Over at “One Gosnell Myth that endures”, we talked about how Monday, May 13 was the 6th anniversary of the day the jury found abortionist Kermit Gosnell guilty of three counts of first degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter.
The myth I was referring to is the enduring mythunderstanding 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 a man (even Gosnell) could be so cold blooded that he would do something this hideous, not to a baby in the womb, but to a born child he had just removed from her mother and might be staring him in the face?
In a real sense, Gosnell is a precursor to what we are seeing played out today. Democrats, who know better, will come to the Senate floor and tell 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, 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 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 Democratic 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) it does requires 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 neglect, 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, explains, “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 wrote yesterday about this man who is now serving three consecutive life sentences.
AP writer David Crary carries so much water for the Abortion Industry he’d put a dromedary to shame. He wrote one of those connect-the-dots “fact checks” in which he criticized President Trump for publicly denouncing infanticide.
In what he no doubt saw as a tour de force, Crary 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. 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, comes in a distant second.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
