UPDATE: Kermit Gosnell Found Guilty of Murder

Thankfully the author of the NY Times article below gets the point:

“Put simply, [pro-lifers] asked why a procedure done to a living baby outside the womb is murder, but destroying a fetus of similar gestation before delivery can be legal.”

To be fair, pro-abortionists would likely maintain that the difference is that the one in the mother’s womb isn’t a human being, but the one 8″ past the birth canal is. If the Kermit Gosnell trial has taught us anything it is that it’s fine to suction the limbs off an unborn child inside the mother’s womb, heck, snip a spine if you’ve got to, but don’t dare do any of those things a mere 8″ more south. Then, and only then, are you guilty of murder.

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NY Times: Philadelphia Abortion Doctor Guilty of Murder in Late-Term Procedures

BBC: Kermit Gosnell guilty of three murders in late-term abortions

IB Times: Abortionist Kermit Gosnell Found Guilty Of Three Murder Counts

The Pro-Abortion Rhetoric Primer Poster

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US President Barack Obama’s address to Planned Parenthood on the subject of “women’s health” was a masterpiece… of deceptive rhetoric. Not once in during the entire speech did he mention abortion.

Why?

This question is especially important since Planned Parenthood performed a record number of abortions (333,964) and profits ($87.4 million in excess revenue and $1.265 billion in net assets [!]) in the 2011-2012 fiscal year (2011-2012 Annual Report here).

It’s simple to understand. This is merely a rhetorical game to blind the public to the reality of what on-demand abortion actually is. Even pro-abortion advocates from the ’70s admit this:

“The process of eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun. It may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion. In defiance of the long held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or status, abortion is becoming acceptable by society as moral, right, and even necessary… since the old ethic has not been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.”

- California Medicine 113, no.3 (1970), reprinted in The Human Life Review 1, no.1 (1975): 103-4.

How odd that an organization would perform hundreds of thousands of abortions a year when its founder would have called it “a disgrace to civilization”…

Qwerky Quotes for the Inquisitive: Scott Klusendorf

“Men and women, I am here to concede today that my opponent has won this debate. She’s right! We shouldn’t restrict abortion for any reason. There should be no laws passed against it. Abortion should remain legal through all nine months of pregnancy as is currently allowable. In addition to that, even partial birth abortion ought to be allowed. Even a procedure that ends the life of a human fetus in the process of being born ought to be allowed legally and morally. Furthermore, I wish to concede that I have lost this debate before it has begun. In other words, I’m standing up in front of all of you to concede that my opponent has won… if the unborn are not human. And if [my debate opponent] can demonstrate that the unborn are not human using scientific and philosophic reasoning, I will concede that this debate is won by her side of the issue and I’ll be the first to join her in her adventure to keep abortion legal.

…

If [my debate opponent] can show us that the unborn are, in fact, not human, she wins this debate. And I can’t wait to see what scientific evidence she’s going to present to make her case. Let’s wait to see what she has to say.”

- Scott Klusendorf Pro-Life Ethics lecture [10:32]

Klusendorf highlights in his short lecture that abortion is not about “choice”, but about correctly identifying the unborn. Simply put: “What are the unborn?”

A View on the Silent Screams and Cruel Casualties of Modern-Day Genocide

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The trial of Kermit Gosnell has brought to light the true face of the victims of abortion. It is also a fine time for us to read and share a horrific description of what happens during a legal abortion procedure as recalled by former director of a Planned Parenthood office in Texas Abby Johnson in her book “Unplanned”:

At first, the baby didn’t seem aware of the cannula. It gently probed the baby’s side, and for a quick second I felt relief. Of course, I thought. The fetus doesn’t feel pain. I had reassured countless women of this as I’d been taught by Planned Parenthood. The fetal tissue feels nothing as it is removed. Get a grip, Abby. This is a simple, quick medical procedure. My head was working hard to control my responses, but I couldn’t shake an inner disquiet that was quickly mounting to horror as I watched the screen.

The next movement was the sudden jerk of a tiny foot as the baby started kicking, as if it were trying to move away from the probing invader. As the cannula pressed its side, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away. It seemed clear to me that it could feel the cannula, and it did not like what it was feeling. …

My eyes shot back to the screen again. The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor, and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest moment the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone.

All the training she went through merely blinded her to the reality of what she was a part of. Then there on that gray scale screen she literally came face to face with the disturbing truth. Thank God that it was the first and last time she was actually involved in an abortion herself.

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Notes:

genocide – the deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, or other group defined by the exterminators as undesirable

Gosnell worker testifies: Baby being ‘aborted’ ‘screamed… like a little alien’ (In fact, the illegal worker commented that she identified the babies as “specimens” to make it “easier to deal with mentally”.)

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Two great articles about the impact this case is having on even pro-choice people:

From Roe to Gosnell by James Taranto (Wonderfully points out the Orwellian doublespeak that fills so-called “pro-choice” rhetoric. You can also read of the sadistic, experimental device Kermit Gosnell was responsible for inserting into the wombs of 15 women nearly 40 years ago.)

14 Theories for Why Kermit Gosnell’s Case Didn’t Get More Media Attention by Conor Friedersdorf (Very thoughtful article.)

Really Recommended Reading: Apple, Inc. and Abortion?!

Well, is this what we’ve come to? Letting Denise Paolucci and Planned Parenthood provide women with an iPod so they don’t have to listen to the heartbeat of the child they are going to abort? (NOTE: Texas law makes it optional.)

Here’s the story: Tuning out bad abortion laws

Note: Before the hate mail starts, understand that I agree it’s traumatic for the women involved. And just how do you think the baby feels? Or is that irrelevant?

And in related news: I Can’t Hear You by Eric Metaxas

A New Low In the Exodus of Moral High Ground?

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This is not a political cartoon and I’m not taking anyone’s side. I’m just asking a question.

Chen Guangcheng is a brave guy who, according to his TIME, “is best known for exposing alleged abuses in official family-planning policy, often involving claims of violence and forced abortions.” Even Batman went to visit him!

But how can the world applaud his efforts, press for his release and freedom, but turn a blind eye to the darkness he uncovered? And how then can a nation in which 50 million innocent children have been aborted spend so much time, effort, and media attention on a single person who another country considered a criminal? If leadership has so little care for the most innocent of its own citizenry, isn’t this sort of prime-time diplomacy just an expensive show on an international stage that, in the end, means nothing and results in less than that?

In a way, the Chinese government’s persistent reaction to US intervention is sharp and thought-provoking. They insist, and rightly so (maybe), that things like this are an internal matter.

But I’m genuinely interested in what you, the readers, might think about these questions:

1) By what right or authority does America suggest or impress its will on other nations? When is it right or not right to do so, if ever?

2) Is it not slightly contradictory that a nation would spend so much time, effort, and media attention on someone whom another nation considered criminal, yet sweep so many of its own failings under the rug (I won’t name them here)?

3) Doesn’t China have the right to point to America’s own human rights record to show that any assumed moral high ground has long ago eroded?

To me, in the end all people are familiar with this story are faced with a moral question regarding guilt and innocence and their relationship to the right or wrongness of punishment.

(And please know that I’m all for “world peace.” I just don’t have the realistic expectation that it’s going to happen as long as the human heart remains evil. And there are no signs that is going to change, this side of God’s grace and judgment through His Son, Jesus.)

Let me know what you think. (Comments with personal insults will be deleted, but knock yourself out.)

Proudly Pro-life and Pro-death

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Dear John Blake:

Read your question. Enclosed with this short letter is my answer.

Of course, the reason is even more simple: One is guilty. One is innocent. I’ll leave it to the inferentially challenged to decipher which is which.

And let it be known that this writer takes no pleasure in the death of anyone for any reason. However laws are written to emphasize the behaviors that society deems acceptable and punishment is to deter people from following the dictates of a sin-stricken heart, a temporary yet necessary tool since the gentle whisper of the human conscience is too weak for some.

Thanks!

NoApologiesAllowed

Enc.

Victims of Vanity

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“Burden” is intentionally spelled “Burton”. Reference The Garbage Pail Kids.