Says Megan McArdle. She rejects the excuse that it's not a national issue — that murder is a matter for state law. I would say that there are plenty of general policy issues you can extract from that story — at least as many as we get from the Newtown murders and the George Zimmerman case (to name 2 stories that have received massive national press).
The linked piece dithers, but I think it's a confession that she just didn't want to have to think about it. It was squeamishness and a political commitment to abortion rights that she didn't want rumpled.
Let's talk about the morality of the seen and the unseen. This is a shallow morality that infects our lives. If the human entity is inside the womb, and it is cut into pieces that is one thing, but if it's "partially born" so that a nurse sees it clenching and unclenching its fists as it meets its demise, it's another. And if it slips entirely out, and everyone sees a living child and then the doctor severs its spine, then everyone is supposed to know it's murder. From the inside, these deaths are all the same. But no one sees from the inside of that now-dead brain. Why not shine a bright light on Kermit Gosnell and yell monster? Make it clear to everyone that you think he is so different from properly professional abortionists.
If you don't, you reveal that you have a nagging suspicion that he is not. And that's the one thing you don't want anyone to see.
IN THE COMMENTS: Matthew Sablan says:
The thing is, you don't even have to frame the story about abortion. I fully acknowledge Gosnell is probably not what most abortion providers do. It needs to be framed as another example of how the state failed to protect its people.I respond:
I agree that's the way those who support abortion rights should cover it. But why did they not jump at the opportunity to display so vividly that health care services to the poor (or to women) are not what they should be and no one cares?
They didn't want to risk that. There's a deep fear — true shame — about this other matter that I'm talking about.
Posts
469 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 469 of 469In response to Inga who wonders how I can be vehemently pro-life yet allow for abortions out to week 24 of gestation:
I believe all abortion is murder but Roe v Wade currently dictates what is legal abortion-wise.
I do not personally endorse or agree with Roe v Wade.
When I was pregnant with a child with suspected anomaly, abortion was advised and late term termination was discussed in excruciating detail. I opted to carry the fetus to term. Abortion for me was not an option. I was incapable of killing my own child.
In response to Inga who wonders how I can be vehemently pro-life yet allow for abortions out to week 24 of gestation:
I believe all abortion is murder but Roe v Wade currently dictates what is legal abortion-wise.
I do not personally endorse or agree with Roe v Wade.
4/14/13, 11:42 AM
Strange Martha, how we so agree, actually I'm even more pro life than you, yet I am attacked here , even called "nurse baby killer" on occasion last year.
Shana, I have so much more respect for Martha here, than I do for you. Much more.
You are not an honest person.
You keep trying to make this personal for some reason, Inga. I'm not interested. Deal with the arguments.
Big Mike abortion clinics absolutely need to have standards that comport to standards for hospitals and other health care clinics. Absolutely, why must you even ask?
A woman coming in for an abortion deserves the same professional levels of care as any woman for ANY medical procedure.
Shana, please do not address me , I really have no use for your dishonest comments.
Inga said...
All the questioning I did and was attacked for, when I dared to ask, WHY were abortion clinics not inspected since 1993?!
Actually, you silly, dishonest hack, you were attacked for pathetically trying to blame a libertarian philosophy for the lack of abortion clinic inspections in PA.
Since the obvious answer is that they were not inspected due to a "pro choice" philosophy, it was pointed out that you are rather pathetic by continuing to engage in such dishonesty.
Regarding Cedarford's 9:57 post: I read it through and and was struck by something missing. It mostly flowed, but he left something out--perhaps because he was too ashamed to include it. Here it is with the "missing parts."
(1) Few things have lawyers screwed up on in America worse than Roe v. Wade. Maybe the deep flaws in the Constitution that set us up for the Civil War, maybe the inability of the Founders to realize that future financing made unlimited size government fueled by debt not revenue possible.
(2) But we were on a path to democratically "settling" abortion before the lawyers dressed in robes intruded and set the cancer of the Right to Lifers loose in the Republican ranks and idealogues that see no problem whatsoever with Dr Gosnell.
(3) The people would have voted to make 1st trimester abotions and morning after pills legal. They would also have allowed exceptions for life and physical health of the pregnant woman and likely distastfully been forced to accept a need to abort the fetuses with severe defects.
(4) They probably would have voted exceptions for rape and incest initially, but then voted to take those away because few incest babies would actually be defective and there is no reason why a raped woman would hestitate to get a 1st trimester abortion.
(5) They likely would have voted to have review boards so the abortionist making money from late abortions was not financially connected in any way with those doctors determining fetal defect, diagnosing the pregnant woman as having real health issues or a life threat from going full term in gestation.
(6) They would not have voted for the sort of carnage explicit in the trial of Kermit Gosnell, nor would they have voted for a Party and President whose Party Planks implicitly those atrocities.
[I inserted that paragraph into cedarford's text to ease the transition into his next one but I see that it it still doesn't flow]
(7) Instead, what we got was Republicans playing the pro-life card to get in power where they abandoned all other Republican principles like business responsibility, seeking better wages for working Americans, more jobs, and fiscal prudency.
Democrats now have the advantage - they win most elections - with 55% of the woman's vote being the prime determinative. And all they have to do is tell women to close their eyes and imagine Rick Santorum and the other RTL goobers being in charge of their wombs and family end of life decisions if they vote Republican.
=============
Around the time of the last elections, Gosnell was no where on the political radar. The journolistic powers that be (Fight The Power!) are still unwilling to connect any policy oversight at Philadelphia with official policy of the DNC (Run DNC!) let alone with POTUS. Short of Obama coming out and "weighing in" on Gosnell, about the only thing now that can save face for him and the DNC on this is distraction like a nuclear confrontation with North Korea.
P.S.: Cedarford is a closet Obama supporter. I've watched him for a long, long, time.
Squeaks Jay the gerbil.
Perhaps my thinking is not nuanced enough and I see no need to be dragged into an abortion debate. But it seems to me that what Gosnell did was murder pure and simple. I do hope he receives the death penalty for his heinous actions. There seems to me a point where parsing and philosophic opinions should cease and simply look at the evil in front of us. This is one of those times, again in my opinion.
Roger, I think most people would agree with you, I do.
Inga wrote:
Big Mike abortion clinics absolutely need to have standards that comport to standards for hospitals and other health care clinics. Absolutely, why must you even ask?
Then why has planned parenthoood been fighting it so strenuously?
Then why has planned parenthoood been fighting it so strenuously?
They'll argue that it helped keep costs down until--ironically--the costs were too high.
But now that the POTUS has insisted that all have a stake in each other's care, all have a say in paying for each other's care. So, no public-funded abortions. POTUS sees the conundrum, hence the tacit approval. But the game is up now.
As Charles Krauthammer wrote:
"I would think there would be unanimity in the country, and the reason that there is resistance, against either outlawing or heavily regulating it is because the pro-choice people imagine that any regulation, at any level, at any kind, is the beginning of the end of abortion rights. I think there is room for a national consensus on this.”
Because they were WRONG IF indeed they did not want abortion clinics inspected and run like any healthcare clinic would be run. I'm not aware that PP feels that abortion clinics should be unsanitary and dangerous.
Oh Jr.
What about Martha and her comment? Is she pro life in your eyes?
Insofar as its pro choicers blocking holding abortion doctors and hospitals to standards, will we get any denunciation of Planned Parenthood from Inga?
This is what I mean by having cake and eating it too. You want to play both the pro choicer and the pro lifer at the same time, and reflexively blame republicans for non regulation of abortion clinics, when in fact the pro choice movement has been adamant about not letting those places be so regulated (as a lot of them will close down).
You're going to have to pick a side. Straddling hte fence just makes you look two faced.
INga, is Martha saying she agrees with Roe v. Wade?
I think she said: do not personally endorse or agree with Roe v Wade.
Whereas, you think it's murder but should be legal. It's a bit of an oxymoron considering a murder is considered an unlawful killing. If it's an unlawful killing but should be lawful, then you don't really think it's an unlawful killing.
Inga wrote:
Democrats now have the advantage - they win most elections - with 55% of the woman's vote being the prime determinative. And all they have to do is tell women to close their eyes and imagine Rick Santorum and the other RTL goobers being in charge of their wombs and family end of life decisions if they vote Republican."
See, and this is why we think you are pro choice and not pro life. Beacuse to you, womens issues is unrestricted freedom to commit abortions and you vote politically on those terms and demagogue republicans on those terms.
Now, im asking you seriously, if you think that abortion should be ILLEGAL after only a few months, is that not "getting into womens wombs"? Your idea of abortion is more restrictive than Roe V Wade would allow for, and certainly more restrictive than NARAL would suggest. So how then are you not in the same camp as Rick Santorum?
Again, have cake eat it too.
I am Pro choice Jr. I'm not saying that women should have no choice whatsoever. Limited choice, but choice nevertheless.
And JR. I was quoting Cedarford in the first paragraph, you need to be more careful with punctuation and quotation marks!
Obama is pro this doctors actions:
Obama, Senate floor, 2001: Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a nine-month-old – child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.
They can't be children even if they are delivered full term since that would undermine the argument the abortion argumetn since you can't kill a child.
This monster simply believed the same thing. Even though it was out of the uterus, it wasnt a child. THerefore - Snip, snip.
Inga wrote:
I am Pro choice Jr. I'm not saying that women should have no choice whatsoever. Limited choice, but choice nevertheless.
Pro choice is not the same as limited choice. Pro choice would have just as much a problem with you proposing to limit choice as say NARAL has with trying to limit late term abortions or regulate abortion clinics.
Rick Santorum and the other RTL goobers being in charge of their wombs and family end of life decisions if they vote Republican."
How is limited freedom not a restriction on a womans womb? You are saying you think that goobers (other than RTLers) should be in charge of a womans uterus if she wants to have an abortion five weeks into her pregnancy instead of 4.
@Inga, based on your 12:15 comments you and I seem to agree. If I didn't have to run out to mow the lawn I'd go get drunk.
Just joking.
Then you wrote "I'm not aware that PP feels that abortion clinics should be unsanitary and dangerous". Frankly, I'm not at all sure they care. Planned Parenthood is like way too many liberal organizations -- long on getting stuff passed through Congress but short on monitoring the results and making sure things work right.
Anyway the whole argument of who is pro-abortion and who is anti-abortion (FWIW I despise the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life") is wasted energy. One would have to be a pretty hard core anti-abortionist to advocate carrying a Tay-Sacks baby to term, and one would have to be a pretty hard core pro-abortionist to advocate killing a baby born live from a botched late-term abortion. There really are extremists like both cases, but one learns nothing from paying attention to them.
Found this incredible doc on the Gosnell case. Really well done.
He doesn't understand why liberals feel the need to defend late-term abortion.
Because the AMA and American College of Gynecologists do, and liberals trust those organizations to render sound judgments about surgical procedures more than they do a bunch of puffy, empty-headed loudmouth moralizers, who yearn to get the government to do their bidding.
You claim to know this line and that many of use "right wingers" don't...so tell us in precise detail. Tell us how many births of any kind, animal or human you've attended yourself. What is the source of your knowledge, superior as you say it is?
The AMA,
and
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
But you go ahead and pretend that a bunch of yokels in the government, with no medical experience or interest, have superior knowledge to them.
Typical Ritmo...cite some boilerplate "authoritative" citations that don't actually answer any of the questions you were specifically asked. Actually they don't support positions you've taken either...you just want them to do so. Then denigrate the credibility of the questioner. By all means, at no time answer the questions, just blabber on with your political dialectic.
And of course ignore the Althouse statement in comment 6 of 433 now. There was a question there too...and one you've not answered. You just said "bullshit." Then cited what you say are the legitimate differences between abortion per se and what Gosnell did...but you are unable to explain that.
Women want the right to choose.
This is what they have chosen.
They have to live with it.
It is only a matter of timing after all.
I see Baron Zemo doesn't agree with his buddy Ritmo today.
Hilarious.
Of course, the medically-obtuse bumpkins who seek to restrict medical practice on account of what "looks" icky to them aren't engaging in political dialectic.
No, to Aridog the falsely "authoritative" (in phony-making scare quotes) "boilerplate" citations are what the American Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians actually say regarding their interest in maintaining physician discretion along with safe, legal access to abortion!
Yes, it's the NON-PHYSICIAN wanna-be theologians who are the honest, authoritative and well-informed groups in this matter. The actual physician credentialing organizations? Phooey!
One can only wish that your mother would have carried, delivered, and raised you without the advent of 20th century medical knowledge and ethics. It apparently would have been consistent with your values, if not necessarily your physical existence or livelihood.
Women have the RIGHT to a choice, they have the RIGHT to a clean, safe abortion, as a medical procedure.
An unborn baby has the right to life after there is brain activity (IMO), which would define it as alive, just as statutes define when a human is dead, brain activity.
Right is right and wrong is wrong.
You don't need to be a doctor to know that what happened here was evil. The worst kind of evil. An evil that is no doubt repeated every day all over America in clinics where there are no inspections. Because politicans and regulators quake in fear of the abortion machine.
Currently in New York State, Andy Coumo has passed a law where you do not even have to be a doctor to perform an abortion.
You can make all the excuses and plea bargins you want.
The reality of abortion are exposed by the case.
This was the choice you are talking about. It is on your head.
Gosnell lied, kept unsanitary conditions, and provoked an unwanted loss of viable lives as a result. He is being sued for a number of malpractice counts along with the murder charges and no medical organization is defending or would defend him.
Abortion is a regulated procedure for a reason. Pregnancy is an inherently risky condition and the way it is handled or ended can and should be regulated with the input of credible physician specialists.
Just throwing up your hands in the air and saying all abortion is just like what Gosnell did shows that you have no understanding of medical ethics or medical practice generally - so it does not need to be entertained in this case specifically.
As I said, you are acting as a wanna-be theologian moralizer and pretending that any medical distinctions between legitimate practice and Gosnell's wholly illegitimate practices are null and void. A completely ignorant position to take.
The choice women have a right to is not to be murdered in an unsanitary clinic for the sin of aborting their babies. Even the most ardent pro lifer should be able to understand and internalize this.
Inspections weren't done for reasons we have yet to fully understand, there is plenty of blame to go around.
I would like to believe there are "bright lines" in society that should not be crossed. Others, of course, may disagree; but when there are no bright lines then society will suffer the consequences. Gosnell's actions are, to me, one of the bright lines. If his actions can be swept aside, then society will suffer.
So what Ritmo & Inga are saying is we need to make sure abortion mills are nice ans sanitary efficient murder machines.
That last comment's directed at Aridog, BTW.
If Cuomo wants to pass a law extending practice privileges to non-physicians, I'm reasonably confident that they'll still have to be credentialed in some way, with oversight over what they can and can't do, and guidelines issued to make sure that ethical considerations are maintained.
murder machines
As Dick Thornburgh explained to Ali G., "murder" is inherently illegal. It has a legal definition. It does not apply to the cells that Alex requires us to perceive as "persons", but it might apply to a viable, delivered fetus and the women delivering it whose considerations - in both cases - Gosnell obviously disregarded.
I expect that all this will be too sophisticated for Alex to understand and fly right over his head and his comical attempt at making a blatantly naked political point.
No response to Baron Zemo's moralizing I see. Aridog is far less of an absolutist than Baron Zemo. Aridog is actually quite reasonable and straightforward most times I've dealt with him.
Interesting.
Ritmo - you and I are a clump of cells. Just because the law doesn't recognize a fetus as a person doesn't mean it's not murder. You can play legal games all day, but what really matters is how it looks in the eyes of GOD.
Inga, if you want to tussle with Baron Zemo you can do that on your own, without my help. He doesn't deliberately misread or misinterpret my comments and I don't do the same with his. We both allow each other some steam and some excess in getting across each other's points. We both understand that absolute knowledge or absolute correctness may very well be impossible, so allowing for argumentation, ethical appeals and joking on both sides is important as long as you can separate person from idea. And so it comes down to a matter of respect, which you may or may not understand.
Inspections were not done because of the abortion lobby which treats any inspection or limitation on abortion as a nuclear attack on their murderous regime.
Keep defending them. Keep making excuses for this evil. Keep saying that it is an isolated instance. We will never know because we know that no journalist will ever attempt to find out if this is going on in the rest of the abortion mills in this country. The bodega on the corner will get a more vigorous inspection than an abortion mill that does late term abortions.
Abortion is the be all and end all for the liberals and the Democratic party. And those Rhinos like Ridge who would knuckle under to these Merchants of Death.
Woman wanted a choice. This is what they have chosen. They have to live with it. With their consciences. If they have one.
Roger, we do need a bright line, in the form of a life statute. All of this horror of babies being born alive could be a thing of the past, if pregnancies were no allowed to be so advanced.
We have no bright line for the beginning of life, as we do for the ending of life.
Ritmo - you and I are a clump of cells. Just because the law doesn't recognize a fetus as a person doesn't mean it's not murder. You can play legal games all day, but what really matters is how it looks in the eyes of GOD.
Oh, here comes that all-important bible THUMP, like a thwack on the back of a leather-bound King James.
Quite right that we're also still a bunch of cells, but with a great many of them devoted to eyes, ears, nerves a brain and all sorts of other wonderful contraptions that allow for all the hallmarks of sentient personhood. I mean, I'm sure you could argue with me how you could lack all those things, and the pain, pleasure, self-consciousness and other things they give rise to in order to allow for such concepts as "personhood" and "identity" to take root. But you're too good for that. Best to leave it all to the monarch who cannonized an edition of sayings left behind by pre-historic bronze age goat herders, I bet. Screw science.
Baron Zemo, God complex?
Inga - even end of life is controversial. Just ask the euthanasia crowd.
Inga--and more the pity. I am willing to accept "bright lines" when it is possible to discern them. And I am also aware that some will never accept any bright line. Such is the society we live in.
Ritmo... if you don't believe in the word of almighty GOD you will burn in hell for all ETERNITY.
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
Alex is an atheist, he is playing games here, that's kind of despicable Alex.
So, in essence, Alex the Atheist uses appeals to a deity he denies so that he can pretend that eyes, ears, nerves and brains don't matter when it comes to the ethical consequences of deciding what acts can be inflicted on a lump of flesh.
Well, I don't know about him (or his weasel ways), but I'm pretty sure that those organs are actually identified in that all-important BIBLE that he pretends to believe in.
Orthodox Jews don't believe in restricting abortion until quickening. The fertilized egg point is an interesting innovation, but an innovation nonetheless. It confuses genome with person.
Inga - who said life was fair? LOL
Inga - who said life was fair? LOL
Does it take a life like yours to see it that way? LOL
Ritmo - I don't need you to tell me that life isn't fair. I come from the school of hard knocks. I always get up.
He's a joke. It must take a special person to make mockery of life and death.
Inga - grow a sense of humour. Life is a joke.
He's a joke. It must take a special person to make mockery of life and death.
A person special enough to pretend to take it seriously simply for the purpose of exercising a philosophical point.
Alex, life can be funny, but it's no joke.
(Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.) - Beethoven on his death bed
"where were the State Inspectors"
The pro kill as many black babies crowd (run mainly by non-black people) lobbies hard to stifle regulations and other restrictions on the inner-city "clinics". One such group: "Abortion Gang | unapologetic reproductive justice activists" at abortiongang.org. It really pisses me off that women are being put at-risk of death, mutilation, sterilized etc. just so the pro population control (especially for blacks) can keep abortions cheap and accessible.
Ritmo sez ...
Abortion is a regulated procedure for a reason.
It is? What would that reason be? Was Pennsylvania "regulating" abortions adequately? If not, why not?
Oh, you missed the whole point of this Althouse post, didn't you?
Hint: It is not about whether abortion is legitimate or not in absolute terms.
Duly noted: Everyone who disagrees with you is a theological bumpkin. I've not said anything about theology on this topic, but I realize you just know these things, eh?
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