What Difference Did Roe Make?

Mark Steyn talks Gosnell back in February 2011. Many links and graphic details in original.  Excerpts:

With Planned Parenthood aiding and abetting child prostitution, my friend Rich Lowry argued that the back alley is back:

Legal abortion was supposed to end "back-alley abortions," both their dangers and their entanglements with shady characters. But the practice and the mores of the back alley are with us still, tolerated by people for whom the ready provision of abortion trumps all else.

Rich is right. Ever since Roe v Wade, proponents of a woman's "right to choose" have warned us against going back to the bad old days of rusty coat hangers and unsterilized instruments from money-grubbing butchers on the wrong side of town. Now, happily, the back alley is on the main drag, and with a state permit framed on the wall...

For years, the supposed regulators averted their gaze - as a matter of policy. For abortion's ideological enforcers, the official euphemisms trump reality. For those on the receiving end of infection, mutilation, sterilization and death, reality has a way of intruding...

The back alley is back, and supersized: The above New Jersey clinic performs 10,000 abortions a year. When the pro-choice rally ends and Cameron Diaz, Ashley Judd and other celebrities d'un certain age return to Hollywood, and the upper-middle-class women with the one designer baby go back to their suburbs, a woman's "right to choose" means that, day in, day out, the blessings of this "right" fall disproportionately on all the identity groups the upscale liberals profess to care about - poor women, black women, Hispanic women, undocumented women, and other denizens of Big Government's back alley.

A government back alley, licensed and supposedly regulated, is worse than the old kind, because it implies the approval of the state, and of society. That's what Gosnell thought he had, when he murdered those babies and mutilated those teenage girls. That's what Planned Parenthood think they have, when they facilitate the sexual exploitation of Third World children. And, given the silence of the PC media, maybe they're right. Aside from the intrinsic evil of not only Gosnell but a state that knowingly colludes with him, these "little" abortion stories reveal an almost totalitarian mindset in the "pro-choice" movement's determination to brook no intrusion of reality upon the official myths. You may be one of those wealthy suburban "feminists" or "new men" indifferent to the fate of eight-pound "blobs of tissue" or 14-year old "women", but the gulf between propaganda and truth, between the fatuous feelgood bumper stickers and the rusty crochet hooks, is profound - and, in a world where statists and social engineers serve as ruthless enforcers for the prevailing ideology, its deep moral corruption will eventually swallow you, too. America should be at the very minimum deeply disquieted by these revelations. That it is not - that it is dismissed as a "little thing" - is even more disquieting.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL, once discussed the reason why abortion tends to attract the worst doctors--why the Gosnell case is unlikely to be the last such.  He listed a number of reasons, both personal and professional, including the technical ease of the procedure, the distaste amongst many younger physicians who'd rather not perform it, the effect of ultrasound on people who could now see what it was that they were killing, and the high profits to be made by those willing to perform abortions quickly.  Gosnell is not alone.  Update:  Gosnell is not alone.

If these conditions are persisting, even after abortion is legalized, we need to start asking whether illegal abortions were awful because desperate women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the illegal for money, or whether they were awful because women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the unthinkable for money.

Gosnell Coverage, Clinic Regulation, and the Pro-Life Movement

"The picture above, for what it’s worth, is of the reserved media seats at the Gosnell trial. It was taken by JD Mullane, a news writer and columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, The Intel and the Burlington County (NJ) Times. He says:
Sat through a full day of testimony at the Kermitt Gosnell trial today. It is beyond the most morbid Hollywood horror. It will change you.
I was surprised by the picture and asked 'really?' He responded 'Local press was there, Inky, PhillyMag, NBC10 blogger. Court staff told me nobody else has shown up.'"--GetReligion

Well, coverage is finally picking up, compared to the early days of the trial (see picture of an empty press section above).  A friend recently raised the following concern:

One week ago, clinic regulation represented a political compromise, a half-measure of a defeated movement. Today, discussing regulation would be surrendering on the verge of a route. Admit it, both "sides" used regulation tactically--it is no one's goal, nor should it be. But the value of the tactic has now increased exponentially for one side, and could accomplish its critical need to weather this unprecedented storm.

I think this piece answers that concern quite well. Excerpts:

...Normally, like a game, the media will only admit to this kind of oversight long after it is too late to do anything about it. Worse still, the admission of the mistake is generally just a convenient excuse for the media to talk about their favorite subject -- themselves.

That doesn’t appear to be the case this time. Last night on CNN, Jake Tapper (one of the few who had already covered Gosnell), Erin Burnett, and Anderson Cooper devoted extensive time to the story. And as you can see above, the media are promising to do more next week than just navel gaze.

And I for one am very grateful for that, because even marginally bad coverage, like what we saw from CNN's Erin Burnett last night, is a win. (Anderson Cooper's segment was flat-out outstanding and a must-watch.)

Regardless, let the left-wing media spin the Gosnell horrors into a pro-choice argument for safer abortion clinics. As someone who considers abortion a moral abomination, as long as it is legal, I don't want to see that abomination made worse with unsafe clinics and the horrific exploitation of desperate women.

But that is the worse-case scenario (which is still a plus). What is also likely to happen is an increased  public knowledge of the act of outright infanticide known as partial-birth abortion. For over a decade now, the media has tried to turn that horror into a "right-wing myth." But now we not only have an example of a doctor eagerly engaged and made wealthy by the practice, but other doctors referring patients to him.

New Media has a responsibility now, as well. We need to use this opportunity to do our own reporting on Gosnell, not just to peck away at the mainstream media for not covering the story in the way we would like...

More shame-faced acknowledgements that the story deserves coverage from Bloomberg and Politico.  My main post on the case.  And we need to keep asking:

If these conditions are persisting, even after abortion is legalized, we need to start asking whether illegal abortions were awful because desperate women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the illegal for money, or whether they were awful because women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the unthinkable for money.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, and the Low Quality of Abortion Doctors

Warning: graphic images and descriptions.

3801 Lancaster from 3801Lancaster on Vimeo.

So there's finally beginning to be a rumpus about the Kermit Gosnell trial, than which a more perfect storm of horrors could not be imagined.  (Update:  The grand jury report here.)

Elizabeth Scalia points out avenues in for media coverage and calls on Christians to seize the moment in a Gospel fashion. Excerpts:

...Embracing this moment with a Christlike heart and mind means no hateful postings on Facebook. No hashtags on twitter meant to insult, demean or cast down. Try #pro-abortion instead of #pro-murder.

Let me put it another way: if you’re a Christian who hates abortion and you see a sliver of light in this 40 years of darkness — which is exactly what this hushed admission from the press might be — and you repel the light with your anger instead of widening it (and its pathway) by taking a gentler, more merciful tone, then you will have to answer to the God of Justice about it. You’ll have to tell God why you thought it was more important to beat his wounded sheep rather than heal; you’ll have to explain why you thought your immediate “justice”, which can never be as informed as God’s, was preferable to waiting for his, which (for others) might come well after some years of regret, and contrition and penance and (for others) may be wholly beyond our comprehension.

We may be in a moment of grace, standing at the advent of a great gift. It’s not time to put a nail through a bat and start swinging...

Catholic World Report's Catherine Harmon has more on the coverage of the story and brings up Dr. Bernard Nathanson's documentary The Silent Scream , pointing out that the silent scream of the fetus in the abortion depicted in that documentary has now become rather less silent in the Gosnell case.  Warning to the weak-stomached.  Excerpts:

This week we have reports of another tiny victim of abortion screaming—not silently this time:

A Delaware woman who worked for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell recalled hearing one child “screaming” after it was delivered during an abortion procedure at Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic.

Sherry West, of Bear, said she was loyal to Gosnell – who is now facing multiple counts of murder for allegedly killing children after they were delivered alive at his clinic – but said the incident “really freaked me out.”

When Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore pressed the 53-year-old West for specifics about the incident, West struggled to answer, clearly uncomfortable with the memory.

“I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” West testified, telling a judge and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury that the body of the child was about 18 to 24 inches long and was one of the largest babies she had seen delivered during abortion procedures at Gosnell’s clinic.

West said she saw the child, whose face and features were not yet completely formed, lying on a glass tray on a shelf and she told a co-worker to call Gosnell about it and fled the room...

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL, once discussed the reason why abortion tends to attract the worst doctors--why the Gosnell case is unlikely to be the last such.  He listed a number of reasons, both personal and professional, including the technical ease of the procedure, the distaste amongst many younger physicians who'd rather not perform it, the effect of ultrasound on people who could now see what it was that they were killing, and the high profits to be made by those willing to perform abortions quickly.  Gosnell is not alone.  Excerpts:

...Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, former employee said, "It was just unsafe. I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was."

Werbrich alleges conditions inside the facility were unsanitary.

"He didn't wear gloves," said Werbrich.

Another former employee, Joyce Vasikonis told Action News, "They were using instruments on patients that were not sterile."

The former nurses claim that a rush to get patients in and out left operating tables soiled and unclean.

Werbrich said "It's not washed down, it's not even cleaned off. It has bloody drainage on it."

"They could be at risk of getting hepatitis, even AIDS," added Vasikonis.

Both of these nurses said, they quit to protect their own medical licenses, stunned by what they called a meat-market style of assembly-line abortions...

Gosnell is not alone.

Gosnell is not alone

Go hunt through pro-life websites, and there's no shortage of links to other stories about abortion clinics being shut down for unsanitary conditions, injured patients, and more.  Listen to the testimony of Carol Everett in Blood Money: Getting Rich Off a Woman's Right to Choose.  Read Dr. Nathanson's The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind, or Abby Johnson's Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey across the Life Line (Focus on the Family Books) to learn that abortion clinics are usually first and foremost businesses.  All too often, the bottom line is the bottom line, not women's health and safety.

Update:  CNN is on the job!

If these conditions are persisting, even after abortion is legalized, we need to start asking whether illegal abortions were awful because desperate women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the illegal for money, or whether they were awful because women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the unthinkable for money.