Postcard from Hell

“It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place…I felt like a fireman in hell. I couldn’t put out all the fires.” These are the words of Steven Massof, one of the employees in an abortion clinic operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, describing the busy times when the women were given drugs to induce contractions all at once. Gosnell is on trial this week for killing seven children and a young mother in a filthy, blood-splattered clinic near Philadelphia.

The babies had the misfortune to be born live in Gosnell’s abortion clinic staffed in part by teenagers posing as licensed anesthetists. The bodies of the tiny victims were stored in a freezer in the basement of the clinic. Massof admitted that killing babies born alive was standard procedure at the clinic. He estimated that at least 100 babies were born alive in the clinic and had their necks snipped, but the beheadings were so routine that no one could determine the exact number.

Generally, such stories of horrific tragedies would be meat for the media grinder. However, you probably have not heard much if any reports from the great majority of news media. But thanks to the Family Research Council and other conservative organizations and leaders, the story which the media have ignored or censored is gaining some attention.

Sherry West was another long-time employee of the clinic. She testified that she called the babies specimens “because it was easier to deal with mentally.” West recalled one incident of a “screaming baby that really freaked me out…I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien.” She estimated the baby to have been between 18 and 24 inches long, one of the largest she had seen during abortion procedures at the Women’s Medical Society clinic operated by Dr. Gosnell at that time.

Perhaps you will recall President Clinton’s statement that abortions in America should be “safe, legal, and rare.” But his statement is just political sop to pacify the squeamish. The same sop to hide abortion’s grisly reality was used by Alisa LaPolt Snow, the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates lobbyist, in her testimony regarding a bill before the Florida legislature that would require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion. In response to being asked what would Planned Parenthood do if a live baby were born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, Snow replied, “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

Effectively, Planned Parenthood would leave the life or death decisions to the Dr. Gosnells of the world with regard to babies born alive after a botched abortion. Certainly the mother is in no emotional or physical shape to make a thoughtful and rational decision, and it is extremely unlikely that the doctor would consult the mother’s family (generally not present anyway) as the baby is lying on the table and struggling for life. Apart from lack of sanitation and improper licensing, Planned Parenthood would have little to no issues with Dr. Gosnell’s methods and decision-making process with regard to killing a live baby.

After January 22, 1973, the lives of unborn babies were no longer sacrosanct in America but placed in the hands of the deciders following the dictates of man’s law. It is estimated that over fifty two million abortions have fallen victim to man’s law in America from January 1973 through the end of 2008. These estimates came from direct surveys of abortionists by the Guttmacher Institute, once a research affiliate of Planned Parenthood. The number of abortions per day, if an average were calculated for the entire thirty-six year period, is over 3,900. This average number of abortions per day exceeds by over one thousand the number of lives lost in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Numbers and statistics are sterile things and do not convey the horror of a single abortion as shown above. Euphemisms, platitudes, and legal arguments about rights, privacy, and choice attempt to soften the picture or divert our attention from the horror surrounding the abortion of an unborn child.

Legalized abortion was the wedge used to split open the historic Western commitment to the dignity of human life. Now the humanist defenders of abortion continue attempts to drive the wedge deeper by sanctioning the taking of innocent life which effectively dispenses with concerns as to when human life begins. Thus, the abortionists’ coveted right of choice is attempting to move across the line from abortion to infanticide. Doubters only need to listen to the testimony of Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Alisa LaPolt Snow.

Many scientists and academics would not stop at aborting babies born alive as the result of a botched abortion. Some such as Francis Crick, Nobel Prize winner for discovering the double helix in DNA, support screening newborns. For Crick, those that fail to meet certain health standards would be euthanized. Peter Singer, Princeton’s DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, believes that parents ought to be allowed to kill their disabled children. His reasoning is “…that they are ‘nonpersons’ until they are rational and self-conscious.” Singer extends his reasoning to the “…killing of incompetent persons of any age if their families decide their lives are ‘not worth living’.” Some would scoff that Crick’s and Pinker’s opinions are extreme and would never gain cultural acceptance. However, legalized abortion in America was also once thought extreme by most Americans.

Under the aegis of a majority of nine people on the United States Supreme Court, abortion became a choice in 1973, and unborn babies suddenly became mere fetal tissue with potentiality for human life. Contrast the Supreme Court’s decision and humanism’s convoluted defenses of abortion through fictitious rights and irrational moralizing about choice with the words of the Psalmist:

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body, and knit them together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it. You were there while I was being formed in utter seclusion! You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book! [Psalm 139:13-16. Living Bible]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

John Hayward, “Kermit Gosnell’s House of Screams,” Human Events, April 8, 2013. http://www.humanevents.com/2013/04/08/kermit-gosnells-house-of-screams/ (accessed April 10, 2013).

Tony Perkins, “Washington Update,” Family Research Council, April 9, 2013. http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/braking-news-media-halts-coverage-of-serial-killer (accessed April 10, 2013).

“At Gosnell trial, Del. woman testifies scene ‘freaked me out,” delawareonline.com, April 9, 2013. http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20130409/NEWS/304070067/ (accessed April 10, 2013).

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 344, 350-351.