Many people credit author, columnist, and television panelist Kirsten Powers with unlocking the logjam that prevented virtually any “mainstream” media coverage of the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
It’s not like there was a flood of reporters who washed into Philadelphia after her “We’ve forgotten what belongs on Page One.”. But it is still true that her public shaming (no lesser word will do) of her colleagues did result in additional coverage of a trial that ended with Gosnell’s richly deserved sentence of three consecutive life sentences.
Her USA Today column published today–“Caught in stomach-turning video, all it [PPFA] can apologize for is the tone”– may or may not have such an event-altering result, but it is helpful in a different way.
Powers is writing primarily about the first undercover video that the Center for Medical Progress put online last week. There is a reference to the second, in which Dr. Mary Gatter casually discussed possibly using a “less crunchy [abortion] technique” to preserve intact baby organs.
But for the most part Powers’ column addresses the astonishingly stomach-churning comments of Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director for medical services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in the first video, and PPFA President Cecile Richards all speed but no altitude You Tube rebuttal.
As you may recall, Richards offered a tepid “apology” for Dr. Nucatola’s “tone” but for nothing else. Indeed, Richards doubled (and tripled) down on PPFA’s overall wonderfulness and especially its ability “to help women and families donate tissue for medical research when they wish to.” (We’ve taken that canard apart numerous times.)
Powers writes,
This is stomach-turning stuff. But the problem here is not one of tone. It’s the crushing. It’s the organ harvesting of fetuses that abortion-rights activists want us to believe have no more moral value than a fingernail.
It’s the lie that these are not human beings worthy of protection. There is no nice way to talk about this. As my friend and former Obama White House staffer Michael Wear tweeted , “It should bother us as a society that we have use for aborted human organs, but not the baby that provides them.”
Powers wrote her column before the usual PPFA allies, such as the New York Times, kicked into full attack mode against the CMP. So the “ usual defenders “ of PPFA who “were nowhere to be found,” are now beginning to poke their heads up and spin, spin, spin a discussion of intact hearts, lungs, livers, and brains.
But, from the PPFA’s vantage point, some “defenders” are probably best avoided. We’ll finally get to writing about abortionist Willie Parker tomorrow, but let’s end this post from Powers with her magnificent conclusion:
Mississippi abortion doctor Willie Parker — who was lauded by Esquire for his “ abortion ministry ” — ran with the trope that direct quotes from a Planned Parenthood doctor constitute a vicious attack, but went a step further: He compared Nucatola to Jesus. “It’s no secret that my frame of reference for the work that I do and in terms of generating compassion is related to my religious understanding and, in particular, my Christian religious understanding,” Parker told Cosmopolitan magazine. “I’m thinking about a strong parallel between what’s happening to my colleague (Nucatola) and the trial week of Jesus before he was crucified (as) he was marched from place to place, asked to answer allegations.”
When abortion doctors are elevated to gods who may not be questioned or held accountable, society has officially gone off the rails.
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
