Culture,  Politics

God help us if we don’t learn from Gosnell’s crimes

Kermit Gosnell was convicted yesterday of three charges of first degree murder. He killed countless other live-born infants, but prosecutors could only prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered these three. Some were killed after being delivered alive into toilets. Others had their necks “snipped” with scissors after clinic workers had played with them. The crimes were so heinous and the conditions so gruesome that it’s staggering to imagine that people have been witnessing and participating in this horror for decades.

Can anyone really claim surprise that this was going one? Pro-abortion activists long ago took the position that granting human rights to survivors of abortion would present a threat to the regime of Roe v. Wade. Their position has not been a secret. That’s why a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood recently argued against a bill that would protect the live-born infants from being left to die. That’s why our own President Obama—when he was an Illinois state senator—voted four times against legislation that would have protected babies in the same situation as the ones in Gosnell’s clinic. This was all well-known when President Obama was a candidate, and Americans seemed to be indifferent about it as they elected him twice to be their chief executive. The bottom line is this. The culture of death is mainstream. People are accustomed to the fact that killing unborn babies is legal. What’s the difference if some of them are killed right after they pass from their mother’s body?

Gosnell did not act alone. He had many who assisted him. I’m thinking about those clinic workers. How did they sleep at night when day after day, week after week, year after year they went to work and “ensured the fetal demise” of human babies? No matter how you euphemize it, it is what it is—cold-blooded murder. What kind of culture produces a clinic full of workers who went along with this atrocity for so long? I’ll tell you what kind of culture it is. It’s the culture of sexual revolutionaries and radical feminists who sold our country a bill of goods—that a woman’s right to be free from the consequences of her fertility is sacrosanct, even if it means that human infants have to die. It’s a culture that won’t speak about what abortion really is but that euphemizes murder with bromides about “reproductive rights” and “access to healthcare.” It’s the culture of death.

In this context, what is the real significance of the Gosnell trial? The Gosnell trial exposes the abortion license for what it is. It forces Americans to look square in the face at what they usually cover up in euphemism and indifference. Gosnell killed human beings. He regularly killed them inside the womb, and he regularly killed them outside the womb. Gosnell forces us to ask the questions that the pro-abortion activists desperately try to keep us from asking. Why was it legal to kill the one and not the other? Why is it normal and right to kill a baby in the birth canal but appalling and repugnant to kill that same baby moments later outside the womb? Gosnell exposes the farce that a baby’s location should determine his right to life.

At this point, what else can be said about the Gosnell verdict? Isn’t the point of it all as plain as the nose on one’s face? For me it is. Yet I am still astonished that for so many it isn’t. Planned Parenthood and NARAL both lauded Gosnell’s conviction as reminder of the importance of providing “safe” abortions for women. Neither group acknowledged the sanctity and the worth of the human babies who were killed at Gosnell’s hands. After all the pictures of murdered human babies and after all the testimony from witnesses who watched as these children were ruthlessly killed, how can Planned Parenthood and NARAL be so cold-hearted? Will we as a culture follow pro-abortion absolutists into moral bankruptcy? Will we follow the darkened logic that says that there are no lessons to be learned about the morality of abortion from all of this?

Wisdom cries aloud in the streets (Prov. 1:20-23). Will anyone hear her voice? God help us if we don’t.

11 Comments

  • henrybish

    Thanks Denny, for sounding the unpopular bugle on this issue. You can be sure that many people despise you for it.

    p.s. What happened with Hobby Lobby? Can you provide an update?

  • Paul Reed

    “The Gosnell trial exposes the abortion license for what it is.”

    Not really. Most killing is done early-term and “cleanly”. The American public is largely fine with it. Moreover, even most pro-lifers will rationalize baby-killing if the mother’s life is threatened.

  • Thomas Witten

    Having lived in the US my entire life I’m familiar with its culture, and if there is one thing it is not, it is radically feminist.

  • Ian Shaw

    While it may be only my opinion, the American public is ignorant regarding the # of abortions occuring due to the mother’s life being at-risk. It’s not as many as people think.

  • buddyglass

    For someone who holds to total depravity, you seem oddly surprised at how depraved people are. Especially considering most of them are (for the time being) probably numbered among the lost.

  • James Harold Thomas

    I don’t understand why Planned Parenthood would say that the verdict was just. Are they agreeing that what he did to those newborn babies was indeed first degree murder?

  • Patrick Duncan

    Denny, you said it was “well known” what Obama did in Illinois (opposing the “born alive” legislation), an action that was extreme even for Democrats in Illinois. Obama knew that infanticide was going on at least at one hospital and he must have known it was just the tip of the iceberg. But when I’ve talked with Christian Obama supporters, most of them didn’t know about it and some of them didn’t believe me when I told them about it. Media silence on this issue did greatly mute the ability to spread the word about it and make it well known. However, we can’t just blame the media either. I was very saddened by the apathetic response of many “Christians” when they were confronted with Obama’s support for infanticide.

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