Many of my colleagues here have written so wisely about this horror show. I’d like to add a bit to the commentary, especially as regards the liberal media’s brazen and deep silence on the crimes of Dr. Gosnell and others. The silence is national, but it’s local too.
On January 26, 2011, the New Haven Register published an editorial titled “Tone down anti-abortion rhetoric.” There had just been a pro-abortion awards event in town, which marked Roe’s anniversary by honoring abortionist LeRoy Carhart (who has since gained infamy for a woman dying earlier this year courtesy of one of his late-term partial-birth specialties). Pro-life picketers showed up. The Register, a First Amendment bastion that never met an Occupy bucket-drummer it didn’t ballyhoo, was corporately disgusted. From the editorial:
There is a new awareness that words do have consequences and that the public is weary of partisan vitriol that hampers the work of Congress.
This national wave of civility has failed to wash over the fringe of abortion opponents, such as those who showed up outside a dinner at the New Haven Lawn Club held by the Connecticut Coalition for Choice on the anniversary week of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion. The honored guest at the dinner was LeRoy Carhart, an Omaha doctor who performs late-term abortions. For these opponents, Carhart engages in “baby killing” and “murder.”
For those who call doctors killers and murderers, it has been a short step to feeling justified in killing them.
On January 31, 2011, I submitted an op-ed to the Register in response. It was rejected, as was the paper’s right. I don’t claim any special talent for upbraiding, but I believe the paper was embarrassed at being called out on a number of matters, particularly limiting speech and turning a blind eye to the abortion industry’s slaughterhouses. So I share below the (rejected) comments of someone who, over two years ago, tried to coax the MSM into covering this case.#more#
Civil discourse is important. But using civility as a pretext for muting legitimate criticism, and for ignoring reality, is pathetic — sorry for the mean word — especially when perpetrated by a newspaper.
The Register’s January 26 editorial instructs pro-lifers to “tone down the rhetoric,” to stop calling abortionists “baby-killers” and “murderers.” Without evidence, it finds a cause and effect: Pro-lifers use these terms, and abortionists get shot. Obviously the Register has got the “No Labels” religion. We are all expected to convert.
It was a terrible thing that George Tiller, an infamous Wichita abortionist, was gunned down in 2009. It’s also terrible that his death should become the basis for an editorial advocating restricted speech.
Then there is . . . beyond terrible: The horrid story unfolding in Philadelphia. It concerns abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D., who for decades operated a house of horrors, named the “Women’s Medical Society,” a place where thousands of unborn — and some born — children were put to death. And some of their mothers, too.
In mid-January, a grand jury charged Dr. Gosnell with eight counts of murder. Seven charges were for “live birth” abortions (execution by scissors!). And one charge involves a mother, Karnamaya Mongar, who died under Gosnell’s so-called care.
The grand-jury report begins with this sentence: “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women.” Maybe the Register needs to lecture jury members on this baby-killer language.
The ensuing 300 pages are a sickening look into the reality of the abortion industry, the reality ignored by the Connecticut Coalition for Choice at its award ceremonies. As the grand-jury report summarizes: “The medical practice by which [Gosnell] 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. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.”
They knew. They saw. “They” are “officials.” But as can be the case with editorial writers, truth matters less to bureaucrats when political correctness makes demands. From the report:
“Numerous city health department employees went about their jobs going in and out of Gosnell’s clinic, performing some particular task to promote public health, while ignoring the most squalid, unsafe conditions imaginable in a Philadelphia health care facility.”
So much for employees of the City of Brotherly Love. What of their state counterparts? And what of self-policing doctors’ organizations? Yes, they too saw, with their very eyes, the inner workings of Gosnell’s slaughterhouse. But they too turned their gazes. Again, from the grand jury report:
Those at the state Department of Health who were responsible for assuring the health and safety of women and infants delivered live at abortion clinics were aggressively passive when it came to inspections or responding to complaints. The department’s attorneys were encouraged to misinterpret laws so that the department could evade its duty to protect public health. DOH employees were only too glad to go along with the charade. The prosecutors for the Board of Medicine, who are charged with sanctioning bad doctors, appeared determined not to discipline even one of the worst doctors in the region.
Is there any industry so protected, so sacrosanct, as the one which “terminates” millions of defenseless unborn lives each year? That should be the subject of a Register editorial.
Dr. Gosnell, his wife, and several workers now face a slew of charges, handed down by the repulsed grand jury. They are: murder of Ms. Mongar; murders of babies born alive; infanticide; violations of the Controlled Substances Act; hindering, obstruction, and tampering; perjury; illegal late-term abortions; violations of the Abortion Control Act; violations of the Controlled Substances Act; abuse of corpse; theft by deception; conspiracy; corrupt organization; corruption of minors.
“Baby killer.” “Murderer.” These words are understatements. One wonders what the politically correct writers at the Register would call this Philadelphia butcher.
One wonders also about the National Abortion Federation. It refused to give its sanction to Gosnell’s charnel shop, but also refused to report the disgraces witnessed there in a recent inspection. In essence, Abortion Inc. protected him. The folks whose mantra is “safe, legal, and rare” never met an abortion they didn’t like.
Rather than defend abortionists, rather than make the First Amendment subservient to political correctness, the Register should save its editorial angst for the unborn children and women who walk into abortion mills. For the babies, most never come out alive. And thanks to abortionists, neither do some mothers.