But if you are trying to find out more about it--and mind you, if you look very long, you're going to see something that makes you sick--here are a few links:
Justin Taylor posts a short documentary about Gosnell's abortion clinic called 3801 Lancaster.
GetReligion wonders where the coverage is.
Anne Conlon comments on The Corner.
Charles Krauthammer sums up the politics of the situation:
Update: GetReligion continues to probe the media non-coverage of the Gosnell trial, and it is beyond absurd. Here's a little bit from a post today:
Then I decided, since tmatt has me reading the Washington Post every day, to look at how the paper’s health policy reporter was covering Gosnell. I have critiqued many of her stories on the Susan G. Komen Foundation (she wrote quite a bit about that) and the Sandra Fluke controversy (she wrote quite a bit about that) and the Todd Akin controversy (you know where this is going). In fact, a site search for that reporter — who is named Sarah Kliff — and stories Akin and Fluke and Komen — yields more than 80 hits. Guess how many stories she’s done on this abortionist’s mass murder trial.
Did you guess zero? You’d be right.
So I asked her about it. Here’s her response:
Hi Molly – I cover policy for the Washington Post, not local crime, hence why I wrote about all the policy issues you mention.
Yes. She really, really, really said that. As Robert VerBruggen dryly responded:I know I beat this drum all the time, but I'm going to do it again: When you read these stories, remember that mainstream media bias like this is nothing new. They have always slanted coverage; they have always played up the stories they liked, and spiked the stories they didn't like. It's only now, because of the Internet and new media outlets like GetReligion, that we are finding out about it.
Makes sense. Similarly, national gun-policy people do not cover local crime in places like Aurora or Newtown.
It's particularly worrying when the British press (particularly the Daily Mail, despite being less driven by the newsworthiness of the story than they are by the prospect of gruesome details for a solidly middle-brow tabloid)is doing a far better job of covering this story than any of our so-called journalists on this side of the pond. In fact, until the last few days, when more folks started asking why the story wasn't being covered here, the *only* articles about it I had seen were in the British press. Journalistic integrity is for folks without an agenda.
ReplyDeleteTrue that. I hope the shaming bombardment from America's alternative media will at least add something to the national conversation. You'd hope that a travesty like Gosnell would be a game-changer, but we seem to be so steeped in "abortion rights" rhetoric that even this might not be enough.
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else, my fervent prayer is that this will show some of the fence-sitters the reality of abortion, it is the killing of a child, period. Dress it up in the language of "choice", try to insist that as long as it happens before a certain arbitrary limit, it doesn't count, it is no more and no less than the deliberate ending of an innocent life. Those who are completely invested in "abortion rights" as a cornerstone of their socio-political beliefs may not be reachable, but there are likely millions in this country who personally believe abortion is wrong, but feel that they have no good reason to oppose something that is so widely supported in the media and liberal establishment.
ReplyDeleteI say this as someone who has undergone a 180 degree shift in my thinking on abortion in the last 20 years, from someone who really thought that legalized murder somehow protected my "rights" and contributed money to NARAL, to someone who thought her (small l)libertarianism required a degree of fence-sitting, even if abortion violated my own moral codes, to a woman who holds out hope that my grandchildren and their society will view mass abortion as an aberrative evil on the same moral level as the Holocaust.
I am a licensed medical provider (PA) and get a lot of blowback from my colleagues for holding this position, but for me, the two go hand-in-hand. The more I learned about human biology, the less I was able to somehow differentiate between a newborn as human and fetus as somehow not-human. And since no-one can determine the moment at which a human being becomes a person vs. the proverbial "clump of cells" I feel we are morally obligated to err on the side of caution and say abortion is never OK.
I also have come to understand that being pro-life is not anti-libertarian, but in fact firmly rooted in the libertarian concept that while one has the right to live with as little interference as possible, that freedom ends as soon as it infringes on the right of another to do the same. And one of the most fundamental of all rights is the right to life. This article actually helped a lot in clarifying my own thought process, though I obviously approach it in a somewhat different mindset as a Christian, while the author is definitely a secular humanist. http://www.l4l.org/library/abor-rts.html
Not to mention the fact that this should (but won't) end, once and for all, the idea that making sure that abortion clinics have to meet the same standards of oversight and regulation as any other free-standing surgery clinic is somehow a violation of the rights of women to have a "safe, legal" abortion. Because that is exactly the opposite of what that lack of regulation actually resulted in. There is no way a free-standing same-day surgery center could have gotten away with such complete disregard of health, safety and medical regulations for 17 months, much less 17 years.
Quick correction to the above, the author of that article on the libertarian objections to abortion is an Objectivist, not a secular humanist. A different proposition to be sure, but an atheistic worldview, vs my own orthodox Christian one, regardless.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to hear from someone whose opinion has changed so radically. Good to hear that it's even possible.
ReplyDelete