The rest of this post quotes from an editorial written by Rich Lowry of the National Review and posted in the Feb 5th edition of the Daily Herald.
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"Legal abortion was supposed to end 'back-alley abortions," both their dangers and their entanglements with shady characters. But the practice and the mores of the back alley are with us still, tolerated by people for whom the ready provision of abortion trumps all else.
Pro-choicers have long evoked the dignity of women. The nightmarish case of ....abortionist Kermit Gosnell...shows the dignity of women is decidedly secondary...Gosnell's gruesome operation was, on its own terms, highly efficient. During the day, his assistants administered labor-inducing drugs to pregnant women, overwhelming poor women from minority groups. Then the good doctor showed up in the evening.
On some women, he performed traditional abortions, occasionally butchering them in the process. Other women had delivered babies before he arrived. Here he performed post-birth abortions ~ cutting the spinal cords of the newborns with scissors...
Gosnell specialized in late-term abortions, that were technically illegal in Pennsylvania...The grand-jury recounts one case of a 17-year old girls who was ... seven-and-a-half-months pregnant. After her 6-pound child was born, Gosnell killed it and disposed of the body in a shoe box...
When pro-choice...Tom Ridge replaced the pro-life...Robert Casey as Pennsylvania governor in the 1990's, regulation of abortion basically stopped. The Department of Health ceased inspections of clinics and ignored complaints and warnings about Gosnell.
An evaluator from the National Abortion Federation was horrified by his filthy facility, but didn't report him. The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania kept mum while it repeatedly treated women who'd been injured by Gosnell.
No one wanted to interfere for fear of chilling the right to choose. The grand jury says no one acted "because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities and because the subject was the political football of abortion.
In all his awfulness, Gosnell clarifies the moral questions surrounding abortions...What he did to newborns was "snipping" in the cause of "ensuring fetal demise."
In Gosnell's case, the frank pejorative "baby killer" is unarguably apt; he's charged with murder. But if that's so, what about other abortions? If Gosnell is wrong to deliver 24-week-old babies and kill them, why is it acceptable to destroy a 24-week fetus in the womb? If ending life is wrong at 30 weeks, why not at 20, or 15, or10?
All this talk of dignity is nice. At the bottom, though, ensuring and facilitating fetal demise is a low-down, morally corrupting business."
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(Blogmeister's note: Sometimes my road trips expose me to things that aren't so fun. Often it's stuff I learn when reading a local newspaper. This piece of news made my stomach churn and my heart ache. I'm going to leave this post standing for a couple of days. It's too important to gloss over and get back to regularly scheduled life, or in this case, regularly scheduled road trip. If I offended you, whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, then so be it. I make no apologies.)
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