Dr. Gosnell and Legal Back-alley Abortions
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

When authorities finally visited his clinic to investigate drug-related claims, they found that animals and litter boxes were sometimes present during operations; bags and bottles of murdered babies were scattered throughout the facility; and jars containing infants’ severed feet lined a shelf, for no apparent reason (the serial-killer trophy phenomenon comes to mind). He is also accused of performing “procedures” in filthy rooms; using unsanitary instruments; and having operations conducted and anesthesia administered by unlicensed personnel — including a 15-year-old high-school student. Moreover, Gosnell is suspected of murdering hundreds of viable babies who were born alive during his long career, but this cannot be proven as he destroyed his records.

Note: This angel of death made many millions of dollars running his house of horrors.

The obvious question is how the abortionist’s criminal operation avoided scrutiny for so long, especially since, writes CBSPhilly.com, “a grand jury investigation revealed that, for over two decades, government health and licensing officials had received repeated reports about Gosnell’s dangerous practices.” Nevertheless, CBS continues, “no action was ever taken, even after the agencies learned that Mrs. Mongar [the adult victim] had died during routine abortions [sic] under Gosnell’s care.” But now it seems we have an answer to this question.

Shockingly, Pennsylvania decided 17 years ago to stop inspecting abortion mills for political reasons.

Marian Wang at ProPublica.org tells us:

According to the grand jury report….

The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.

“Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety,” the report states. "Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer."

According to the report, the policy change occurred after 1993 when attorneys under the administration of then-governor Tom Ridge "interpreted the same regulations that had permitted annual inspections for years to no longer authorize those inspections."

So let’s get this straight: Pro-abortion advocates claim that they support legalized abortion because they care about women’s health but then object to health inspections of abortion clinics? Consider that one of the main arguments in favor of legal abortion always was that it eliminates the dangerous “back-alley” variety. Yet the very people advancing that position have given us the worst of both words: legalized back-alley abortions.

This story illustrates well how our culture of death is born of, and gives birth to, corrupted judgment. Writer Elmer Smith, who knew Gosnell when the latter attended high school, said: “This monster wasn’t the kid I once knew.” But does this simply mean he didn’t know Gosnell very well? Monsters don’t appear with a pitchfork and horns, you know; they tend to hide behind nice smiles and unparalleled charm. This is why serial killers, such as Ted Bundy, often appear as the nice boy next door. Yet it’s also true that serial killers aren’t born with a victim in their hands; they may begin by torturing animals or indulging some other form of lower-level darkness, and then the next step is taken, and the next, as they progressively become more depraved.

Murdering thousands of babies is a form of serial killing. And once a person has rationalized this away, it’s not hard to grasp how he can descend into the other kinds of depravity that normally attend the crime. Do you think I’m overreaching? Well, read this story and you’ll learn that this isn’t the first time abortionists have exhibited such behavior.

Then we have the corrupted judgment of those who facilitate abortion — both legal and illegal. One example is the Pennsylvania state government with its refusal to inspect abortion mills. But then there is also the following, courtesy of PZ Myers, a tenured Minnesota biology professor who identifies himself as a “godless liberal” on his blog. While responding to a pro-lifer who sent him pictures of aborted babies he wrote:

The standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice … with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, [sic] I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me. [Emphasis added.]

Well, I suppose everybody is proud of something. But the above really says it all.

In the wake of the Tucson massacre, many are trumpeting the importance of “civility.” But politeness becomes vice when it serves to obscure Truth, and, when considering the words and actions of Gosnell, Myers, and their ilk, it becomes obvious that Nazis didn’t cease occupying positions of power and prestige in 1945.

As for more decent pro-abortion Americans, here is a question: Are these really people on whose side you wish to be?