In Wake of Gosnell Atrocities, Where are Appeals for Debate? [krakatoa]

NOTE: This was originally set for early last week, but Scandalgate broke, and it was impossible to find a slot for it in prime-time.

Every tragedy in this country seems to be an excuse for the Left and its mouthpieces to yarble for a "Debate" on how to prevent children from suffering. Notably missing however, from both the media and their dutiful reader's endless litany of causes to be outraged over is, not so surprisingly, anything that has the potential to roast one of their sacred cows.

One line in Breitbart's article on the multiple guilty in the 1st degree verdicts in the Gosnell murder trial has me steaming a bit, as it repeats one of the Left's unexamined lies that, if I could borrow the eloquent words of Tank Girl, really works my titties.

Both sides of the abortion divide seized on the case. Abortion foes said it exposed the true nature of abortion in all its disturbing detail. Abortion rights activists warned that Gosnell's rogue practice foreshadows what poor and desperate young women could face if abortion is driven underground with more restrictive laws. [emphasis mine]

Here, let me take apart this abortion of an argument that so offends my sensibilities:

First: I'm not sure I see how having to get a medical procedure done by a clinic that actually has passed some minimal medical inspections is a burden on any patient. I do suppose that failing to use sterile instruments or clean linens and/or kitty-litter boxes does decrease some overhead, allowing those cost-savings to be passed on to victims patients.

But one would be forgiven for thinking that in the regulation-addicted psyche of the average Leftist the concept of maintaining a safe environment for these procedures would be a no-brainer. Imagine, for clarity's sake, the wailing from the Left if regulatory control were lifted from Californian free-clinics that serve a large percentage of illegal immigrants.

Second: There is probably a reason Gosnell's clinic was so frequented by "poor and desperate" young women in search of late-term abortions, and I'd be willing (and yes, it goes without saying, racist) to hazard a guess that it has less to do with Gosnell's bargain rates and high volume, but rather that the phrase "poor and desperate" could be accurately and widely exchanged for any or all of the words & phrases "selfish, enthusiastically encouraged to abort over other alternatives, and incapable of using proper birth control".

Third: Given that the standard for inspecting clinics the past 15 years in Pa brought us precisely to this sad and horrifying end, I'd assert that the burden of proof lies on their side to prove that Gosnell's serial baby-murder shop is the "rogue" element in Abortion clinics.

Finally, if you want to illegally kill your late-term viable baby and the only way to get away with that murder is to find some back-alley butcher like Gosnell, I fail to see a real down side. Maybe you should have some skin in the game so you can make a fully-weighed choice. Does drastically improving the odds of survival for a life you actually care about offset one less month of inconveniently carrying your "parasite" to term, signing a few papers, and putting it up for adoption?

Or shorter: In the timeless words of Cliff Spab, So Fucking What, you callous, careless git!

And all this goes without exploring deeply the notion that the non-enforcement of laws which allowed the maniacal depredations of Gosnell is somehow a cautionary tale against more stringent laws in regards to late-term abortions. That is a self-serving logical contortion too righteously facile for my temperament to contemplate in more than a fleeting manner.

Nor do I address the overblown phenomena of back-alley abortions in the first place. Let me just say that I agree what few that occurred were horrible, but in my opinion they pale in comparison to the plight of poor hippy man-boys participating in drum-circles only to be violated by marauding bands of hyper-amorous and sexually indiscriminate moose.

I accept that exceptions to rules exist in all things. For instance, I can accept the choice for a late term abortion that is truly necessary to save the life of the mother; and I accept that a good argument for abortion can be made in the case of a severely deformed unborn baby. These are points where the debate lines blur.

So while I'd love to be able to take the Abortion-pushers' word that Gosnell was indeed an exception, his and several other "exceptions" provide what I think can be an acceptable point for people on both sides of the debate to agree that a serious investigation be opened into the influence the abortion "rights" lobbies have had on these sorts of medical procedures, and yes, on whether existing abortion restrictions go far enough.

The debate lines aren't blurry in cases like Gosnell's, and if we had a truly objective press whose agenda was the truth rather than an ideological quiche of special Leftist interests, those lines would have been debated decades ago and untold numbers of children's lives would have been saved.

Instead, from a media and a movement that is obsessed with the bodies of dead (and not-so-dead) children (and not-so-children) when it suits their narrative of the day, we got crickets on the substance of this trial, and either an ostentatious display of looking the other way to more important news like slutty-murderess Jodi Ariola (or whatever the hell her name is - I could never be bothered to pay any attention); or the obnoxious one of demonizing those who noted their self-serving hypocrisy.

This sordid story reveals one of the great ironies of Obama's legacy (as it were): One of the barbed arrows spent in service of Obamacare was the spurious argument that doctors perform unneeded amputations to bolster their bottom lines.

Now, here, we have a clear and proven example of abortion clinics performing unneeded late-term abortions for pure profit and macabre fun, and nary a peep from the establishment Left, much less Obama himself, that more regulation is the answer, much less that a debate be enjoined on a procedure they claim is a vanishingly narrow slice of the abortion pie.

Like so many other issues, the debate... the science... the law... is always settled whenever the topic has the potential to be an inconvenient wedge issue for the Left.

If one of the byproducts of abortions was a dead environmentally insignificant fish or three in some river delta or perhaps a few well-lubricated pelicans the Gulf of Mexico, there would have been a moratorium on them years ago.

But a dead baby, or 3, or 30 or...?

Eggs. Omelettes. Penumbras. You know the drill.

posted by Open Blogger at 12:40 PM

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