Editor’s note. This appeared in NRL News Today a year ago today. I believe it is well worth reposting.
By Dave Andrusko
Abortion, by its very nature, is one endless story of brutality, viciousness, and moral myopia. But some atrocities must be remembered in vivid detail, lest we miss how they established a pathway to even greater inhumanity. No better example exists anywhere, in my opinion, than West Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
To this day—over eight years since a jury found Gosnell guilty of three counts of first degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter—there is the enduring misunderstanding that Gosnell murdered babies after they were born because he had “botched” the abortion. Not so.
Not so at all.
He deliberately and with malice aforethought aborted late-late term babies in a manner that they were born alive and then he severed their spinal cords. Perhaps people (as they say) can’t wrap their heads around this.
How could a man (even Gosnell) be so cold blooded that he would do something this hideous to a born child he had just removed from her mother and who might literally be staring him in the face?
In a real sense, Gosnell is a precursor to what we are seeing played out. Democrats, who know better, have come to the Senate floor and told pro-life Republicans that the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is not needed.
Nobody—certainly no tender-hearted abortionist—would provide less care to an abortion survivor than he would to a premature infant who is born spontaneously at the same gestational age, right?
Let’s see.
Opponents of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act have a multiplicity of excuses, rationalizations, and less-than-candid explanations why the law is not necessary, even cruel.
All are bunk.
The 2002 Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) already addresses the situation, we’re told. In theory, yes.
But there is no enforcement mechanism if the abortionist chooses not to regard babies born alive during abortions as persons, as required by BAIPA, and does not provide “the same degree” of care. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act does have real penalties, which is why the Abortion Industry and its cat’s paw, the Democrat Party, oppose it.
Next we’re told the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires “futile” treatment, indeed useless treatment at the expense of a suffering baby.
This is among the least honest and cruelest dodges.
By any honest reading of the bill, it does not dictate bona fide medical judgments, let alone require “futile” measures. But (to repeat) the bill does require that babies born alive during abortions are treated in the same manner as those little ones who are spontaneously born prematurely.
What about instead of “merely” neglecting the child, there is an “an overt act that kills a child born alive”? The bill applies the existing penalties of the federal murder statute to someone who does.
As Jennifer Popik, JD, NRLC’s Legislative Director, has explained, “This would apply, for example, to an abortion clinic staff person who dissects a breathing born-alive infant in order to harvest an intact liver, or to an abortionist who ends a born-alive baby’s whimpers with a sharp blow to the skull, or by snipping the spine.”
That could never happen, right?
Guess again.
There are other common misdirections employed by opponents, but you get the point. To come full circle to Gosnell, let me just touch on something I’ve written about in the past.
One reporter criticized then President Trump for publicly denouncing infanticide.
In what he no doubt saw as a tour de force, this reporter wrote
Abortion-rights advocates say the Gosnell case proves their contention that existing laws are adequate.
Why? Because he was eventually convicted.
But that ignores a ton of other atrocities that took place over a span of decades at his “House of Horrors.” They included the deaths of two women; the hundreds of violations of the state’s 24 week abortion limit; the likelihood that Gosnell murdered hundreds (if not more!) of nearly full-term babies but escaped justice by destroying the records; the utter corruption of the Pennsylvania Department of Health which stopped inspecting abortion clinics at all (Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society wasn’t inspected for 17 years); and a National Abortion Federation inspector who came by, saw how horrific his clinic was, refused to allow Gosnell to join NAF, but never reported any of the violations to the proper authorities.
What can we say about abortionists and their enablers? When choosing between protecting their own, the health– even the lives of women—is a small price to pay.