Gosnell Headlines? Gone, Baby, Gone!

Feb 1, 2011
Elizabeth Scalia

The story of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who ran what a Grand Jury report referred to as “a baby charnel house,” where viable babies—“big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus,” as Gosnell joked—were delivered and then outright killed with a “snip” to the spinal cord, their feet sometimes severed for souvenirs, is one the press quickly consigned to the memory hole. It is not being talked about by the “strong feminist” voices on daytime TV, or on night time cable news. There are no headlines, no feature articles in leading magazines.

The mainstream media, confronted with a house of horrors that was gestated and born of a single-minded mania for “protecting choice for women” had no choice but to report on Gosnell being charged for the murder of one woman who died while under his dubious “care” (another woman’s death had been “settled” for a financial consideration), and they mush-mouthed their way through his killing of at least seven living, viable babies, but they did not like this story. the rest-don't miss this!

In the wake of Kermit Gosnell, however, in the wake of Andrew Rutland, Stephen Brigham, and Abu Hayat, there is no following-up, no digging through records; there is no curiosity about filthy, women-maiming, spine-snipping facilities existing in other cities; there are no big names to go to for quotes. These crimes—when they are covered at all—are treated like “local” aberrations. No one peers in at authority or examines the pro-abortion leadership. There is no one in government, apparently, to ask about criminal-neglect, lack of scrutiny; no one to accuse of mismanagement or of looking-away.

The mainstream press, made uncomfortable by a 261-page grand jury report detailing what might well be called a decades-long and heinous crime against humanity, abetted by the spectacularly willful looking-away of those in authority, itself turns away from the story and neglects its duty to the public trust.