I’m struck at the wide gulf between a pro-life and a pro-choice view of Kermit Gosnell. From this late term abortionist’s trial, we are getting some of the most gruesome testimony ever to be heard.
Pro-lifers say: This is a natural outcome where your business is killing babies. Inevitably, you are going to end up killing one who makes it out alive, and it’s not going to be pretty or easy. This is the logical extension of a view that women have sole decision making power of life and death over their children.
Pro-choicers say: This would never happen were it not for restrictive laws on abortion clinics, put forward by pro-lifers. If pro-lifers weren’t out restricting early term abortions, we’d never see women with their backs against the wall forced to go to butchers like Gosnell.
The point of intersection is that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers think Gosnell is a butcher.
Pro-lifers say it is inherent in the business. Pro-choicers argue not, because they think early term deaths aren’t really deaths at all, or, alternatively, matter less because they are early term.
I don’t know why I felt inclined to write this post. I suppose I didn’t want to write the typical “Woah! This is disgusting!”
But really. I am pro-life, and this is disgusting. I challenge pro-choicers to consider the logical extension of their worldview.
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What the Pro-Choice folks fail to acknowledge is that Pennsylvania stopped inspecting the clinics for political reasons, thus leading to this butchery. It’s a stone cold fact in the report. They simply ignore that part and it’s crucial to what happened there. Had routine inspections happened, Gosnell would not have been able to get away with what he did.
There is no point so blatantly missed by these pundits and it should be an obvious strike to any credibility that they may have.
But look at Canada. We don’t hear about anything like this here, probably because it isn’t happening. Abortion is nice and clean here in Canada, I think because it is all provided by our health system. So Americans could actually look to us as a model of how to do it better, which is truly unfortunate. Because here we can’t even have an honest discussion about abortion, inside Parliament or outside on a university campus. So we have safer abortion here, at the expense of freedom of speech.
Gee, Julie, that seems like a pretty good trade-off to me.
Abortion as a private medical procedure is established in Canada. Therefore. . . no Gosnells!
In Canada, we are rational about abortion. In the US, not so much.
Gosnell is a direct result of stigmatizing, slut-shaming, picayune laws and attitudes promoted by ‘pro-life’.
Gosnell is on you.
fern hill – once again, another person who ignores the fact that they STOPPED INSPECTING ABORTION CLINICS FOR POLITICAL REASONS. That one point blows your theory out of the water yet you fail to acknowledge it. No credibility in your statement whatsoever.
You have any evidence that Pennsylvania stopped inspections because of politics? From what I’ve seen, it looks like sheer incompetence.
Gosnell was refused membership by http://www.prochoice.org/news/releases/20110121.html
In fact, reputable abortion providers in the area tried to get him shut down.
Gosnell is on you.
Julie had it right. Gosnell could NOT happen in Canada. Because we are sensible.
Fern Hill, the Gosnell grand jury report notes: “the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all (mid 90s).” The grand jury further states, “Better to leave clinics do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.”
The fact that you had to even ask me for evidence when it’s spelled out in the Grand Jury report pretty much tells me that you have no credibility to even speak on this issue. This is a key point that illogical people refuse to acknowledge because it hurts their case when they’re attempting to blame Pro-Lifers for Gosnell.
BTW, it happens in Canada, too, but I don’t actually expect you to READ something you disagree with.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/01/born-alive-dead-in-moments-grey-zone-of-live-birth-abortions-a-deep-divide-between-mps-and-physicians/
Once again, nice try, but you’re more interested in propaganda rather than facts. Done with you, Fern Hill. Keep blaming Pro-Lifers every time newborns get beheaded.
My bioethics prof told a story in class that a nurse from a hospital here in the city told her:
Apparently a child was born alive from a late term abortion. The doctor panicked, and drowned him in the sink.
Granted, there are no severed feet kept in jars in this story, but I think you would have to be very naive to think that it couldn’t possibly happen in Canada. It does happen here.
I think, Grand Jury Reports aside, that when your business is killing people, your business is killing people. It can be done cleanly, efficiently. It can be done poorly, unsafely. It doesn’t change the business.
What I’ve written here are harsh words. The average Canadian does not think of abortion as killing people. But the engaged activist–whether pro-life or pro-choice–knows it is.
The engaged pro-choicer must therefore grapple with the very logical extension of their worldview. Sometimes it is clean and “easy”. Sometimes it is not. I don’t see how you can get away from that. This is why supporting abortion is a losing battle at the end of the day. Those who support abortion are always telling a story of death. Where those who are anti-abortion are telling a story of life. Pollyanna-ish? Maybe, maybe not. This is the one tough issue where I truly do see people coming together on this. Not on legal ramifications, no. But on the idea that we can do better than killing our kids, most definitely, yes.