Mark Steyn
The Corner
National Review Online
3/20/2013
…the New York Times’ only story on the case is punctilious enough to refer to Gosnell’s victims as “viable fetuses,” and its early paragraphs emphasize the defense’s wearily predictable line that this is a “racist prosecution.” Instead of my Arizona comparison, what about Sandy Hook? One solitary act of mass infanticide by a mentally-ill loner calls into question the constitutional right to guns, but a sustained conveyor belt of infanticide by an entire cadre of cold-blooded killers apparently has no implications for the constitutional right to abortion. As one commentator wondered two years ago:
Does 30 years of calling babies “blobs of tissue” have no effect on the culture?
For the answer, consider the testimony of “Nurse” Moton — and the clarification by AP writer Maryclaire Dale:
She once had to kill a baby delivered in a toilet, cutting its neck with scissors, she said. Asked if she knew that was wrong, she said, “At first I didn’t.”
Abortions are typically performed in utero.
“Typically.” So, finding oneself called on to “abort” a “viable fetus” in a toilet with a pair of scissors, who wouldn’t be confused as to whether it’s “wrong” or merely marginally atypical?…
Read the entire article at National Review Online.
Related: Do Gosnell’s Victims Matter, Mr. President?
…The President will not offer nationally televised words of healing at any of the funerals (complete with souvenir t-shirt). He will not stare into the rafters, pause dramatically and stage whisper something about Kermit Gosnell failing to live up to our best ideals. In short, he will not capitalize on the deaths of these innocent children. And no one in the media seems to have noticed his unusual disinterest in doing so.
I keep returning to this point because it matters. Gosnell is charged with eight murders but it’s likely the true number of victims–over two decades–is in the hundreds. For perspective, consider that Gosnell’s clinic may well have murdered more infants than the total number of people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. He certainly killed far more than Adam Lanza or Jared Loughner. My point is, by any measure this is a national tragedy not a local crime story.
Add to the scale of the crimes the fact that Gosnell’s murder clinic flourished in the long political shadow of an industry the President enthusiastically supports and defends. The President himself voted to defended partial-birth abortion, which is one technicality away from the crimes Gosnell committed. Given all this, shouldn’t the President at least be asked to comment? Even if he wants to remain silent, for obvious reasons, how can the media allow him to do so?
