Guilt: Gosnell's and Ours

Guilt: Gosnell’s and Ours

Scott J Mahurin

“Sometimes it’s not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don’t mean as well.” Bob Dylan

Guilty.

A mid-spring day in Philadelphia may turn out to give more momentum to the pro-

life movement.

“Dr.” Kermit Gosnell was convicted of three of four first-degree murder charges today. Gosnell was acquitted of many more charges, over 258 charges of third-degree murder, and 227 counts of infanticide.

Unnamed, butchered and discarded, often in toilets, these babies were named by the courts “Baby A,” “Baby B,” “Baby E,” etc. My friend and fellow pro-life activist, Frank Pavone, has named the babies in a recent memorial service. There are others that remain unnamed. Conservative estimates have between 40,000 and 42,000 babies murdered in Gosnell’s clinic from 1988-2009.

The babies that Gosnell killed were often alive for 15-20 minutes before he would snip their spinal cord with scissors.  The details of Gosnell’s house of horrors are well-documented, grisly, and will not be repeated here.

So, let’s analyze this.

What does it mean? And what does it not mean?

1. We must reject the idea that late-term abortion is more horrific than early-term abortion. Terms like “late-term” or “viability" or “post-birth” all blur the issues that really are black and white. All life begins at conception. All life is sacred. All abortion murders people, be they big or small. The Gosnell trial gives us a picture of late-term abortion and its particular horrors, which are many, but abortion, in all its stages, is murder. Murdering a child is the same as murdering a grandmother. Robbing a convenient store is as much theft as robbing the Bank of America. The size of the victim doesn’t matter.

2. The mainstream media will never do the work for the pro-life movement. Individual bloggers can and must do this work. Facebook and Twitter can do this work, and they largely did. After a social media blitz several weeks back, Fox News did a documentary on Gosnell.

3. While we are on the topic of media, the pulpits of America are the media that God will use to end abortion. Ignoring the Gosnell trial enraged right-wing conservatives, but we must ask ourselves a question. How many of us in the pro-life movement have heard a pastor preach about abortion in the last six months? A year? Five years? If the church begins talking about it, we won’t need NBC Nightly News to talk about it.

4. Late term abortion is ugly. Remember that President Obama has defended this ugliness as a State Senator from Illinois by voting against the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” He is the most extremely pro-death President we have ever had. Obama defended the rights of Gosnell and his ilk all across the country.

5. This disconnect, though, between the liberal ideologues who defend late-term abortion and those who were jurors (and even reporters!) during the Gosnell trial is stark. When presented with the horrific evidence, the jurors did not think about reproductive rights, instead they were thinking of dead babies. They did not equivocate, like so many politicians do, about when life begins, and wonder what their decision might mean for “choice” advocates. They heard of babies struggling for life until “Dr” Gosnell severed their spinal cord, leaving them dead and unfeeling. And they made the humane decision by convicting Gosnell.

6. The grisly face of abortion must be seen. It is uncomfortable, shocking, gross, and stomach-turning. But the Gosnell trial provides the pro-life movement with a new talking point, a new antecedent for future discussion. The silence on the left is deafening. This is our moment. Let’s not let this issue go away. Petition your local governments for health inspections of abortion facilities. Find out where the nearest abortion clinic is to your home, your church, your Bible study, and go, and pray. (If you live in Florida I have a list of all the abortion clinics in Florida on the Florida Preborn Rescue blog). Support pro-life missionaries who go to the streets in order to rescue babies and their mommies.

Finally, pray.

But pray with your feet. Let’s do something. 

For if we do not, our guilt and fate will be the same as Gosnell’s.