The trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, facing the death penalty for the deaths of four infants and one woman in his clinic, is over. America has moved on.
It’s exactly what the pro-abortion contingent wants. They want Gosnell out of the news because they want abortion out of the news. Ongoing discussion provokes thought about the status quo. And pro-aborts want to keep things as they are.
And, they have reason to be confident.
Our president, whom no one can accuse of not being politically astute, showed up this week, despite the Gosnell story, as the first sitting president ever to address Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
When Kirsten Powers brought attention to Gosnell, with her USA Today column, she said it wasn’t about abortion. “This is not about being pro-choice or pro-life,” she wrote. “It is about human rights.”
For Powers, the story was about lack of supervision. And, of course, where abortions are carried out legally, clinics should be supervised and inspected.
But to leave the story there is to be content with the tip of the iceberg. And the whole iceberg is a huge story that all of America should be looking at.
The whole iceberg is bigger than abortion itself. It is about how profoundly America has changed since Roe v Wade, in 1973, made abortion an accepted part of American life.
Let’s be clear that pro-aborts and pro-lifers differ on far more than technicalities about when life begins. They differ about what life is.
In the state of Pennsylvania, where Gosnell was doing his dirty business, abortion is legal until the developing child is 24 weeks - 6 months - old. Among Gosnell’s many transgressions was performing abortions after 24 weeks.
But Planned Parenthood, and their guest speaker, our president, oppose that 24-week limit. They believe abortion should be legal until the child is born.
In 2007, shortly after the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, which banned a brutal abortion procedure most commonly used to destroy infants from 15 to 26 weeks old, then-Senator Obama spoke at a Planned Parenthood event and decried the decision. He called it part of a “concerted effort to steadily roll back” access to abortion.
Justice Kennedy, who wrote the decision, included a description of one of these procedures on a 26-week-old infant. It takes a certain deadening of the heart, of the soul to read the description of the little baby clasping his fingers and toes as the doctor jams his scissors into his skull , and still believe this should be permitted.
Since Roe v Wade, we’ve given birth to a new materialistic culture of narcissism where reverence for life itself is gone. Life has become a commodity and people use each other as cavalierly as they destroy innocent young life.
As our reverence for life has diminished, so has our reverence for the institutions that surround and support it.
Scholars at the Brookings Institution observed in 1996 that Roe v Wade contributed to the collapse of marriage and the dramatic increase in out-of-wedlock births. The idea that children were part of a sacred institution called marriage started disappearing.
The sense of honor, the sense of shame disappears in this culture of self.
In 1965, seven years before Roe v Wade, less then 10 percent of American babies were born to unwed mothers – 24 percent to unwed black women and 3.1 percent to unwed white women. As of 2010, this was up to 41 percent of our babies born to unwed mothers – 73 percent to black women and 29 percent to white women.
Sixty percent of our out-of-wedlock births are to women in their 20’s.
Soon, as our resources diminish to care for our growing aging population, we will start dealing with our elderly as we do our unborn.
Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.
Alisa LaPolt Snow [pictured right] the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor.
“So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief,” said Rep. Jim Boyd. “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”
“We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” said PP lobbyist Snow.
Rep. Daniel Davis then asked Snow, “What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving. What do your physicians do at that point?”
“I do not have that information,” Snow replied. “I am not a physician, I am not an abortion provider. So I do not have that information.”
Rep. Jose Oliva followed up, asking the Planned Parenthood official, “You stated that a baby born alive on a table as a result of a botched abortion that that decision should be left to the doctor and the family. Is that what you’re saying?”
Again, Snow replied, “That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.”
Florida HB1129 defines the term “born alive” almost as the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 did. An amendment to HB1129 added the federal BAIPA’s “neutrality clause.”
But HB1129 went further than the federal BAIPA by adding, as the sponsor testified (beginning at 11:02) during the committee hearing:
Parity, that regardless of how a born alive infant entered the world – natural birth, c-section, or abortion – s/he shall be treated with the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence. The bill provided that a born alive baby would immediately be transported to a hospital.
“Infant born alive” becomes a reportable item.
Surrender – “A work in progress,” according to the sponsor, The bill’s language originally assumed the baby was not wanted, since the mother had just paid to have him or her killed, and should be immediately surrendered to the state. The sponsor said an amendment was being crafted for the unique circumstance when an abortion was necessary for the health of the mother, which meant mean she likely would still want the infant born alive and give it loving care.
It was into this bill language mix that PP lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow stepped in.
The problems PP had with the bill were providing care, transport, and surrender.
The former two are problems state Sen. Barack Obama had with a separate companion bill (page 33) to Illinois’ Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which for all intents and purposes was saying the same thing, that medical care of abortion survivors was to be taken out of the hands of the doctor who had been paid to kill them:
[A]n additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make thee assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion….
Obama agreed with Snow that, regarding the care of abortion survivor, as Snow testified, “any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”
Barack Obama fought the BAIPA (Born Alive Infant Protection Act) in Illinois with all the power he could muster.
Why? Ask Barack Obama
At the recent National Prayer Breakfast, Dr. Benjamin Carson lectured President Obama on everything from ObamaCare to political correctness. This has prompted some to suggest Ben Carson should run for president in 2016. Find out what Alfonzo Rachel thinks on this Zo Nation.
The trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, facing the death penalty for the deaths of four infants and one woman in his clinic, is over. America has moved on.
