For decades, liberals have been playing upon people’s emotions by exploiting human tragedy for political gain. In recent months, that tendency has become more pronounced. Their attempt to use the suicides of eight confused young men to advance the homosexual agenda was disgraceful. Then there was the more recent attempt to use the Tucson shooting to advance a gun control agenda that will ultimately increase homicide and other crimes of violence. I think the time has come for conservatives to start making better use of tragedy for political gain.
There can be no better starting place for the exploitation of tragedy than the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Just Wednesday, he was charged with murder. He stands accused of delivering seven babies and then using scissors to kill each one of them. He was also charged with murder in the death of a woman who suffered an overdose of painkillers while awaiting an abortion.
The grand jury report in this case contains details that would make Margaret Sanger proud. The evidence indicates that numerous complaints about the conditions at Gosnell's clinic were ignored. His clinic catered to West Philadelphia’s poor minorities – the kind of people Sanger referred to as human weeds that should be removed from the population.
Darwin proclaimed “survival of the fittest.” Sanger promoted survival of the whitest and survival of the richest. She would have been proud to learn that white women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area of his clinic. Prosecutors allege that this was because Gosnell believed they were more likely to file complaints.
Kermit Gosnell was not the only one arrested and charged with numerous counts of murder. His wife was a cosmetologist who was supposed to cut hair. The allegation is that she cut babies instead.
Every crime has a motive and prosecutors have a motive in this case. It was money. Gosnell made millions of dollars performing thousands of dangerous abortions, many of them illegal late-term procedures. He is alleged to have cut costs by refusing to hire nurses and trained medical staff.
The abortions are alleged to have been “unsafe.” Of course abortions are never safe. There is one killed and one wounded in every case of abortion. Now the court must decide whether the abortions were legal. Since it appears that at least two women died from the procedures, while others suffered perforated bowels, cervixes and uteruses, the case seems ripe for a plea bargain. But prosecutors should resist the temptation. They should seek the maximum penalty in a televised trial.
Prosecutors have noted that Gosnell induced labor, then forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, and eighth months of pregnancy. He then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord. According to prosecutors, Gosnell referred to it as "snipping.” One problem for prosecutors is that Gosnell seems to have destroyed many of his medical files. That is not surprising. Abortion doctors do not keep their Hippocratic oaths. Why should they be expected to keep their records?
There appears to be a certain Hannibal Lecter quality to this case. Authorities have found bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses scattered throughout the offices of Kermit Gosnell. There were jars found containing severed feet that were kept for no apparent purpose. They were the kinds of trophies which, had they not been human, would have aroused the ire of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). But these were not people’s pets. They were people’s mistakes. They deserved no ethical treatment in the eyes of some.
Prosecutors in the Gosnell case have also alleged that he falsified ultrasound examinations and taught his staff to hold the probe in such a way that the fetus would look smaller. He is alleged to have joked with his staff saying one (fetus) was so large he could "walk me to the bus stop.”
How did Kermit Gosnell pass the annual inspections of his clinic, which opened in 1979? It was actually pretty easy since there have only been five inspections since 1979 and none since 1993.
Some defenders of abortion will point out that – although he earned his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University – Gosnell started, but did not finish, a residency in obstetrics-gynecology. Some have already said that he does not know how to perform an abortion without risking killing someone. That trite observation ignores the obvious: No one has ever performed an abortion without actually killing someone.
In the wake of the Tucson shooting some have argued that we should limit semi-automatic handgun magazine capacity to ten. I think we should consider limiting abortion clinic waiting room capacity to ten. Or maybe we should have a seven-day cooling down period for those who have a passion for performing abortions.
However we decide to exploit this tragedy, the conservative slogan is fairly obvious: “Guns don’t kill people. Abortion doctors kill people.” We need to start printing tee shirts now.