Life Links 4/18/13

Some have portrayed Kermit Gosnell as a predator who lured women to his clinic with low prices.  Gosnell's defense will attempt to paint a different portrait.  During testimony yesterday, a former employee notes that sometimes Gosnell would perform abortions without being paid. 

Lewis also acknowledged during cross-examination that Gosnell would go ahead with abortions even if the patient did not have enough money, and many patients never returned to pay their bills.

The Florida House has passed their born alive legislation with a 119-0 vote. 

 Temporarily setting aside debate over the legality of abortion, the Florida House unanimously passed a measure Wednesday that would require doctors to provide emergency care if a failed abortion somehow produces an infant who is born alive.

HB 1129, sponsored by Avon Park Republican Rep. Cary Pigman, passed 119-0. Along with requiring that doctors provide care, the bill requires that cases of live births following an abortion attempt be reported.


Meanwhile, RH RealityCheck's Robin Marty calls an infant who is born alive after a failed abortion a "fetus."

The "Planned Parenthood infanticide" faux-scandal Blackburn evokes refers to a debate on the floor for a recent bill in Florida where the legislature proposed "aid" to any fetus "born alive after a botched abortion."

The legislation is titled, "Infants Born Alive" and I don't see the term "fetus" anywhere in the text yet Marty's years as an abortion advocate must compel her to use the term "fetus" to describe infants who survive abortion.


The Philadelphia Inquirer has an editorial by Father Frank Pavone.

Kermit Gosnell has been accused of "snipping" the spinal cords of babies born alive in his Philadelphia abortion clinic. Is such behavior crazy, or does it simply follow the logic of an industry that believes the mother's choice overrides any right to protection that the baby has?

Now I'm not saying Gosnell, if found guilty, shouldn't be held accountable for the eight murders he is charged with. But I am suggesting that a certain set of presumptions has been created by our public policies on abortion and the arguments made to justify these policies. If we are horrified by what happened at Gosnell's clinic, we have to examine what that connection might be.

Statistics from the Guttmacher Institute show that, in the United States, about 18,000 abortions occur annually - and legally - at 21 weeks of pregnancy and beyond. These are babies the size of a large banana.