moral equivalancy judgments are neither moral, nor are they equivalent because the comprison serves often times as justification.
The worst form of hyprocricy is sweeping the extreme cases into Orwellian memory holes. Facts as stubborn things can be ignored. Guilt complexes are harder to erase from the subconscious.
The tragic events in that Philadelphia'clinic' was monstrous for both the women and the children they were carrying. HOW can any sane person rationalize severing the spinal cords of infants after their birth ? I hope our legal system deals with all who commited these immoral,vile acts as severly as allowed by law. But I'm not optimistic justice will be done.
There was no justice for these infants at the time of their birth, and our liberal justice system will make all the defendents the VICTIMS.
This callous disregard for human life will disappear in the proceedings, and the only rights we'll ever read about are the 'rights' of the accused -- you mark my words.
That's how insane the abortion issue has become !
And now the American Republic, where the right to life is proclaimed to be self-evident, ranks among the most prodigious killing machines of the twentieth century: Greater perhaps than even the Nazis or Soviet Communists. This was inevitable from the the day it became politically correct to call a fertilized egg a "tissue mass" and a baby a "fetus."
Thank you, NR, for being so strong on this issue. Abortion is THE moral issue of our time, and the left needs to be confronted on it, particularly in light of their desire for the state to play a role in every other "private family matter" as the logical outcome of their healthcare reform act.
The shame of our country.
I read the other day that 40% of current abortions are performed on black women.
The KKK should be proud. They should celebrate the day with a parade, white hoods and all.
Using the liberal abortion logic - that the decision whether to keep a pregnancy going is a "liberty" interest, protected substantively and absolutely, by a clause in the Constitution that allows a full denial of liberty if certain procedures are followed - there is no logical case against extending "Reproductive Freedom" beyond pregnancy.
Why should that freedom not extend to women AFTER birth? Why not give women a 30-day grace period to determine if "the item" is worth keeping? That way, the born children can be aborted, too.
After all, does not the left focus its morality (however limited) on the desire of the pregnant woman to be a mother? Why should women who have given birth be conscripted to motherhood any more than those just about to give birth?
In other words, since the political left makes the desires of the woman sacrosanct, then why should a matter of mere nanoseconds between when the child is in the birth canal or very recently exited determine the amount of "reproductive freedom" a woman can utilize, especially if the most important variable in the equation is the desire for parentage on the part of only the female parent?
How can the political left claim that abortion after birth is immoral, when mere seconds earlier, it was a glorious freedom?
If the political left claims it is indeed immoral to kill a child after birth, then it begs two questions:
1) Why does a matter of a few mere nanoseconds change your moral calculus, when - from the perspective of the unwilling mother who enjoys unfettered "reproductive freedom" - nothing has changed?
2) Why is YOUR moral judgment that infanticide is immoral and wrong ANY MORE VALID than anyone else's moral judgment that it is grotesque and sickly evil to purposely kill the most innocent form of human life?
Harry Blackmun and his fellow political hacks who call themselves judges opened Pandora's box to infanticide by codifying a right to kill. This epis in Philly is simply a logical conclusion to the processes put in motion by They Who Know Better.
The Ho-Humm probably comes from the fact that many of us can't stand to read about it. I've avoided the articles about this because they are so upsetting, but I'm already pro-life. I'm sure the pro-abortion crowd won't even consider looking at the articles, except those that are turned on by such violence to children.
My cousin's baby was born at only 23 weeks due to a complication. The hospital saved her life and she is now home with her parents. The bizarre nature of all of this is that my cousin's wife could have asked for the baby to be killed during the emergency delivery rather than asking for it to be saved.
Regarding Obama, he made his position on abortion clear when he said that he'd be just fine with his daughters murdering his own grandchildren during the presidential campaign.
My last point is that there is not enough advertising for the alternative of adoption. Pro-life groups really need to spend more of their limited $$ on encouraging third trimester women to pick adoption over murder.
"Obama did not refer to the word “abortion,” preferring instead to discuss “reproductive freedom” and the “fundamental principle” that “government should not intrude on private family matters.” "
Obviously Barack and Michelle do not consider choosing to give your child Cheetos on occasion to be a "private family matter". What happens in your 12 year old child's womb is private, even from the parents, but what's included in her lunch? Not so much.
The absurdity of this belief system is abundantly clear and deeply revolting.
By the way, I actually did forget to say a few things:
1) If you are a perfectly innocent unborn baby (is there any other kind?), keep the heck out of NYC! Over 40% of pregnancies in that city result in your death. Remove yourself from NYC ASAP! You can't do that? Oh . . .
2) Ask anyone on the far left if he or she likes humanity. Odds of a positive response are .015%. This type of abhorrent desire to "benevolently" extend a right to "reproductively" kill babies is what happens when people who hate the human species are placed in positions of leadership over our species.
3) Those who hate humanity are uniquely disqualified for leadership in a human society. There's a pack of rats underneath my office building that need a leader, though. Haters of humanity are qualified to lead THEM!
I see that people on the Left are blaming pro lifers for the barbarism and inhumanity of Gosnell because this is "about poverty". Baloney - the proof is that Gosnell became a very, very wealthy man by performing abortions and by hurting women. According to the Far Left blogs, a little bit of antiseptic, some painted furniture, some magazines in the waiting room and this House of Horrors would have been peachy keen. Their shamelessness and moral myopia are mind numbing.
