Mind the Gap

Important mainstream media outlets have consciously decided not to cover the newsworthy trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist accused of killing babies who survived botched terminations.  I previously posted about this trial earlier this month.  To fill in the media coverage gap, let me point to a few pieces that stand out.

• James Taranto, "The Banality of Bias"
• A reflection on the late Sir Edward Roberts, the pioneer of in vitro fertilization, by Robert P. George, "The Sanctity of Life, Even in a Test Tube"
• An Interview with Leon Kass on "The Meaning of the Gosnell Trial"

But there are also other related articles worth reading:

• A New York Post column by Kyle Smith on actual proceedings in New York abortion clinics
• A Washington Post new story on clinical practices that forms the basis for the previous New York Post op-ed
• A now well-known video of public testimony by a Planned Parenthood representative, Alisa LaPolt Snow.  She testified in Florida that, at best, it is unclear whether a baby who survives an attempted abortion should have rights as a citizen.  In other words, she left open the possibility that a live baby could be killed in order to complete the failed abortion.  Apparently, that decision, whether to kill the infant, is a decision that parents of the born child and the doctor could, in her view, legally and morally make.
• The text of the legislation under consideration is here.
• The 6-minute clip of the Planned Parenthood testimony is here.

Why have this trial, which is now set to go to jury, and related matters been little covered by major media?  Mr. Smith's observation is probably close to the truth:  A "primary reason the Gosnell case has received amazingly scant and grudging attention from most of the major media outlets is that it’s impossible to discuss illegal abortions without thinking more about legal ones."

Thinking about legal abortions would, I suppose, be uncomfortable.

But maybe taking a closer look at legal practices that are morally questionable and emotionally unsettling is the responsible thing to do.

Major media sources seem in the name of responsible journalism all too ready to spotlight reports of genocide in far flung countries like Rwanda and Darfur (never mind that in the Bronx more than 57% -- i.e., more than half -- of all African-American pregnancies are terminated).

Or, for another example, major media consider it an obligation to cover, at least nominally, alleged human rights violations in places like Syria, Egypt, or maybe even CIA interrogation facilities (never mind the systematic but legal extermination through abortion of between 800,000 and 1.2 million non-consenting humans annually in the U.S.).

Psychologists tell us that we have more difficulty comprehending and relating to large, nebulous, and seemingly distant but significant matters than small, concrete, and more proximate but trifling ones.  Big numbers like the majority of African-American babies in the Bronx terminated, or between 0.8 and 1.2 million American babies terminated -- these figures are easy to push aside.  We gravitate emotionally to an identifiable victim, while we distance ourselves cognitively from statistical victims.  But this inherent tendency of the brain doesn't make those grand matters insignificant.

If you read one of the articles linked above, try the interview with Leon Kass, who discusses human dignity, broadly considered, and contemporary threats to it.  Then, returning to the Gosnell trial, assess your emotional reaction to concrete accounts like this one:

Investigators who raided the clinic in 2010 saw "blood on the floor" and smelled "urine in the air," according to the grand jury that indicted Gosnell. They also found "fetal remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic—in bags, milk jugs, orange-juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers." Members of Gosnell's staff testified that the abortionist would deliver babies who had been gestating for as long as 30 weeks, far longer than the 24-week limit imposed by Pennsylvania law. Gosnell or staff members would gouge the infant's neck with scissors to sever the spinal cord, according to the grand jury report. Gosnell referred to the method as "snipping."

"Snipping" infants' necks with scissors?  If you are repulsed, if you quiver in horror, or shudder in disgust, or if your temper flares in outrage, that's your moral sense.  It is speaking to you.  And it is on the money.

Now then ask yourself, Do I care -- really and fully -- if some other method, equally lethal, is performed on living humans just on the other side of the mother's belly, inside it, where supposedly that growing human is, for a time, safe from the hostile world beyond?

Ask yourself:  Does my professed position on abortion match my moral sense at what was done to these premature babies?

Or do you applaud how ingenious humans have become at violently bypassing natural bodily barriers like the womb that are designed to protect the innocent?