The trial of Kermit Gosnell

Philadelphia Abortion Doctor Charged With Murder

The prosecution claims they were born alive and then he killed them.

In Pennsylvania that is first degree murder, says the story.

The prosecutor cited Pennsylvania law stating that if a baby delivered during an abortion “shows any sign of life, it’s considered alive — a heartbeat, breathing, a cry, movement.”

Also, per the story,

Gosnell . . . is also accused of performing 24 abortions beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy, the limit in Pennsylvania.

The alleged victims of post-delivery murder are Baby Boy A, Baby C, Baby D, and Baby E, and staff at his clinic are the witnesses.

Those who oppose what are euphemistically called “late term abortions” agree it is absurd that killing a child in utero is legal but killing the same child ten minutes later, in the open air, is murder.

In this, they agree with the usually hidden opinion of some of the folks at Planned Parenthood.

Those people, who of course support the legality of late term abortions, recently let slip that, in their view, when things go awry and the infant is born alive the doctor should be allowed to kill what no one can deny is a newborn child.

The opponents – rightly, I think – insist late term abortions are egregious in utero infanticides and tolerating them is an unacceptable refusal to protect innocent and helpless human life.

On the other hand, generally, these same people also oppose abortion at any stage, and some of them oppose various drugs that prevent implantation.

I do not agree.

As a practical matter it makes some sense to draw the line at viability, allowing abortion at will before that and forbidding it afterward except for situations that would justify euthanasia or perhaps to save the life of the mother.

That, you will say, is no line but a blur, a gray area, constantly moved up by technology which might someday push viability all the way back to conception, making the “line” disappear altogether, and the right to abortion along with it.

Quite so.

And that would carry things, I think, further than necessary to truly protect the value of human life, though if we have to choose between that extreme and the other of permitting even late term abortions I would prefer that all abortions be disallowed – again, except for situations that would justify euthanasia or perhaps to save the life of the mother.

This is what I think is true, like it or not.

When it is unavoidable to recognize the fetus as an unborn child, however small, it is too late for abortion at will to be anything but a horror of selfishness, callousness, and inhumanity.

But before that, before we have anything thus recognizably a human, it could be allowed, I think.

But not after that.

Definitely not after.

Historically, infanticide and abortion at will have been at home in many societies, all of them drenched with man’s inhumanity to man, with gruesome cruelty.

I do not view cruelty favorably.

The story says,

Nine states have banned most abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Last month, two states went further: Arkansas banned abortion after 12 weeks and North Dakota beyond about 6 weeks, when a fetal heartbeat is “detectable.”

Good for them.

Liberal support for this, liberal endorsement of feminist demands for "a right to choose" reaching all the way to the natural end of pregnancy in childbirth and even beyond, is shameful and inexcusable.

The demand for such a right is a nakedly cruel demand for legal permission to commit murder out of sheerest, ugliest, horrific selfishness.

Nothing quite like that unconditional mother's love, is there?

And they bitch about men being selfish.