A worker has admitted to snipping the spines of ten babies at Kermit Gosnell’s clinic, reports the AP:
A medical assistant told a jury Tuesday that she snipped the spines of at least 10 babies during unorthodox abortions at a West Philadelphia clinic. And she said Dr. Kermit Gosnell and another employee did the same to terminate pregnancies. . . .
She once had to kill a baby delivered in a toilet, cutting its neck with scissors, she said. Asked if she knew that was wrong, she said, “At first I didn’t.”
“Unorthodox abortions”: Is this really the strongest language we can muster for what happened in that clinic?
March 19th, 2013 | 5:23 pm
I will pray for the assistant, Ms. Adrienne Moton, to find peace.
March 19th, 2013 | 6:09 pm
Shockingly evil would be the appropriate words. But even they don’t convey the what is so profoundly horrible about this. We simply don’t possess the words in any language that reflects how wrong these acts are.
March 19th, 2013 | 6:35 pm
We shouldn’t be surprised–though people with a conscience will be repulsed–when we hear stories like this. Our culture of death fosters the kind of thinking that says, “if it’s legal, it’s also morally acceptable.” They are dead wrong.
March 19th, 2013 | 9:36 pm
Every surgical abortion is just as gruesome and just as wrong.
March 19th, 2013 | 10:43 pm
May God lead that man to repent of these and all of his sins. May God judge the sincerity of his repentance and renew his soul through the Word and the cleansing waters of Baptism.
May the souls of these and all the faithful departed rest in peace.
March 19th, 2013 | 11:24 pm
“Unorthodox abortions”: Is this really the strongest language we can muster for what happened in that clinic?”
Just call it “abortion”. This is what abortion is. This is what happens in a culture of death, which so dulls the senses that grown-up women of normal intelligence do not immediately realize that killing babies (including their own) is utter barbarity.
March 19th, 2013 | 11:36 pm
“…Deliver us from evil”
March 20th, 2013 | 12:02 am
Our culture of death fosters the kind of thinking that says, “if it’s legal, it’s also morally acceptable.”
John Pummell,
Kermit Gosnell is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. So clearly what he is accused of doing is not legal.
March 20th, 2013 | 2:30 am
“Just call it ‘abortion’. This is what abortion is.”
Thanks Peg, you said what needs to be heard with perfect, ruthless clarity.
March 20th, 2013 | 9:00 am
Yes, “unorthodox abortions”. There are many in this country (some on these comment pages), who quibble with terms like “partial-birth abortion”. The “great avoidance” which began with Roe v. Wade continues apace and nothing can compel them to look. “Deliberate, premeditated killing” just can’t be used – after all – we’re not sure the “snapping of spines” is even illegal, thanks to Roe v. Wade.
March 20th, 2013 | 9:24 am
The line that comes immediately after in the full article is telling:
“She once had to kill a baby delivered in a toilet, cutting its neck with scissors, she said. Asked if she knew that was wrong, she said, “At first I didn’t.”
Abortions are typically performed in utero.”
The doctor faces the death penalty for murder because he killed these children after they were born. If he had killed them before they were born, he might well be celebrated as ‘helping’ women, with no talk of murder at all.
March 20th, 2013 | 10:06 am
True, David. But I’m speaking of abortions in general, at any stage of pregnancy.
March 20th, 2013 | 11:07 am
Lest we forget, the Journal of Medical Ethics recently published an article advocating “post-birth abortion” by two “medical ethicists.” There is nothing so heinous that it will not eventually be endorsed by “ethicists.” If these people had just done their work in a more sanitized way, people would be wondering “well, why not…?”
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full
March 20th, 2013 | 10:00 pm
You know that paper exists only to provoke controversy, such that many people cite it in order to refute it? Do you understand how academia works?
March 21st, 2013 | 1:54 am
“Unorthodox abortions”: Is this really the strongest language we can muster for what happened in that clinic?
No, it is obviously not the strongest language, since Kermit Gosnell is on trial for seven counts of first-degree murder.
It seems to me that to highlight particularly grizzly (and illegal) cases of abortion is not particularly helpful to the pro-life cause. Who is going to disagree with calling Gosnell’s clinic a “chamber of horrors”? One can be staunchly pro-choice and agree that abortions are legally first-degree murder ought to be prosecuted. As harry said from the pro-life point of view, “Every surgical abortion is just as gruesome and just as wrong.” People who approve of abortion are not going to change their minds because of the Kermit Gosnells of the world.
March 21st, 2013 | 10:26 am
“It seems to me that to highlight particularly grizzly (and illegal) cases of abortion is not particularly helpful to the pro-life cause. ”
It is helpful to combat the idiotic myth of “safe, legal, and rare” and all the “this must be legal to prevent the back-alley” stuff.
There are many points to be made in the pro-life argument. Obviously, at bottom, is the point that all unborn life is worthy of the same protection as any other human life, which does not change whether you’re doing it like Gosnell or by the book. But along the way, it’s perfectly reasonable to point out cases where legalization has done little to provide even those limited protections of women that some would argue require legality. When things like this go on with licensure, it’s just that much harder to hold up licensure as a way to limit the damage, and legality as a way to prevent it.
March 21st, 2013 | 11:45 am
Do you understand how academia works?
So you believe they wrote this article to say the opposite of what they actually hold? They are not fake pro-lifers, they are actually in favor of the position they advance in the article, as subsequent quotes by the authors attest.
By the way, I am an academic. I do not write articles that say the opposite of what I believe, nor do any other academics I have ever known. They are no where near the first to hold that infanticide is an ethical action.
March 21st, 2013 | 2:27 pm
[David Nickol] “It seems to me that to highlight particularly grizzly (and illegal) cases of abortion is not particularly helpful to the pro-life cause. Who is going to disagree with calling Gosnell’s clinic a “chamber of horrors”?”
For starters, Dr. Gosnell, presumably a number of his staff for some significant length of time, Peter Singer and any of his Princeton students whom he successfully influences, and “extreme cases” in the Netherlands. It helps to highlight where our roads lead.
Maybe some of those Princeton students will have the intellectual fortitude to ask why the Pennsylvania State Legislature was, and apparently continues to be, so incompetent – or whether incompotence alone is an adequate explanation.
March 21st, 2013 | 5:01 pm
Sally Rogers said what I wanted to say: That ethicists in our elite institutions believe that even the child outside of the womb is fair game for the abortionist. The entire abortion industry is an abomination.
March 21st, 2013 | 5:12 pm
Sally: My point was not that the authors were “trying to say the opposite of what their paper said.” My point was, rather:
1) This is not even remotely representative of “mainstream ethical philosophy,”
2) The authors almost certainly do not *actually* believe killing infants is or should be ethically acceptable,
3) The motive behind the paper was not to present a polemic in favor of killing infants, but to excite controversy surrounding the authors and their department, thereby causing them to be highly cited in other scholarly work (nearly all of which will be blustery condemnation of the article’s conclusions) and thus earning much name recognition.
In other words, they are academics trolling academia. Quite effectively, I’d add.
March 22nd, 2013 | 12:00 pm
“It seems to me that to highlight particularly grizzly (and illegal) cases of abortion is not particularly helpful to the pro-life cause. Who is going to disagree with calling Gosnell’s clinic a “chamber of horrors”?
David, the reason highlighting these cases (and make no mistake, this is but one of many) is helpful to the pro-life cause is that there are still people who are eventually swayed by common sense. Jesus said, “By your fruits you will know them,” and Gosnell’s clinic and the actions of its workers are nothing more than the maturation of the practice of abortion. Think of it as Abortion grown to adulthood, taken to the logical philosophical conclusion of the “pro-choice” position–We don’t protect them inside the womb, why should these lives be protected outside?
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