Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Is Important

[Ad Orientem]

Caution: The linked stories deal with allegations and sometimes graphic descriptions of exceptionally horrific crimes. Some readers may want to skip this thread. The subject (abortion - late term abortion - and infanticide) is highly controversial and I ask anyone commenting to please take a deep breath and keep the conversation civil.

From The Atlantic: Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... ry/274944/

From The WaPo: In the Kermit Gosnell case, conservative watchdogs rattle the mainstream media’s cage
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/eri ... e/?hpid=z4

[Pointedstick]

Becoming a father has made this kind of thing far more emotional to me. I remember seeing my son in the ultrasound video and being shown that a single pixel darkening and lightening was his little heart beating. It was at that moment that my brain said, "that's a little person in there. Not just a clump of cells, or a parasitic ball of matter, a little person. And he's your son."

Regardless of what's legal, it seems like such a terrible thing to terminate a pregnancy. The women I know who have gotten abortions say that it lives with you forever, that it's not just a medical procedure like any other. And to have an abortion in such a horrific and grotesque manner that Gosnell performed; it's nightmare fuel. I can't imagine what kind of monster would do such procedures.

[MachineGhost]

This says it all.

The conclusion drawn at the end of the section is provocative. "Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that," it states. "But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."

[Benko]

I believe in abortion, but there was a disturbing video of someone at planned parenthood on the net recently.  There was a late term abortion that "went wrong" and the result was a living baby.  So the question put to the planned parenthood person was "what now?"  And the answer the planned parenthood person gave was that it was up to the mother what is done with the now living outside the womb infant, meaning it was up to the mother whether the baby was treated as a baby, or "abortion" was "continued" i.e. whether the now living baby was put to death.

[MachineGhost]

PS, you stated that really well.  I feel very much the same way.  I believe future generations will look back on our generation and wonder how we could all stand by and let abortion happen.  It's horrific.  I haven't always felt this way.  It wasn't until I educated myself a bit on the reality of abortion that I began to see how horrible it is.

It's very horrible, but if we drive it back underground into the black market, Dr. Kermit's little shop of horrors will be a dime a dozen.  Strict oversight and regulation seem to be the only answer.

[Ad Orientem]

For the record (having started this thread) I believe abortion to be the great moral issue of the age. It is to our times what slavery was in the 19th century.

[Pointedstick]

It's a lot easier for me to condone of abortion within the first week or so when it's just a blob of cells. When the fetus is basically an unborn baby, it's hard for me to avoid seeing it as infanticide. But let me clarify that I don't  believe that abortion ought to be a crime; as we've seen, like outlawing guns or drugs, it will just happen anyway in more dangerous contexts. Ultimately you can't really stop people from doing what they want to do.

I do believe that any woman wanting to get an abortion ought to really think long and hard about the consequences before doing it. It can be really scarring. Ideally we'd live in a society where abortion was extremely rare and only requested in the case of extreme danger to the mother, and as soon as possible in the pregnancy. And without monsters like Gosnell.

[Ad Orientem]

It looks like some in the media have woken up and suddenly recalled their avowed profession. There have even been some mea culpa's from some in the liberal corner for their failure to address the topic.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism ... e-Coverage

[moda0306]

I am not the least bit religious, but I find any late-term abortion to be absolutely disgusting.

[RuralEngineer]

I am not the least bit religious, but I find any late-term abortion to be absolutely disgusting.

Respect of life doesn't need to come from a musty religious tome. I don't consider myself particularly religious either but I still respect and cherish innocent human life.

[moda0306]

RE,

Agreed. I was simply pointing out that my distaste didn't come from the some source as a vitriol against birth control and gay marriage, but more of a natural distaste due to the "humanness" of what's happening on a subjective level.

Likewise, seeing a baby die from a disease because his/her family couldn't afford health insurance would be similarly unsettling... But now I'm getting into hijacking trollville.

[D1984]

Becoming a father has made this kind of thing far more emotional to me. I remember seeing my son in the ultrasound video and being shown that a single pixel darkening and lightening was his little heart beating. It was at that moment that my brain said, "that's a little person in there. Not just a clump of cells, or a parasitic ball of matter, a little person. And he's your son."

I cannot begin to understand how anyone could feel this way. My first instinct in such a situation would be "flush the little parasite before it can be born and end up costing me tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in child support".

Regardless of what's legal, it seems like such a terrible thing to terminate a pregnancy. The women I know who have gotten abortions say that it lives with you forever, that it's not just a medical procedure like any other.

http://Imnotsorry.net

Plenty of women there who'd disagree with you on that

[Pointedstick]

Becoming a father has made this kind of thing far more emotional to me. I remember seeing my son in the ultrasound video and being shown that a single pixel darkening and lightening was his little heart beating. It was at that moment that my brain said, "that's a little person in there. Not just a clump of cells, or a parasitic ball of matter, a little person. And he's your son."

I cannot begin to understand how anyone could feel this way. My first instinct in such a situation would be "flush the little parasite before it can be born and end up costing me tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in child support".

If that's the way you feel, then I hope very much that you remain childless. Sounds like it would work out better for you, the baby, and the mother.

Personally I don't see my son becoming a stream of child support payments because I have no intention of abandoning him and my amazing wife.

[RuralEngineer]

All of human behavior is a spectrum/distribution. You're more than a couple standard deviations away from the mean on this one D1984.

Not wanting children is a valid choice, one that I wish certain segments of society would embrace fully. However, we've essentially decoupled sex and reproduction in most instances. Science has a working male birth control pill. If such views become sufficiently common, economic collapse due to population decline might be a major concern.

I'm not too worried.

[D1984]

Becoming a father has made this kind of thing far more emotional to me. I remember seeing my son in the ultrasound video and being shown that a single pixel darkening and lightening was his little heart beating. It was at that moment that my brain said, "that's a little person in there. Not just a clump of cells, or a parasitic ball of matter, a little person. And he's your son."

I cannot begin to understand how anyone could feel this way. My first instinct in such a situation would be "flush the little parasite before it can be born and end up costing me tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in child support".

If that's the way you feel, then I hope very much that you remain childless. Sounds like it would work out better for you, the baby, and the mother.

Personally I don't see my son becoming a stream of child support payments because I have no intention of abandoning him and my amazing wife.

I wasn't implying that you should abandon them...if staying as a family together makes you happier then more power to you.

I was just looking at it from the point of view that:

A. Even if one does have to pay child support (which would be financially detrimental...which was why I stated "flush the parasite before that can happen") at least with child support one's obligation is done after having cut that check (or had it direct deposited from one's pay); no screaming kids fighting with each other or sick infant vomiting on you after waking you up at 2AM with its incessant wailing,

B. From an ROI standpoint children are typically a poor investment (think of what the several hundred thousand dollars spent on the average child would compound to if put into a PP or other moderate or conservative allocation portfolio) so the best option would be abortion in order to avoid having to "make the investment" in the first place (let's face it...if any one of us knew--not predicted, but KNEW--in advance that gold or stocks or whatever was going to be a bad investment for a certain time period we would avoid investing in it. Well, kids are the same. Hundreds of thousands of $$$ down the drain once you count lost opportunity cost on that money equals a definite bad investment for the next 18 to 21 years). Failing that, from a rational point of view the next best option would be what you called "abandoning" (bailing out of parenthood and then only paying the state required minimum of child support). No different as I see it than abandoning a house that's underwater on the mortgage or a stock that's a perennial loser; it's simply a matter of cutting your losses in a timely and efficient manner as soon as possible.

[MachineGhost]

But now I'm getting into hijacking trollville.

AFAIK, doodle did not register his trademark on "pulling a doodle" with Uncle Sam so no need to fear his empty threats!

[MediumTex]

I wish that people would have a natural distaste for abortion that would make laws against it unnecessary, sort of like it is unnecessary to have strict laws against cannibalism because so few people are interested in it in the first place.

I would never want to impose my beliefs on others.  I just honestly wish that people would see that late term abortions are not good for anyone--the unborn, the mother or society.  That's JMHO, of course.

As I have noted before, I also think that the death penalty is a misguided use of state power.  If the government can't get it right in so many other spheres of life, what makes us think that it will be able to make the right choices concerning which members of society are going to be exterminated?

In watching the Jodi Arias trial on TV I am struck by the hypocrisy of the prosecutor who feigns outrage at the idea that the defendant would kill someone that she didn't like while the prosecutor is attempting to do precisely the same thing by attempting to persuade the jury that the state should kill the defendant because the state doesn't like what she did.

[MachineGhost]

I wish that people would have a natural distaste for abortion that would make laws against it unnecessary, sort of like it is unnecessary to have strict laws against cannibalism because so few people are interested in it in the first place.

Why isn't it the young and uneducated or the young and poor or the poor and uneducated or whatever mix is relevant, cannot have a natural distaste for late-term abortions as they do for murder or cannibalism?  Late-terms abortions is not a huge problem in general, but it seems to be a huge problem for this particular demographic group.  The economic consequences of having an unwanted child must truly be soul-crushing.

[Xan]

I cannot begin to understand how anyone could feel this way. My first instinct in such a situation would be "flush the little parasite before it can be born and end up costing me tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in child support".

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." - Mother Teresa

[murphy_p_t]

But let me clarify that I don't  believe that abortion ought to be a crime; as we've seen, like outlawing guns or drugs, it will just happen anyway in more dangerous contexts. Ultimately you can't really stop people from doing what they want to do.

Hi PS...can you expand on your thinking here? Although I'm very sympathetic to this approach when it comes to things like drug use, I'm very skeptical of the approach for abortion. Specifically because voluntary abortion is a direct assault upon a unique human being.

Specifically, if I apply your reasoning, you might say that homicide laws should be rescinded. Or human slavery (we have modern day human trafficking to be sure). I suspect you don't favor decriminalization of either of these. How do you distinguish your approach?

[MediumTex]

I cannot begin to understand how anyone could feel this way. My first instinct in such a situation would be "flush the little parasite before it can be born and end up costing me tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in child support".

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." - Mother Teresa

I guess D1984 is fortunate that his parents were more generous with him during his earliest days than he seems to be with respect to his potential progeny.

It's cool not to want kids, but if a kid is already in the oven I think that some level of generosity of spirit ought to kick in at some point.

[Pointedstick]

But let me clarify that I don't  believe that abortion ought to be a crime; as we've seen, like outlawing guns or drugs, it will just happen anyway in more dangerous contexts. Ultimately you can't really stop people from doing what they want to do.

Hi PS...can you expand on your thinking here? Although I'm very sympathetic to this approach when it comes to things like drug use, I'm very skeptical of the approach for abortion. Specifically because voluntary abortion is a direct assault upon a unique human being.

Specifically, if I apply your reasoning, you might say that homicide laws should be rescinded. Or human slavery (we have modern day human trafficking to be sure). I suspect you don't favor decriminalization of either of these. How do you distinguish your approach?

I don't really know. Abortion is a really complicated subject for me because it's not just murder... another perspective holds that (especially early in the pregnancy) abortion is a medical procedure that falls under the fundamental human right to own and control your own body, which is the foundation of self-ownership and all other property rights. Under this school of thought, restricting abortion makes women prisoners to their own bodies, and I am fairly sympathetic to this view.

If a woman is raped or birth control fails, should she really be forced to continue those fairly radical changes to her body if she doesn't want them? Is it appropriate for the government to tell her, "you can't control what happens within your own body." But is it really just another physical change? The real question is, are unborn children separate humans, or simply a part of their mother? Does the answer change when it's just a blastocyst? When it's 8 months along? Where's the dividing line, if there is one?

These are really hard questions for me. I don't have the answers. All I can say is that I want to err on the side of less government control when I'm not sure of the answers. More government control rarely leads to better outcomes, IMHO.

But I will say that why anybody would choose to have an abortion after the 6th or 7th month is beyond me. I feel pretty strongly that by that point, it's a little person and there is a moral difference between it and an embryo or a fertilized egg. Personally, I am much less averse to restrictions on third and even second trimester abortion than I am abortions performed in the first trimester.

[Ad Orientem]

My own ideals are that you may do what you will so long as you don't hurt someone else. And the old rule that says your rights stop at the tip of my nose and the edge of my property. On that basis abortion is very problematic even from a libertarian perspective.

[Ad Orientem]

It's also worth noting that even in Europe where abortion is considered a human right (!?) it is generally not allowed after the 10th or at latest the 12th week of pregnancy.

[Pointedstick]

My own ideals are that you may do what you will so long as you don't hurt someone else. And the old rule that says your rights stop at the tip of my nose and the edge of my property. On that basis abortion is very problematic even from a libertarian perspective.

That's true... so long as the unborn child is a person. Clearly it's a person when it's exiting the birth canal. But is it a person the moment the egg is fertilized? That's the tough part: defining when the protected status of personhood starts. You can come at this from a religious, scientific, or philosophical point of view, but I doubt there will ever be real agreement on it. It's so highly personal.

When the law gets involved, this kind of thing is always arbitrary; why is 18 years of age the point when a child is an adult, for example? Were they not an adult the day before ? It's nonsensical if you really think about it. Hard lines like these will always make little sense in the real world, but the law has to make them for issues of legal status to be resolvable.