Life Links 5/2/13

Ramesh Ponnuru and Margaret Carlson have a discussion about Kermit Gosnell and abortion.  Carlson, to her credit, doesn't play defense for the abortion industry. 

Margaret: Let me answer the question you raise: Yes, we have gone too far. Since we're talking about what we wrote, during last year's Democratic convention I wrote about how terrible it was that Democrats took out of their platform that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." As I read the Gosnell case coverage, I've learned that late-term abortions aren't as rare as I thought. Gosnell is charged with repeatedly and openly killing babies born alive. That is something doctors who perform abortions sometimes have to contemplate.

The vast majority of research money distributed by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine has not been for human embryonic stem cell research.  Only $458 million (or 25.44%) out of $1.8 billion dollars. 

The amount is of some interest because the key reason that the agency now exists is the perceived need in 2004 to fund hESC research in the wake of the Bush Administration restrictions on federal funding in that area. The restrictions created a national uproar in the scientific and patient advocate community, which feared that promising therapies would never be developed.

Dick Polman doesn't seem to understand (or maybe he's being intentionally obtuse) that the criticism over the lack of national media coverage was for Gosnell's trial (which as Polman notes started March 18).  Polman's main argument is that various media covered Gosnell when he was arrested in 2011 and somehow thinks that excuses the national media blackout of the first three weeks of the trial. 

The paragraph below is especially telling of the mindset of many abortion advocates who dreamily believe the myth of Roe v. Wade.

In truth, Gosnell is a classic back-alley practitioner, the kind of quack who thrived prior to Roe v. Wade — and would again if the bad old days ever returned. Gosnell is actually an advertisement for why early abortions should remain legal, with government oversight to keep them safe.

Notice Polman's delusional belief that pre-Roe was the bad old days (back-alley practitioners thrived) and Roe created the good days (back-alley practitioners apparently don't thrive) because of government oversight while he's discussing the case of a man who operated an unsanitary abortion clinic on a main street for 3 decades and whose clinic wasn't inspected by the government for 17 years.


Rich Lowry's column is on Barack Obama, Planned Parenthood and how pro-choice individuals often avoid saying "abortion." 

Listening to him, you could be forgiven for thinking that the country is riven by a fierce dispute over whether women should be allowed to choose their own ob-gyns or decide whether to take contraceptives or to get cancer screenings. One side is pro-women's health, the other anti. In his speech, the president said the word "cancer" seven times. About that he is happy to be straightforward.

Imagine if he had been similarly frank about the rest of Planned Parenthood's work: "In 2011, according to your annual report, your clinics or affiliates performed 330,000 abortions. That's a lot of abortion. Over 10 years more than 3 million. Thank you, Planned Parenthood. Think of all those women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies and you were there for them. That's what you do. That's what you are about. And that's what this country is about."