The Gosnell trial is about the killing of infants born alive and a mother undergoing an abortion.
The reaction, however, is not just to the killing of an infant born alive after an abortion, it is to the dismemberment, decapitation, and other gruesome means of killing the unwanted child.
The exposure has abortion advocates worried. We have seen a misleading and unsupported pushback suggesting that feminists have been in the lead in exposing Gosnell when in fact feminists were reacting to pro-life criticism of Gosnell, as I wrote in Salon.com shouts “Look, Squirrel!” to deflect #Gosnell outrage.
Scott Lemieux, writing at the liberal American Prospect, sees the danger of Gosnell’s horrors being generalized and argues the now-standard point that the answer to Gosnell is more abortions in hospitals and cleaner environments:
Finally, the Gosnell case is an illustration of a deeper problem with abortion politics in the United States. A number of pundits—most notably Slate‘s William Saletan and The Daily Beast‘s Megan McArdle—have argued that even though it’s best that abortion remain formally legal, pro-choicers should concede that abortion is an icky, immoral procedure that should be discouraged. But the stigmatization of abortion, as it functions in the United States, greatly harms women. In most other liberal democracies, the Gosnell clinic wouldn’t be an issue because even poor women could obtain safe abortions in a public hospital…. The best way to prevent future Gosnells is to treat pre-viability abortions like the ordinary, safe medical procedures they in fact are, not to engage in sexist moralizing.
Here is an unborn child at 12 weeks (via WebMD):
And 20 weeks:
Aborting these children is legal using the procedures used by Gosnell, albeit in utero, although the 20th week is a frequent cut-off point used in proposed state legislation.
The dismemberment of these children in utero receives about as much mainstream media coverage as the Gosnell trial received until late last week. The fear among pro-abortion advocates seems to be that Gosnell may change media coverage and public perception not only of infants born alive, but of abortion more generally.
A writer at The Washington Post argues that the lack of mainstream media coverage is not the result of pro-abortion media bias, but “something far more banal.”
I can’t believe WaPo used that term.
Update: Andrew McCarthy describes the dehumanizing terms utilized by the courts in discussing abortion procedures, From Dehumanizing Word Games to Gosnell (h/t @backyardconserv).
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Comments
Thank you for bringing this topic up. The Lame Stream media has effectively ignored it for too long. Abortion, the word, is hardly ever used, but many euphemisms are. The use of euphemisms is to imply a ‘not so bad’ thing. The reality is that you kill a human being. Why cannot some people see that, or do they see that and just ignore it, a la “I CAN’T HEAR YOU”?
Mark Steyn, at The Corner…
““Neonates”? I wonder if that was Mr. Douthat’s word, or a compromise painfully negotiated with his alert editors at the Times. Ah, what a lovely neonate; she’s got your eyes.
So now we’ve advanced linguistically from euphemisms for abortion to evasions for infanticide. Progress! By the time the president weighs in and says that if he had a male neonate he’d look like the contents of Gosnell’s refrigerator, we’ll hardly notice it.”
That nails it.
Exactly. Deconstruction of the language continues, apace. These are wretched specimens of our species.
I don’t know when it will happen, but someday I firmly believe that the history writers will decide that Roe v Wade was the worst Supreme Court decision ever, displacing Dred Scott. In Dred Scott, white supremist Democrats perverted the language of the day to dehumanize blacks because of their skin color. As a result, the Dred Scott decision denied citizenship to what, about 3 or 4 million people who Democrats had successfully demagogued as less than human because they were born black? Similarly, in the modern era pro-abortion Democrats have used perverted language to dehumanize pre-born children. As a consequence of the Roe decision, citizenship and life itself has been denied to about 50 million to 60 million pre-born children. And counting.
Photos like the ones embedded in this post were not available when Roe was decided. Nor was this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKyljukBE70&feature=player_embedded
I think the advances in technology that permit us to see how life progresses in the womb and the ability to distribute those images widely will ultimately lead to an abortion backlash. You don’t have to be a far-right religious zealot to oppose abortion. You only need sight. And a soul.
Roe v. Wade is what keeps the US government from COMPELLING abortion of disfavored children. If that decisions gets overturned, you will see government-coerced abortions in the United States within 20 years. If you think I’m wrong, cast your memory back to the nasty things written about Sarah Palin’s decision to carry her Down Syndrome child to term.
Here’s the opinion.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZS.html
You really need to read the part about the consequences of a grant of power to our secular government. In brief, if the government is granted the power to make a decision, there is no way to ensure which way the decision will go. The effect of Roe v. Wade is to put a full block on the government’s ability to compel wholesale abortions. At the time the decision was handed down, there were people who loudly proclaimed that such a thing couldn’t happen here. That was before we became aware of China’s population policy.
The day is fast approaching when the pro-life movement will wield Roe v. Wade against those who would coerce abortions on a grand scale.
I don’t think that would happen for an instant.
Roe merely took abortion out of the democratic process and Federalism.
There was a broad swath of law across the states, and it would be that way again. In MOST states, there would not be a “right” to an abortion, but it would not be prohibited. Just subject to due process.
States can’t intervene at all until the second trimester. That makes it just a bit tougher to coerce abortions.
If the government wants to start compelling abortions, if we have a government that really wants to do that, they’ll do it, and Roe will stop it about as effectively as it stopped this.
The biological fact is that after the egg is fertilized by the sperm, what you have is a living being. In the case of a human, those people OUGHT to be protected by the same consitition whether in the womb or not. The “Pro-choice” people always use the “It’s my body, so I can do what I want with it.” arugment, but they fail to realize that the baby that is developing inside them is NOT part of their body (It has a different DNA signature), rather it is *DEPENDENT* upon their body. So, the question becomes, do we have a “Choice” to willfully kill our dependents? Last time I checked, that was defined as murder.
Were the Republicans smart or if they really wanted to move the law in a pro-life direction there would already be legislation, named after one of Gosnell’s victims, that would go after such villains – much like Obama has done with Newtown.
But they are not smart, and the leadership is leftwing, so nothing will happen.
Hell, Romney and the Republicans could have used Gosnell as a tool to handle the Akin flair-up but they choose not to.
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