Life Links 4/30/13

Erik Wemple busts NARAL president Ilyse Hogue's obvious lie that NARAL was "first out of the gate to call attention to (the Gosnell) case."

Having done precisely 3,454 Nexis and Internet search on the Gosnell case, we missed the part where NARAL had led a charge to highlight the alleged atrocities in West Philadelphia. So we Nexised again, checking on NARAL's footprint around the time that Gosnell was indicted in January 2011. Not much there. When asked to provide news releases or other evidence of activism around that time, NARAL didn't provide anything.

Saynsumthn reveals that Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania CEO Dayle Steinberg lied about not knowing about the problems in Gosnell's clinic when he lost his license in 2010.  Steinberg recently said that while he was doing abortions, Gosnell's patients would come to Planned Parenthood and complain about the conditions there. 

  
Kirsten Powers has another column devoted to the Gosnell case in which she shares a conversation she had with a woman who went to Gosnell after being referred there by a NAF affiliated clinic in Maryland and whose child's foot was one of feet stored by Gosnell. 

When she was 16, Hawkins sought an abortion at a National Abortion Federation-certified abortion clinic, Hagerstown (Md.) Reproductive Health Services. The clinic told her she was 19 weeks pregnant and referred her to Gosnell. When she recently retrieved her file in anticipation of testifying, she was shocked that her sonogram showed she had in fact been at 21 weeks, which meant she would have been 23 weeks pregnant by the time Gosnell performed the abortion. "I was so overwhelmed and hurt," said Hawkins. "If I had known I was 23 weeks, I would have (chosen) adoption."

She also would have avoided the trauma visited upon her by Gosnell. Hawkins described the licensed medical professional as laughing at her during the procedure as she cried and begged him to stop because of the pain. "Stop being a baby," he said.

Late-term abortionist doesn't trust women

Is NARAL going to target late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo because he doesn't trust women to make certain decisions about their health care?

Santangelo, 56, said he's been a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist in the District since 1987. He said he keeps a low profile, partly because he worries that the controversial nature of abortions could make him a target for violence, but also because he prefers to stay out of the politics. He said he sometimes refuses late-term abortions if he feels women have been coerced or are in extramarital affairs, are seeking to terminate because of the sex of the child, or seem unsure whether they want the procedure.

So Santangelo doesn't trust women to make decisions if they are in affairs or want a sex-selection abortion.  Where's the pro-choice outcry? 

Life Links 4/25/13

NBC New York: Police Investigate Report of Fetus in Trash Bag

Police are investigating a report of an apparent human fetus found inside a trash bag on a Queens sidewalk Wednesday evening.

A neighbor in East Elmhurst called 911 after spotting a black trash bag in front of her home at 99th Street and 31st Avenue.

She told police she kicked the bag, then reached in and saw a jar containing what looked like a human fetus.

More than 100 Irish psychiatrists have signed a statement saying that abortion shouldn't be legalized for threat of suicide. 

Dr McCabe said: "I am not surprised that so many of our colleagues agree that the proposed legislation is flawed. As members of the medical profession, we have a duty to our patients to adopt best practice and an evidence-based approach to everything we do.

"The fact is that there is no evidence that abortion is a treatment for suicidality in pregnancy and may in fact be harmful to women. The Government must take this into account and reconsider its proposals."

A Georgia man has been charged in the death of his girlfriend and their unborn child.

Carlos Jerome Simpson was indicted Tuesday by a DeKalb grand jury on charges of murder, felony murder – killing someone while committing a felony – aggravated assault and possession of a gun during the commission of a felony.

Simpson, 23, allegedly shot and killed Shikira Dunson outside his home on Feb. 18.

The 20-year-old Dunson was five months pregnant, so prosecutors added the charge of feticide, defined by Georgia law as willfully and without legal justification causing the death of an unborn child by any injury to the mother.

Another man charged with killing his wife and unborn child now faces two 1st degree murder charges after authorities searched his computer.

The day before Margorie Holland died, Roger Holland made Internet searches asking: "if you pass out and fall down a flight of stairs, can you break your neck," according to the criminal complaint against him.

He made similar searches multiple times before that, Backstrom said.

Police found Margorie Holland at the bottom of a flight of stairs in the couple's Apple Valley townhouse -- though the county medical examiner concluded she died of strangulation, not a fall down the stairs.

Gun store owner sells illegal, dangerous guns to customers, gun rights advocates blame restrictive gun laws

In a story which probably hasn't received as much media attention as it should, gun store owner Timrek Lensog is on trial after authorities discovered he was selling illegal, dangerous guns to customers.  One customer, Maya Ragnom, who purchased a firearm from Lensog was sadly killed when the firearm exploded as she attempted to use it. 

Ragnom attempted to purchase firearms from other gun stores in the area but was turned down because they were unwilling to sell her the guns without a background check and a waiting period.  One of those stores referred her to Lensog's store. 

Even though a number of Lensog's customers had complained over the years to authorities about being injured after purchasing illegal and dangerous firearms, no one at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had investigated Lensog's store for more than a decade because proponents of gun rights in ATF leadership positions feared that inspecting gun stores would lead to a lack of access to firearms and the inability of citizens to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.

If the ATF would have inspected Lensog's store they would have discovered that Lensog consistently committed a number of violations including selling firearms and ammunition to felons, failing to record information on ATF forms, failing to comply with waiting period laws, and storing loaded firearms out in the open.  

While gun control advocates have howled at FOXNews for not giving the trial any air time, gun rights advocates have pointed out that Lensog is an extreme outlier among gun store owners.  Instead they've pointed towards gun laws, background checks, waiting periods, Lensog's cheap prices and the lack of access to firearms as the reason Lensog was able to stay in business for so long. 

The National Rifle Association leaders have claimed that if poor people were allowed more access to firearms and Pennsylvania didn't have such strict gun laws that individuals looking to purchase guns (like Ragnom) would have gone to more reputable gun sellers in the area. 

The NRA is also fighting numerous state legislative efforts which would require gun stores to be inspected on an annual basis and meet certain requirements regarding how guns are stored, who is allowed to sell guns and how background checks are done.  They claim that if these bills pass at the state level then more gun sellers like Lensog will spring up as reputable gun stores will close because they won't be able to meet the cost of the new requirements. 

The trial is set to continue next week as a number of Lensog's former employees (including one employee who started working at the store when he was a 15-year-old high school student) will testify to his dangerous and unorthodox method of selling firearms. 

Timrek Lensog

Michelle Goldberg latest to blame Gosnell on lack of access

Michelle Goldberg is the latest of pro-choice writers to attempt to claim the supposed over regulation of abortion clinics led to Gosnell. She claims Karnamaya Mongar was led to Gosnell by the over regulation of abortion as she was turned away from two abortion clinics in Virginia and one in D.C. 

But Mongar, the woman Gosnell is accused of killing, ended up there because she couldn't find a place to have an abortion in Virginia. Now, the doctor's alleged crimes are being used on behalf of laws that will hurt other women like her.

Mongar, a 41-year-old grandmother newly arrived in the United States from a Nepalese refugee camp, looked for a place to end her pregnancy, which was in its second trimester, closer to home. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week, according to her daughter's tearful testimony at the trial, Mongar had been "turned away from two abortion clinics in Virginia and one in Washington, D.C., because she was too far along in her pregnancy." Finally, someone referred her to Gosnell. She died of an overdose of Demerol, a sedative that, according to the Grand Jury report, the doctor favored because it was cheap.

Karnamaya Mongar

First, this shows some of Goldberg's ignorance.  While Virginia has a law which requires second-trimester abortions be performed in hospitals, abortion is not tightly regulated in the District of Columbia.  While NARAL doesn't give them a grade, the only restrictions they list for D.C. are that nurse-midwives can't perform abortions, tax dollars aren't used to pay for abortions, and individuals can refuse to do abortions. 

In fact, there are numerous abortion clinics in D.C. which will do second-trimester abortions.  Washington Surgi Clinic says they do abortion to 26 weeks.  The D.C. Planned Parenthood does abortions thru 19 weeks.  Potomac Family Planning thru 17 weeks.  Abortionist Nathan Bobrow also does abortions thru 17 weeks. 

The reason Mongar went to Gosnell is that the D.C. clinic (that's Goldberg noticeably indescript "someone") referred her there. So, for some reason (maybe Mongar mentioned a shortage of funds?, competition with other local clinics?), the D.C. abortion clinic referred Mongar to Gosnell despite there being at minimum two abortion clinics in D.C. which would have performed an abortion on her (Mongar was 19 weeks pregnant when she died from a drug overdose at Gosnell's clinic).   


Second, this shows how Goldberg isn't thinking clearly.  If Pennsylvania had a second-trimester law like Virginia and enforced it then Gosnell wouldn't have been operating in Philadelphia and Mongar couldn't have gone to him there.  The only reason he was operating there was because pro-choicers concerned about access to abortion clinics put forth the incredibly dangerous policy of not inspecting clinics. 

Who's to say Gosnell wouldn't have been performing abortions in Virginia if the states' policies were reversed?  Who would be to blame then for Mongar's death? 

Ohio Health Department closes abortion clinic after it fails inspection

The Capital Care Network of Cuyahoga Falls abortion clinic has been shut down by the Ohio Department of Health after failing an inspection.

The health department says inspectors found numerous violations during a Feb. 21 inspection, including undertrained staff, failure to maintain a safe and sanitary environment and failure to maintain patient documentation.

The health department gave the clinic a chance to request a hearing about a proposal to revoke its license, but says the clinic did not reply.

Another Capital Care Network abortion clinic closed earlier this year.

Life Links 4/24/13

     
The New York Times has an article on Tuesday's events in the Kermit Gosnell trial which repeatedly uses the term "fetus" to describe the born-alive children Gosnell is accused of killing.

A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday threw out three of seven murder charges against a Philadelphia doctor charged with killing viable fetuses while performing abortions.....

 Bryan Kemper, youth outreach director for Priests for Life, an anti-abortion group, said he was "obviously frustrated" with the judge's decision. Mr. Kemper, who traveled from Ohio to attend the trial, said he was convinced that Dr. Gosnell had deliberately killed live fetuses.

"It makes no sense to me that he could snip the back of the neck of a baby that was not alive," Mr. Kemper said during a break in the hearing.

Today, Judge Minehart corrected the charges which he threw out.  Apparently, he confused some of the babies Gosnell is accused of killing. 

On Wednesday, Minehart clarified that he did not intend to dismiss charges related to Baby C, which former employee Lynda Williams admits killing after it was alive for 20 minutes.

Instead, Minehart has thrown out the charges involving Baby F, which allegedly jerked its leg after it was born. Another staff member says Gosnell then cut the baby's neck to "ensure fetal demise."

Trevin Wax imagines a Planned Parenthood press release responding to Gosnell.

The actions of Dr. Gosnell and the atmosphere of his clinic for reproductive health do not represent the experience of women who visit Planned Parenthood for access to birth control and other reproductive services.

Here are some important differences to keep in mind:

•     In abortions after the first trimester, Planned Parenthood physicians never "snip the necks" of babies outside the womb. We take great care to make sure that the snipping happens inside the birth canal moments before birth, not after.

•     Unlike Gosnell's clinic, Planned Parenthood clinics do not have jars of baby parts or toilets overflowing with fetal remains. We make sure that the fetuses we dismember and extract from the womb are placed in sanitary medical bags and properly disposed of.

                   
Republican senators in New York plan on blocking Governor Andrew Cuomo's abortion legislation. 

The Republican leader of New York state's Senate said Tuesday that he will block any abortion proposal from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whether it's to allow later-term abortions or protect current standards.

"Expansion of late-term abortion is extreme, in my opinion. It's not progressive, it's extreme," Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos said Tuesday.

Abortion advocate Gwen Emmons should have read Gosnell Grand Jury report before commenting on it

In a piece for RH RealityCheck, abortion advocate and current Planned Parenthood of South Pennsylvania employee Gwen Emmons argues against Pennsylvania's law to regulate abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical facilities and claims that the Gosnell Grand Jury Report didn't recommend regulating abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical facilities.  Here's Emmons:

Floor debates suggested that supporters of the regulations either didn't know that abortion facilities were regulated, or conveniently ignored that fact. Rep. Baker argued that "the template for this legislation … is the grand jury report." However, it should be noted the grant jury report did not recommend regulating abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical facilities.       

I don't think Emmons read the report.  On page 248, recommendation #5 is:

5. The Pennsylvania Department of Health should license abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical facilities.           

It reads in part (my emphasis),

Gosnell's facility fell far below the basic, minimum standards of care that any
patient having a surgical procedure should expect to receive. There is no justification for
denying abortion patients the protections available to every other patient of an
ambulatory surgical facility, and no reason to exempt abortion clinics from meeting these
standards.

Whoops!  Kind of tough to claim the Grand Jury doesn't recommend something when it clearly does and when the text of the report demolishes your argument. 

Where does RH RealityCheck find these people.  Is editor Jodi Jacobson so ignorant about the Grand Jury report that she can't spot this obvious error?  Maybe Gwen, Jodi and the rest of the RH RealityCheck crew should take the time to read the Grand Jury report before posting another ignorant commentary they know next to nothing about. 

ABC News article on Gosnell fails to quote single prolife source, comes off as pro-abort press release

Unbelievable. 

Apparently, the best way to disprove allegations of liberal media bias is to publish an article on abortionist Kermit Gosnell which is a complete puff piece for abortion advocates and allows them to blame prolife laws and lack of abortion access for Gosnell. 

Reporter Colleen Curry fails to quote a single prolife source while giving NARAL's Ilyse Hogue, Planned Parenthood's Eric Ferrero and the National Abortion Federation's Vicki Saporta paragraph upon paragraph of space.  She also gets Gosnell's age wrong (he's 72, not 69) and spells his first name incorrectly (only 1 t).  Also guilty is not spelled "guility." 

Is ABC News employing editors anymore?   

If Curry had taken the time to contact one knowledgeable source from the prolife movement she would have discovered that Saporta is full of it.  Kermit Gosnell worked one day a week at a National Abortion Federation clinic in Delaware called Atlantic Women's Services.  For Vicki Saporta to claim Gosnell was "an extreme outlier" when he worked at a NAF clinic and even got patients from that clinic shows just how much confidence the abortion industry has in the media to cover their rears. 

Abortion advocates know reporters like Curry won't take the time to actually get acquainted with the Gosnell case, read the Grand Jury report or interview a prolife source for their reaction to the quotes from the abortion advocates. 

If Curry had done more than a shred of homework she might have mentioned that Gosnell applied to for membership into the NAF and the NAF employee who visited his rundown clinic was horrified but didn't report him to the authorities.

Life Links 4/22/13

Longtime abortion advocate and abortionist David Grimes tries to intentionally deceive Washington Post readers with this quote. 

David Grimes, former head of the CDC's abortion surveillance branch, said clinics like Gosnell's were commonplace before Roe v. Wade, the court case that legalized abortion. Today, the problem of substandard clinics is so small that the branch, which investigated problem clinics, no longer exists, he said.

"The legalization of abortion stands out as a public health triumph," he said. "Over 1,000 women died every year from illegal abortion in the 1940s. Now it's less than a handful a year. That's the story, not one aberrant doctor in Philadelphia."

Wait.  1,000 women died every year in the 1940's?  Wasn't abortion legalized in the 1970's?  Why is Grimes using statistics from 30 years before abortion was legalized to make his case? 

Oh yeah, that's right.  In 1972, 39 women (as opposed to over a thousand) died from illegal abortion.  An additional 24 women died from legal abortion in 1972. 


The Post also has a column about abortion myths by Rickie Solinger which unsurprisingly is filled with its own myths.  Ramesh Ponnuru points out that Solinger can't even cite the source of one of her claims accurately. 
   

Gosnell turned down several plea deals. 

Dr. Gosnell has rejected several plea deals from prosecutors, the last before jury selection started March 4. The offer would have let him serve life in a federal prison rather than in the Pennsylvania system, and let his wife, Pearl, 52, keep their West Philadelphia home.

Philadelphia's NBC affiliate has an article on how the reaction of Gosnell's jury have become less visible. 

"It was way more visible, the reaction of the jurors, in the beginning. You could read the emotion on their faces," Khalil said.

As time marched on, however, jurors barely reacted, according to Khalil, at even the most gruesome details or images.

"There's only so much the brain can handle," said Gomez, who has a Ph.D. in Psychology. "It's not that it becomes less disturbing or upsetting, but it's just not as shocking."   

Life Links 4/19/13

The USA Today editorial on Gosnell's trial includes this line:

Unless evidence emerges that clinics like his exist in other parts of the country, the case looks like an appalling anomaly. 

They say this after noting how a simple internet search could have found other Pennsylvania abortionists willing to perform abortion up to 24 weeks.  A simple internet search or simply having contact with a couple of people in the prolife movement could have provided ample evidence that the filthy, unsanitary conditions in Gosnell's clinic are not an anomaly or that there are a large number of incompetent, dangerous abortionists.  Gosnell is an anomaly in the sense that he snipped the necks of babies who survived abortion and there was so much evidence against him but prolife people have been chronicling shady abortionists for decades.  



James Taranto points out how Roe v. Wade didn't make abortions safe for women.  Instead of hiding in the back-alleys, shady abortionists can now bring the back-alley to main street (or 3801 Lancaster). 

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Gosnell and have already obtained guilty pleas from eight of his former staffers. The grand jury's report should also be seen as an indictment of America's post-Roe abortion industry. Its indifference—at best—to legal limits made possible the deaths of untold numbers of babies, lending credence to the argument that legal abortion is a slippery slope to infanticide.

Meanwhile, the claim that Roe v. Wade made America safe from back-alley abortion stands exposed as a cruel hoax, and a deadly one for women and children alike.

Ross Douthat notes how abortion advocates have failed to put forward arguments which embrace the goriness of late-term abortion without helping the prolife cause. 

To respond effectively to the doubts about abortion that fetal snipping summons up, pro-choice advocates would need arguments that (to rephrase Senior's language) acknowledge and come to terms with the goriness of third-trimester abortions while simultaneously persuading the conflicted and uncommitted of their validity, and that somehow take ownership of the "violence" and "gruesomeness" of abortion (to borrow Harris's words) without giving aid and comfort to the pro-life cause. And in the absence of such arguments, the pro-choice response to Gosnell feels either evasive and euphemistic, or else logically consistent in ways that tend to horrify the unconvinced — and in either case, inadequate to the challenge his case presents to the cause of abortion rights.

But of course it's possible that those arguments are absent because they simply don't exist.

Michelle Malkin sums up the "lack of access lead to Gosnell" meme quite well. She also notes that Gosnell isn't an exception citing Stephen Brighan, Andrew Rutland and the Delaware Planned Parenthood currently under state investigation. 

Gosnell’s enablers have concocted all sorts of excuses for themselves. The billion-dollar abortion racket says “lack of funding” and “access” to “health care” is the real problem. But expanding “access” is exactly how Gosnell got away with murder after bloody murder. As the grand jury revealed, pro-choice bureaucrats in liberal GOP governor Tom Ridge’s administration concluded that increased inspections “would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.”

Abortion clinic in Norfolk, Virginia to close

Hillcrest Clinic in Norfolk will close after Saturday instead of complying with Virginia's clinic regulations.  It had been open for 40 years but had been losing business lately.

Architects estimated Hillcrest would need $500,000 in renovations - including changing ventilation and temperature controls - to meet the standards, Caton said.

But that was just one reason Hillcrest made the decision to go out of business. Costs of supplies and staffing have risen, she said, while the number of women seeking to end their pregnancies has declined.

Hillcrest provided 1,629 abortions last year, compared with 2,116 in 2009, according to the state health department. The overall number of abortions in South Hampton Roads declined by nearly 18 percent in that time.

Was Gosnell really that cheap?

One argument made by abortion advocates attempting to blame prolife laws for Kermit Gosnell is that Gosnell was only able to continue operating because poor women (without tax-funded abortions) were forced to turn to Gosnell due to his super low prices.  I'll agree that his prices are lower than most providers (especially later in pregnancy) but his first trimester and early second trimester abortion prices aren't really drastically cheaper than other abortion providers. 

In fact, some of his prices are higher than the prices charged at the abortion clinic owned by Todd Stave and his sister.   Reproductive Health Services was founded by Carl Stave is currently run by Todd and his sister Nancy Stave Samuels. Todd has been on Rachel Maddow's show.

Here's the price list for Reproductive Health Services.    The price list includes prices for their Prince George's Reproductive Health Services and says to call for the prices at the Germantown abortion clinic where abortionist LeRoy Carhart does late-term abortions.

Compare it with Gosnell's price list (2nd image).   As Gosnell's price list for abortion shows, he provided one price for insurance and another price for women paying cash (if they paid with credit card there was a "merchandising fee").

For women opting for local anesthesia, RHS's price is basically cheaper than Gosnell's "discount" price all the way with RHS starting out at $220 for a 6-11 week abortion and topping out at $525 for a 16 week abortion compared to Gosnell's prices of $330 for 6-12 abortion and $540 for a 15-16 week abortion.  RHS adds a $100 fee for twilight anesthesia while Gosnell's fee was $90. 

Gosnell charged $450 for a RU-486 abortion.  RHS charges $375.

The only time Gosnell would be cheaper than RHS is for 18-19 week abortions.
       
And then here's the prices you'd find at Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C.        

Price ranges for our abortion services are:

    abortion pill (medication abortion) - $475
    in-clinic abortion
        4-11 weeks - $425
        12-13 weeks - $475
        14 weeks - $525
        15 weeks - $600
        16-19 weeks - $700-1075
    sedation - IV medication - $100
    sedation - oral medication - Included in price
    medication if you are Rh negative - $40-100
    post-abortion follow-up exam - Included in price
    abortion patient education - Included in price

For most of the abortions, the Planned Parenthood price is between Gosnell's insurance price and cash price.  For RU-486, Gosnell's discounted price of $450 is only $25 cheaper than Planned Parenthood. 

Gosnell's lowest price for an abortion is $330 for a 6-12 week surgical abortion.  Here's what one Planned Parenthood affiliate says about abortion prices nationwide. 

Nationwide, the cost at health centers ranges from about $285 to $700 for abortion in the first trimester.

Planned Parenthood's main information page on abortion says that surgical abortions "cost about $300–$950 in the first trimester."

For later abortions, the Southwestern's Women clinic in New Mexico says prices for a 20-24 week abortion start at $1,250.  That's really not that much more than the $1,180 Gosnell would charge for a "discount" 21-22 week abortion (without anything more than local sedation).  The New Mexico's clinic price includes sedation (which kind of sedation isn't mentioned). 

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.

State of Delaware investigating Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood's version of the House of Horrors is back in the news as the state of Delaware is investigating the state's largest abortion clinic for the various reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions. 

The article from The News Journal  lists the names of two employees who are no longer working at the clinic but Planned Parenthood won't say if they were fired. 

Amelia Auner, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Delaware, confirmed Tuesday that Dr. Timothy Liveright, who performed abortions in Wilmington, and Gloria Johnson, who was vice president of medical services, no longer are employed by the organization. It was not clear if their departures were related to the recent investigations. Efforts to reach Liveright and Johnson on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Liveright is an abortionist but there's not a ton I could find on him.  Here's a local prolife newsletter which mentions he performed abortions at the Planned Parenthood in Reading, Pennsylvania in 2011.  Gloria Johnson does not appear to be an abortionist but rather a medical administrator. 

The News Journal article also interviewed the nurses who blew the whistle about the unsanitary conditions.  They didn't come forward because they're prolife.

Vasikonis describes herself as "radically pro-abortion," but said she could not continue to work under the conditions she saw.

"I feel like a woman has a right to abortion for whatever reason she chooses," she said. "But she should know all of her options and understand what she is consenting to and she should have a safe procedure. That was not what was happening there. It got to the point where I could not stand it another day. I said, ‘I am going to lose my license if I stay here.' "       

Both the nurses resigned in August of 2012. So the conditions which could have played a role in the 5 recent emergency calls have been in place for 8 months. 

The article also quotes Ruth Lytle-Barnaby as Planned Parenthood of Delaware's CEO. Interestingly, the past CEO, Nanci Hoffman, retired in August of 2012. 

Gosnell jury hears from relatives of Karnamaya Mongar, Gosnell's handyman

On Tuesday, the murder trial of Kermit Gosnell featured the testimony of Karnamaya Mongar daughter and brother.  Gosnell has been charged with murdering Mongar by providing her with a lethal dose of pain killers.  James Johnson, Gosnell's handyman also testified about the frequent problems with the toilet being backed up by the body parts of aborted children. 

The testimony notes how Mongar (who started looking to get an abortion when she was 16 weeks pregnant) was referred to Gosnell's clinic by another abortion clinic. 

The family clinic near Mongar's home - about 20 miles south of Washington - said it did not perform abortions after 14 weeks.

Gurung said that the clinic directed her mother to another clinic in Fredericksburg, Va., but that one also turned her down and suggested an abortion clinic in Washington.

The D.C. clinic also said no, Gurung said, but told them that Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia would likely be able to help them.

Which D.C. clinic was that?  Will the abortion industry admit that abortion clinics will often provide referrals to other clinics without having the slightest idea of whether that clinic is sanitary or not? 

Johnson, who is married to a foster sister of Gosnell's wife, Pearl, testified that the clinic had frequent plumbing problems.

Toilets blocked up weekly, Johnson testified, but he refused to clean out the waste pipe.

"I told the doc I would remove the toilet and lay it on its side, but somebody else would have to clean that out," Johnson said.

Atlantic editor blames Gosnell on prolife protestors

Garance Franke-Ruta just broke the record for pro-choice incoherence.  In a new piece at The Atlantic entitled, "Kermit Gosnell and the Anti-Abortion Movement's Intelligence Failure" she blames the continuation of abortion Kermit Gosnell's atrocities on the prolife people who protested outside his clinic once a month on Saturday mornings for 20 years.  It's apparently their fault the women who got abortions didn't tell them more about Gosnell's clinic. 
   

Nor did the group pull public (such as court) records of complaints against Gosnell, which might have allowed anti-abortion advocates to see the pattern state regulatory authorities were ignoring, despite repeated complaints from doctors and Gosnell's victims. "Groups like Operation Rescue have the manpower to investigate clinics. Most pro-life groups don't have that kind of manpower. We're there to offer women an alternative," she said. The problems with the clinic were "apparently known in the neighborhood, but I wouldn't necessarily know that."

..............

Amid the extraordinary cavalcade of system failures that allowed Gosnell to operate as he did, it's an open question whether the anti-abortion movement could have done more to call attention to his abuses if it had been able to forge any kinds of bonds of trust with the abortion-seeking women who were injured by him. Finnegan rejected that premise. "We are not responsible for the abortion industry or what goes on there," she said.

It's a hard argument to make 40 years after Roe, during which the nature of abortion services in the United States have been shaped by the political opposition to them more than any single other factor. In the wake of the Gosnell scandal, renewed anti-abortion activism in Pennsylvania led to legislation requiring abortion-providing facilities to be licensed as ambulatory surgery centers; Gov. Tom Corbett signed the bill into law in December 2011, and it went into effect last summer.

While claiming the prolifers who were protesting outside at the clinic once a month for 20 years should have been pulling records and alerting authorities (you know those same authorities who knew about the botched abortions, etc. and did nothing) and therefore didn't do enough, Franke-Ruta gives a pass to the National Abortion Federation representative who was actually inside the clinic and saw it's condition because ..... well.....Gosnell's clinic got raided a couple months later.  

Finnegan, for her part, blames the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers in North America, for not reporting Gosnell to authorities after inspecting his facilities. "The National Abortion Federation knew how bad things were in the Gosnell facility. We did not," she told me. It's a fair point -- except that Gosnell only reached out to NAF and asked for an inspection after the November 2009 death of Karnamaya Mongar, and was shut down by state authorities less than two months after NAF rejected his application. NAF did its inspection on Dec. 14 and 15, 2009, and rejected Gosnell's application on January 4, 2010. The clinic was raided on Feb. 18 of that year and Gosnell's license was suspended on Feb. 22.

So apparently the women who had abortions and babies whose neck were snipped in those two months don't really count, huh?   

Franke-Ruta also critiques Rick Santorum for not forcing the media to cover the Gosnell trial more.  

They're nothing if not persistent - abortion advocates continue push to blame Gosnell on prolife laws

Abortion advocates continue to push the false narrative that Gosnell was allowed to continue to operate because Pennsylvania's prolife laws and no tax funded abortions forced women to seek him out instead of more expensive abortionist.  The Weekly Standard reports today they even hosted a conference call to provide these "facts" to the media.                              

When asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the NAF employee's failure to report, the participants on the call admitted this was a "massive failure of oversight" but described the question as "cherry picking" "one employee from one organization." In fact, NAF describes itself as the "professional association of abortion providers in North America" and has member clinics in nearly every state in the U.S. Furthermore, as Warren Throckmorton reported, Gosnell's clinic in Philadelphia wasn't the only one at which he practiced; he also worked one day a week at an NAF-member clinic in nearby Wilmington, Delaware. Several times, Gosnell performed abortions in Philadelphia on women with whom he first met in Wilmington.   

Yeah, why is that I have yet to see a single proponent of the "prolife policies lead to Gosnells" narrative ever mention that Gosnell worked at a NAF clinic part time and got an employee (Lynda Williams) and patients from there?  Why is that these claims are typically in a post which doesn't link to the Grand Jury Report?
 
The reason is that a good portion of abortion advocates (individuals like Amanda Marcotte) are basically paid to keep pro-choice people uninformed.  The commentary they provide helps to keep large numbers of pro-choice people in their bubble.  Just when someone may start to question why Gosnell's clinic wasn't inspected for 17 years and think that annual abortion clinic inspections may be common sense, Marcotte and others are there to blame Gosnell on those evil prolife laws and the lack of taxpayer funding of abortion.  They're led back to the belief that if prolifers got out of the way and let pro-choicers formulate abortion policy, every abortion clinic would be clean as could be, abortion would be performed less frequently and every abortionist would be caring health care provider because women wouldn't be desperate. 

This is why someone like Marcotte or Irin Carmon will never write a story about Stephen Brigham.  They'll never talk about how an abortionist who has lost his medical license in various states is operating a multi-state abortion empire which includes starting late-term abortions in one pro-choice state (New Jersey) and caravaning women to another pro-choice state (Maryland).

Mississippi abortion clinic gets injunction extended

A federal district court judge extended an injunction he gave Mississippi's lone abortion clinic from several month's ago which gave them more time to attempt to meet Mississippi's requirements to have a physician with admitting privileges.

Jordan's ruling comes three days before the state Department of Health was scheduled to hold a license revocation hearing for the clinic over its acknowledged inability to get the admitting privileges. Now the administrative hearing won't be held, said health department spokeswoman Liz Sharlot.

Jordan's ruling says the state cannot close the clinic while it still has a federal lawsuit pending to challenge the 2012 law. A trial date has not been set.

Gosnell links 4/16/13

At the Washington Post, Sarah Kliff offers a mea culpa on her description of the Gosnell trail as a "local crime story" and outlines the basics.


New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan tries to explain the Gosnell coverage in the New York Times. 

I do think that it wasn't on their radar screen – and that it should have been. The murders of seven newborn babies, done so horrifically, would be no ordinary crime. Any suggestion, including mine on Friday, that this is just another murder trial is a miscalculation. And it's certainly possible that journalists who were more in touch with conservative voices and causes would have picked up on the importance of this trial sooner.                   

The New York Times has sent reporter Trip Gabriel there and he has an article which notes the role social media played in getting the national media to cover the trial.


Here's the Washington Post's article with a quote from National Right to Life's Mary Spaulding Balch.

"The significance of the trial is that it shows just how reluctant people are to look at what goes on in abortion facilities," said Mary Spaulding Balch, director for state legislation for National Right to Life, a group that opposes abortion. "This is something they don't know about, and they would be shocked to hear about it."

       
Tim Carney echoes those thoughts.
   

When you discuss the act of aborting -- even perfectly legal abortions -- you have to discuss the blood, the scalpels, the scissors. You might use terms like "dilation and extraction" or "dilation and curettage." Think through those terms ("curettage" is defined as "a surgical scraping or cleaning") and recall that what is being extracted or scraped has a beating heart.

Discussing Gosnell threatens to start a discussion on abortion procedures -- and that's not good for anyone in the abortion industry.

Same with Jonah Goldberg:

Regardless, Gosnell isn't only being charged with performing illegal late-term abortions. He's being charged with delivering viable babies and killing them. The really profound question here is what is the moral difference between killing a living baby that is outside the mother for a few seconds and killing one that's still inside. It's no wonder the media would rather talk about itself.

"No one is pro-abortion." Oh wait.....

Yes, I'm Pro-Abortion

It is not enough to be pro-choice when 87% of American counties do not have an abortion provider. It is not enough to be pro-choice when less than half of all states help to fund abortions to low-income women and women in need. It is not enough to be pro-choice when we must qualify that with, "I support choice, not abortion."

Gosnell links 4/15/13

Another Philadelphia abortionist testified for the prosecution today in Kermit Gosnell's murder trial.  While pro-choice bloggers are crowing about access to abortion in Philadelphia, today's witness notes that he is one of 4 abortionists left in the city. 

Dr. Charles Benjamin is one of about four abortion providers left in Philadelphia in the wake of Dr. Kermit Gosnell's arrest two years ago.  His testimony was received by "an influx of reporters."

Benjamin, by his own count, has performed 40,000 abortions over a 30-year career. He doesn't do them after 21 weeks, or three weeks shy of the 24-week limit in Pennsylvania, he said

Gosnell is accused of performing illegal, late-term abortions and running a dangerously outdated clinic staffed by untrained workers. Benjamin said that he has registered nurses on staff to monitor patients, and that only he or a nurse anesthetist give anesthesia, unlike Gosnell's clinic, where workers hired to clean instruments or handle paperwork have testified that Gosnell trained them to administer potent intravenous drugs......
   
An influx of reporters attended the trial Monday, spurred by criticism that some broadcasters were not covering the trial. A gag order prevents lawyers from speaking outside and no cameras are allowed inside the courtroom.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a piece on how Gosnell cared for his turtles and fish.  While I've seen at least one individual claim it's a puff piece which promotes Gosnell, I see it as highlighting the absurd nature of a man who cared more for turtles and fish than infants who survived abortion. 


Shame and Twitter can be useful tools.  CBS News covered Gosnell this morning. 
                                   

James Taranto's best of the web column is focused on Gosnell today. 

Some pro-abortion commentators have denied that the horrors of the Women's Medical Society implicate their ideology. While they have little to say about the babies Gosnell allegedly killed, they certainly don't approve of the way he treated his pregnant patients, at least two of whom, according to the grand jury, ended up dead, with untold others mutilated or infected. No, these advocates assure us, they want abortion to be "safe and legal." (The Clintonian "rare" is not heard anymore. In a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed last month, Kate Michelman of NARAL Pro-Choice America came right out and said that she wants abortion to be "common.")

But the grand jury--which described its members as covering "a spectrum of personal beliefs about the morality of abortion"--directly blamed "pro-choice" politics for the regulatory failure that allowed the clinic to remain open for decades....

Why pro-choice arguments on Gosnell don't work

Since the tweeter storm on Gosnell has pushed his murder trial into the eyes of journalists who had never heard of Gosnell a week ago, some abortion advocates have been attempting to use the atrocities at Gosnell's clinic to push their ideology and attack prolife laws.

The basic claim (which many of them made back in 2011 and are regurgitating now) goes something like this: "Gosnell was allowed to operate for many years only because desperate, poor women went to his clinic.  If tax dollars funded abortion (or if there were less restrictions on abortion) then women wouldn't have gone to Gosnell but to other clinics."

For example, here's Amanda Marcotte:  

Pro-choicers are the ones trying to prevent future Gosnells. Gosnell made money exploiting desperate women, so the way to prevent future monsters like him is to make sure women aren’t desperate. Pro-choicers raise money for abortion funds, so more women can afford quality care. They set up volunteer-staffed help lines to get women through the process of seeing a reputable provider. They demand an end to the Hyde Amendment, so low-income women can use Medicaid to pay for quality providers.

There are many problems with this belief.

1.  Gosnell was performing abortions before the Hyde Amendment.  He was performing abortions before Roe.  The man was performing abortions for close to 40 years with tax funded abortions and without.  

2.  Women also went to him because he was the only abortionist in the area willing to perform post-viability abortions.  Do the same abortion advocates blaming prolife laws for Gosnell's actions wish there were more abortionists performing elective post-viability abortions in Pennsylvania? 

3. Some of the women who had late-term abortions went to Gosnell's clinic after they first tried to get an abortion at the National Abortion Federation-affiliated clinic Gosnell worked at part-time in Delaware.  If the NAF standards are good for women, how could Gosnell work part-time at a NAF clinic?  I've never seen an abortion advocate mention that Gosnell worked at a NAF clinic.  I wonder why.

4. Last but not least:  Stephen Brigham.  Brigham is an abortionist who has operated in numerous states for years despite losing his medical license in various states at various times.  He was most recently in the news when his abortion caravan system of starting an abortion in one state and finishing it in another led to a woman have severe complications.  The abortion caravan started in New Jersey and ended in Maryland.  Both states have very few prolife laws and both use tax dollars to fund abortions.  If tax-funded abortions and fewer prolife laws would have prevented Gosnell, they should have prevented Brigham.  

While Marcotte and other abortion advocates may claim they want to prevent other clinics similar to Gosnell's and hold clinics to certain standards, their fear about what caused Gosnell (lack of abortion access) is actually the same fear which played a large role in allowing Gosnell's clinic to operate without inspection for 17 years. It's also the reason why RHRealityCheck's Robin Marty bemoaned the closure of an unsanitary abortion clinic in Muskegon. 

The abortionist who operated the Muskegon clinic, Robert Alexander, was basically Michigan's version of Kermit Gosnell (filthy clinic, post-viability abortions, numerous complications, etc.) yet Marty's biggest concern was not about the health of women who went to Alexander but to how women in West Michigan would now have less access to abortion.  Never mind the access they lost was to a disgusting, unsanitary, disorganized abortion clinic with numerous roof leaks and blood splattered everywhere. 

Gosnell trial update 4/12/13

Today the jury heard testimony from Tina Baldwin on how Kermit Gosnell's co-defendant Eileen O'Neill fled out the back door when the FBI raided Gosnell's clinic because she didn't have a medical license.  While unlicensed O'Neill's part of the clinic was cleaner than Gosnell's and that's why he would take the majority of his white patients to O'Neill's side. 

She described O'Neill as a caring doctor who saw mostly older patients for high blood pressure or diabetes. O'Neill kept her office neat, in contrast to the rest of the clinic, Tina Baldwin said. So that's where Gosnell steered wealthy or white patients, she said. Gosnell also met with them and administered their medications himself, she said.

"Nine out of 10 times, if the patient was white ... he didn't want me to (administer the drugs), because he wanted to meet with them himself," she said.

Abortion advocate laughably claims, "There is no Gosnell coverup," pro-choicers have been covering it

At Salon, Irin Carmon has written a piece entitled, "There is no Gosnell coverup" which is hilarious.  I'm struggling to stop laughing.  Here's her premise:

No, they aren't right about the Gosnell story. If you've never heard of the Gosnell story, it's not because of a coverup by the liberal mainstream media. It's probably because you failed to pay attention to the copious coverage among pro-choice and feminist journalists, as well as the big news organizations, when the news first broke in 2011. There would be something rich, if it weren't so infuriating, about these (almost uniformly male, as it happens) reporters and commentators scrambling to break open this shocking untold story. You know, the one that was written about here, here and here, to name some disparate sources.

The "copious coverage" among "pro-choice and feminist journalists" Carmon links to includes one March 2013 post by PhillyNow on (a local blog), a long article from February 2011 by Philadelphia Weekly, an ignorant pro-abortion opinion piece from January 2011 in theGrio, and a pro-abortion piece in the RH RealityCheck blog from January of 2011.

Her "here, here, here" sources are a Katha Politt piece from 2011, a CBS News article from 2011 and an NPR story from ...... you guessed it....2011. 
               
So the "copious coverage" Carmon could come up with from pro-choicers since the start of the Gosnell trial is one blog post from a local blog. Copious indeed!

If you weren't reading theGrio in 2011, it's your fault you haven't heard about Gosnell or his trial 2 year later!

"No search results" is what you get if you search RHRealityCheck for anything on "Gosnell" in the last 30 days. 

Later on Carmon notes a single recent tweet by a pro-choicer and then another 2011 piece by a social worker.

Those pro-choicers are really crawling over each other to cover Gosnell's trial in 2013, huh?  

Breaking thru the media blackout on Gosnell

Dave Weigel at Slate, Connor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic, and Jeffrey Goldberg all have pieces on Gosnell and the media blackout.

Interestingly, both Friedersdorf and Golbderg hadn't really heard that much about the controversy until Kirsten Powers' column. 

Here's Friedersdorf (who took the time to read the Grand Jury Report):

Until Thursday, I wasn't aware of this story. It has generated sparse coverage in the national media, and while it's been mentioned in RSS feeds to which I subscribe, I skip past most news items. I still consume a tremendous amount of journalism. Yet had I been asked at a trivia night about the identity of Kermit Gosnell, I would've been stumped and helplessly guessed a green Muppet.

Here's Weigel on the bubble national reporters tend to occupy:

Let's just state the obvious: National political reporters are, by and large, socially liberal. We are more likely to know a gay couple than to know someone who owns an "assault weapon." We are, generally, pro-choice. Twice, in D.C., I've caused a friend to literally leave a conversation and freeze me out for a day or so because I suggested that the Stupak Amendment and the Hyde Amendment made sense. There is a bubble. Horror stories of abortionists are less likely to permeate that bubble than, say, a story about a right-wing pundit attacking an abortionist who then claims to have gotten death threats.       

Abortion advocate Sarah Erdreich attempts to blame future Gosnells on prolife laws, fails miserably

  
Sarah Erdreich, the author of Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, has a guest post on the Abortion Gang blog in which she attempts to claims that passing more prolife laws will create more abortionists like Kermit Gosnell.  First, she discusses Gosnell's clinic and the Grand Jury report, which seems to have read. 

Those acts, together with a grand jury report that spares no detail in describing the squalid and unhygienic conditions of Gosnell's clinic, paint a grim picture of a man that never should have been allowed to practice medicine. They also call into question just why state agencies did so little to investigate the many complaints that were made over two decades.

Actually, the Grand Jury report not only calls it into question but provides some answers (pro-choice politicians didn't want clinics inspected and their were a bunch of lazy bureaucrats), which for some reason Erdreich doesn't mention.  Nor does Erdreich mention the representative from the National Abortion Federation who visited Gosnell's squalid clinic and failed to alert authorities.  Hmmmm... wonder why? 

The state of Pennsylvania has responded by enacting new anti-choice laws that make abortion care more difficult for people to access and afford.

Post-Gosnell inspections actually closed another squalid clinic with numerous violations.  In other words, they shut down another Gosnell-type abortionist.  That's what even the threat of inspections will do.  Michigan is another great example.  A clinic is closing today likely because the 73-year-old abortionist knew his shady clinic wouldn't pass inspections. 

When a woman dies during childbirth, politicians do not insist that all hospitals adhere to new structural requirements, and activists do not claim that since a woman died, no OB/GYN should be trusted.

Ummm... that's because hospitals already adhere to structural requirements as opposed to abortion clinics which previously adhered to basically no requirements and no inspections. 

Making abortion more expensive and less accessible will not lower the abortion rate in this country.

So absurd.  Of course, making abortion more expensive and less accessible will lower the abortion rate.  That's why abortion advocates always complain about the accessibility of abortion.  They know the harder an abortion is to get, the less of them there will be. 

Instead, it will create an environment that drives women to desperate measures such as self-abortion or turning to untrained, but inexpensive, physicians.

But how will those untrained, inexpensive abortionists operate in states with prolife laws which have clinic regulations and inspections?  Oh wait, they won't.  They'll retire or close their clinics because they can't meet the regulations and pass the inspections.  So, in other words, the only places Gosnell-type abortionists will exist are in states which don't pass laws which require abortion clinics to be regulated and inspected. 

Man arrested for damaging Planned Parenthood clinic

An Indiana man was arrested after breaking into the Bloomington Planned Parenthood at 4 a.m. and damaging the building and equipment with an axe. 

A vandal with an ax smashed glass windows and doors, damaged computers and splashed red paint on Bloomington's Planned Parenthood clinic early Thursday morning.

Bloomington police arrested Benjamin D. Curell, 27, of Ellettsville, Thursday morning on preliminary felony charges of burglary and criminal mischief after causing "extensive damage" inside the facility. Police responded to a call about the break-in shortly after 3:51 a.m., according to Capt. Joseph Qualters, Curell was found in the main lobby area and said he vandalized the building because employees at Planned Parenthood "kill" and "murder" babies.....

Police have initially estimated the damage to be in excess of $2,500. Workers continued to remove red paint from the sides of double doors facing College Avenue as anti-abortion activists remained in front of the building for their regular protest day. Glass blocks at the front of the building were cracked. A window and door to the side of the building were also destroyed. Escorts remained outside of the building awaiting potential clients who may have not heard about the incident, while they also helped sweep up broken glass from the sidewalks and inside of door frames.     

Congressman calls out Obama on "deafening" silence regarding Kermit Gosnell

Props to Scott Perry (R-PA).  Via The Hill:

"Mr. President, your silence is deafening," Perry said on the House floor Thursday. "Are you so blind, are you so intractable, are you so extreme that you yourself can't even call this out for what it is, something that is reprehensible? Pro-life or pro-choice, this is reprehensible....

But Perry also blamed the press for failing to cover the trial. "The media doesn't want to talk about it," Perry said. "Not NBC, CBS, ABC, CNBC, not Fox, and not the leaders of our nation, not the president."

.....

"It gives me great pain and sorrow to have this entered and read into the record," Perry concluded. "But since the media outlets refuse to cover this because it's uncomfortable, because it might not meet with their agenda, and because many of the leaders of this country refuse to discuss it, I think it's important that we have it read into the record, so that this history and their stories don't remain untold."

Also, note that The Hill gets the story wrong and claims Gosnell has been charged with "partial delivering seven babies" as opposed to what he actually did which was kill children after they were fully delivered. This isn't about partial-birth abortion.  It's about infanticide. 

Life Links 4/11/13

Justin Dyer reviews the film After Tiller and what it means for the prolife movement. 

After Tiller is a reminder that the debate today is much more about why life is valuable than when life begins. The "traditional Western ethic" holds that life is valuable and inviolate simply because human life is good and it is not ours to take. That ethic is increasingly challenged in our culture, and communicating the pro-life message creatively and winsomely remains a vital task for the generation after Tiller.

Kirsten Powers joins the chorus of voices challenging the national media blackout of the Kermit Gosnell murder trial.

You don't have to oppose abortion rights to find late-term abortion abhorrent or to find the Gosnell trial eminently newsworthy. This is not about being "pro-choice" or "pro-life." It's about basic human rights.

The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace.

The prolife student group at the University of Alabama is in the midst of a having a Genocide Awareness Project displayed on campus (kudos to the CBS 42 for showing part of the display.  The display is invoking some pro-choice U of A students to say/write incredibly stupid things.  Here's senior engineering student Hakeem Hasan:

At the end of the day, ask yourself this: Does a woman in Texas having an abortion affect your life personally? What about a woman in Michigan? Or maybe somewhere in Alabama? It doesn't, so just let it happen, and maybe you'll live your life easier when you've stopped worrying about everyone else's.

Hakeem, at the end of the day, ask yourself this: Does a man beating his wife in Texas affect your life personally?  What about a man in Michigan? If it doesn't, does that mean spousal abuse should be legal? 

Hasan also absurdly asserts that abortions through the first two months of pregnancy are "harmless to both the woman and the embryo" and that unborn children at 2 months of development don't have brains or hearts.

Update on inquest into Savita Halappanavar's death

The Irish Times has an article on the inquiry into the death of Savita Halappanavar and the testimony of Dr. Katherine Astbury.  Astbury's testimony reveals that Halappanavar's death had much less to do with Ireland's abortion law and much more to do with mistakes made by hospital staff.

However, she did not look at the notes on her rounds and the decision to terminate was not made for another five hours, during which time Ms Halappanavar's health was deteriorating rapidly.

Dr Astbury agreed in evidence, given Ms Halappanavar's shivering early on the Wednesday morning, as reported yesterday by midwife Miriam Dunleavy, it was likely Ms Halappanavar's infection "was arising" at 4.30am. The inquest yesterday heard from Dr Ikechuckwu Uzockwu, that at 6.30am on Wednesday, Ms Halappanavar had a temperature of 39.6 degrees, an elevated pulse of 160bpm and a foul smelling discharge from her vagina. Dr Astbury agreed the foul-smelling discharge was "significant".

However, as another doctor had Ms Halappanavar's notes, she was not aware of this on her ward round at 8.20am......

Dr McLoughlin asked her about the wide variation in Ms Halappanavar's white cell count, of 16.9 on her admission on Sunday 21st and 1.6 when next checked on Wednesday 24th. A normal upper-limit white cell count in a second trimester woman, said Dr Astbury, was 14.8.

Asked to comment on the fact she had not been told by the doctor who was on-call on the Sunday but who was not a member of her medical team, of the elevated white cell count on admission, Dr Astbury said: "If I had known that I would have re-checked it [earlier than on Wednesday 24th]."         

This testimony paints a much different picture than the claims that Savita was dying and they wouldn't give her an abortion.  Astbury makes it clear that Savita was physically well when she requested an abortion.  The article also clarifies the context in which the "Catholic country" phrase was said (to help Halappanavar understand the abortion law and Irish culture) and by whom (a midwife).

Life Links 4/10/13

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that Voices for Life, a prolife group at John Hopkins University, will be fully recognized by the campus after a student judiciary unanimously overturned a decision by student legislators which would have prevented the group from doing certain activities. 

The Judiciary Committee called for its decision to be effective immediately. As a sanctioned club, Voice for Life will be listed in all university publications and websites, be able to raise money on campus and publicize its events, among other privileges. The decision to recognize the group as a club does not guarantee that Voice for Life will receive university funding, which is approved in a separate process.

A Louisiana man named Jeffery Reynolds who cut open his wife's abdomen and removed her unborn child has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity after being charged with killing the child and attempting to kill his wife.  Paula Reynolds survived the attack.

Reynolds is charged with first-degree homicide, attempted second-degree homicide and battery on a police officer.

Police allege he stabbed his pregnant wife, Paula, in October, cut the fetus from her, called 911 and fought officers when they arrived.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld a school's decision to prevent a student prolife group from distributing rubber fetal models inside the school because of the disruption following the distribution.  Sounds like the students at the school have some issues. 

At Goddard High, court documents say, some 300 dolls were given to students before administrators shut down the distribution. Meanwhile, some students tore the small heads off the dolls and bounced them around classrooms like rubber balls. Some students used the dolls to plug toilets, while a few of the dolls were covered in hand sanitizer and lighted on fire. And other students found lewd uses for the rubber dolls.

Teachers complained of the substantial disruption caused by the items themselves, while at least one class was disrupted, with a scheduled test requiring postponement, because students became embroiled in name-calling over abortion, court papers say.

Former nurses at Delaware Planned Parenthood speak out about unsanitary conditions

The local ABC station in Philadelphia has video of two nurses who quit work at the Planned Parenthood of Delaware because of the unsanitary conditions and because they felt they could be held liable when women were injured.  The clinic has had a rash of emergency calls in recent months.   

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......

Action News has learned during our investigation that one doctor and two more nurses at the clinic have mysteriously left.

Planned Parenthood would not confirm if they were fired or resigned.

"I never knew it was murder"

During her testimony on Tuesday, Lynda Williams, a former staffer of abortionist Kermit Gosnell testified that Gosnell's practice of severing the spinal cords of children who survived abortion to "ensure fetal demis" was a routine practice.  The one time she "snipped" a neck, the child's arm "jumped."
           

"I only do what I'm told to do," she told the jury. "What I was told to do was snip their neck."

.....

"I never knew it was murder," Williams told investigators and repeated to the jury.

Overheard: James Taranto on controversy of asserting a scientific fact

Commenting in the Wall Street Journal on abortion advocates complaints about legislation in Kansas which includes a provision which declares "life begins at fertilization."

This is basic reproductive biology. The assertion that life begins at fertilization is a tautology. Camp and Weatherford might as well be objecting to a legislative finding that A is A or 2+2=4 or a tautology is true by definition.

So why do they find the declaration so discomfiting? Because abortion would be easier to justify if one were ignorant of basic reproductive biology. If one imagines gestation as a process in which an inanimate lump of matter, or a part of the mother's body, or a parasite (which by definition is an organism of a different species) grows for months before spontaneously generating an independent identity, then it is hard to formulate a moral objection to abortion prior to the moment at which spontaneous generation occurs.

Overheard: Mark Thiessen on "after-birth abortion"

I like it when columnists hit their own paper: 

This is Orwellian. The term “after-birth abortion” is an oxymoron. You can’t kill an unborn child after it has been born.

 The fact that Planned Parenthood aggressively lobbies against legislation requiring medical care for such children is appalling. The fact that a Planned Parenthood official testified that killing such children is permissible is shocking. And the fact that most major media outlets — including The Post — all but ignored her comments is distressing.

Our country is deeply divided over the question of abortion. But can we not all at least agree that killing a born child is murder — not a question that “should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician”?

Life Links 4/8/13

Some Alabama abortionists may have a difficult time getting admitting privileges and complying with the new state law.

In Birmingham, there is one licensed abortion clinic and its doctor does not have local admitting privileges. And the chance of getting such credentials may be difficult, according to a survey of Birmingham area hospitals.....

The director of Huntsville's only abortion clinic -- which does have a doctor with hospital privileges -- told AL.com earlier today that the building code requirement would mean they would "probably close".....

Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in Alabama, one in Birmingham and the other in Mobile. Neither have doctors with local admitting privileges, she said.

George Will devotes his column to pro-choice extremism at Planned Parenthood and John Hopkins. 
               

Planned Parenthood, which receives more than $500 million in government subsidies, is branching out, expanding its mission beyond the provision of abortions to the defense of consumers' rights: If you pay for an abortion, you are owed a dead baby.

Autocam Corporation is demanding Planned Parenthood remove defamatory and inaccurate statements about the payment of property taxes.  Planned Parenthood attacked Autocam CEO John Kennedy after he sued to prevent the implementation of the HHS mandate.  I can't find the information online so I'm wondering if Planned Parenthood has already removed it. 
               

Autocam Corporation and its CEO John Kennedy have demanded that the Planned Parenthood Action Fund retract the patently false charge that Autocam has not paid property taxes since 1997, as well as other baseless claims circulated by the taxpayer-funded abortion giant. Planned Parenthood leveled the accusations against the Kennedy family as part of a campaign called "The Bosses Who Want to Deny Your Birth Control Coverage."

In a letter sent Monday, attorneys for Kennedy show that the campaign is fraught with factual inaccuracies that even the most cursory investigation would have revealed. Public records indicate that Autocam has paid almost $10 million in real property and personal property taxes in the State of Michigan since 1997, including $961,386.74 in the year 2012 alone.               

Life Links 4/4/13

Noam Chomsky thinks  ignorantly claimed an unborn child is an organ in a woman's body.  He then made a stupid claim that hand washing could become illegal because of human cloning or something (don't expect a logical argument).

"There is a strong debate at the moment with regards to a woman's right to control an organ of her own body - namely the foetus. There is legislation being enacted in several US states to define personhood as a fertilised egg.

"Pretty soon you can imagine legislation prohibiting the washing of hands because thousands of cells are flaked off that could be turned into a stem cell and you can grow a foetus - so you're killing a person. It's attacks on women's rights."

He said these incredibly stupid things at an event where he received University College Dublin's highest award.   It's amazing how elite liberals can say the most unscientific, moronic gibber-gabber and no one seems to care. 


Yesterday at the Kermit Gosnell trial, a former employee of Gosnell named Elizabeth Hampton testified about her difficulties working at his clinic.

Hampton testified that she would pour the jar of red liquid from the machine down a sink drain and turn on the garbage disposal. She said she did not know if the liquid contained fetal body parts.

"I left because of things I saw. I went out that night and started drinking at the bar across the street," Hampton said, her voice choking with emotion. "I fell off the wagon."

                                               
Noah Rothman takes down NARAL president Ilyse Hogue's absurd claim that before Roe v. Wade,  "illegal abortion was the top killer of women of childbearing age in this country."

I am not a pro-life activist – I'm not even particularly pro-life (though many abortion practices make me uncomfortable) – but this claim sounded wildly exaggerated to me. How could it be that, prior to 1973, the leading cause of death for young and middle age women was the oft-referenced but rarely identified "back-alley abortion?" It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Hogue's claim is entirely fabricated.

Jeffrey Meyer has more at Newsbusters. 


At RedState, Reince Priebus hits the media over their lack of coverage on Planned Parenthood's testimony against legislation to help children who survive abortions.

Consider two events from last week. First, in North Dakota the governor signed into law bills that would ban abortions when a fetal heartbeat is present and when the procedure is sought solely because of the baby's genetics. The media, including most major outlets, went into a frenzy to stir up controversy, often casting pro-life conservatives in a negative light.

Then later in the week in Florida, lawmakers held a hearing about a bill to protect the lives of babies born during an attempted abortion procedure. The bill requires the abortionist to provide medical care to the newborn. It might seem obvious that a newborn should be cared for—but not to Planned Parenthood.

What does Planned Parenthood mean by "appropriate care" for infants who survive abortions?

In a recent blog post, Jill Stanek notes that Planned Parenthood doesn't have "neonatal resuscitation equipment, meds, and personnel trained to provide emergency care to preemies" and couldn't possibly provide appropriate care to children who survive abortion.

Jill believes Planned Parenthood is lying about Planned Parenthood's ability to provide appropriate care.  I think Planned Parenthood using a radically different definition of "appropriate care" and is being intentionally vague.

In their statement regarding Alisa LaPolt Snow's testimony against Florida's Infants Born Alive legislation, Planned Parenthood never defines "appropriate care" or provides any details as to how they would treat infants who survive abortions.  There's a reason for this.

Planned Parenthood believes that "appropriate care" in the situation of a child surviving abortion is to leave the child to die or provide "comfort care."  They would never, if they had a choice, call an ambulance or send the child to a hospital (remember Snow's testimony on this issue of requiring the transportation of abortion survivors and Planned Parenthood's opposition to this) where the child could be treated with emergency care and as Jill notes, they don't have the actual equipment to provide emergency care to the infant. 

Read Florida Planned Parenthood's statement again:

Last week, a panel of Florida state legislators demanded speculation about a vague set of extremely unlikely and highly unusual medical circumstances.  Medical guidelines and ethics already compel physicians facing life-threatening circumstances to respond, and Planned Parenthood physicians provide high-quality medical care and adhere to the most rigorous professional standards, including providing emergency care.  In the extremely unlikely event that the scenario presented by the panel of legislators should happen, of course Planned Parenthood would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.

Nowhere does it say Planned Parenthood would provide emergency care to the infant.  The emergency care mentioned is with regards to women having abortions.  They don't say "appropriate emergency care" to the infant.  To Planned Parenthood, providing "appropriate care" to an infant who survives abortion is to let that child die.