What should we learn from the Kermit Gosnell trial?

Abortion rights advocates have argued that there is nothing to see here. Move along. This is what illegal abortion looks like, they say.
But Gosnellâs clinic was not illegal. It was a licensed medical facility. The state of his clinic was well known: there were repeated complaints to government officials and even the local Planned Parenthood. He wasnât operating under the radar but in plain sight, and he received referrals from abortion clinics up and down the East Coast. Gosnell performed plenty of abortions within the 24-week limit in Pennsylvania and worked part time for a National Abortion Federationâaccredited clinic in Delaware.
The woman Gosnell is on trial for allegedly killing, Karnamaya Mongar, perished during a legal abortion while she was 19 weeks pregnant. Gosnell was not forced to operate in the dark because of antiâabortion rights regulations. Itâs the opposite: he was able to flourishâpulling in $1.8 million a yearâbecause multiple abortion rights administrations decided that to inspect his clinic might mean limiting access to abortion. Itâs all in the grand jury report, if you donât believe me.
One of the bodies discovered in the raid of the clinic was of a 22-week-old baby with a surgical incision on the back of her neck, which penetrated the first and second vertebrae. The only thing that would make her death illegal would be if Gosnell failed to finish her off in her mother's womb.
Does that statement make you uncomfortable? Good.
What we need to learn from the Gosnell case is that late-term abortion is infanticide. Legal infanticide. That so many people in the media seem untroubled by the idea that 12 inches in one direction is a âprivate medical decisionâ and 12 inches in the other direction causes people to react in horror, should be troubling. Indeed, Gosnellâs defense attorney Jack J. McMahon has relied on the argument that Gosnell killed the babies prior to delivering them, therefore he is not guilty of murder. His exact words were: âEvery one of those babies died in utero.â
Gosnell is accused of aborting infants past the 24-week limit in Pennsylvania. But those same deaths â if done in utero â would have been perfectly legal in many states with sometimes abused health exceptions, which can include the elastic category of "mental distress."
The New York Times reported that MacMahon argued: âBecause the women were given injections of the drug digoxin, which causes âfetal demise,â any postdelivery movements were involuntary spasms.â The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney, who attended the trial, reported that McMahon argued: âThe purpose of the shot...is to kill the baby so that it will not be a live birth.â
We live in a country where if a six-months-pregnant woman started downing shots of vodka in a bar or lit up a cigarette, people might want her arrested. But that same woman could walk into an abortion clinic, no questions asked, and be injected with a drug that would stop her babyâs heart.
Iâll put my cards on the table: I think life begins at conception and would love to live in a world where no women ever felt she needed to get an abortion. However, I know enough people who are pro-abortion rightsâindeed, I was one of them for most of my lifeâto know that reasonable and sincere people can disagree about when meaningful life begins. They also can disagree about how to weigh that moral uncertainty against a womanâs right to control her bodyâand her own life. I have only ever voted for Democrats, so overturning Roe v. Wade is not one of my priorities. I never want to return to the days of gruesome back-alley abortions.
But medical advances since Roe v. Wade have made it clear to me that late-term abortion is not a moral gray area, and we need to stop pretending it is. No six-months-pregnant woman is picking out names for her âfetus.â Itâs a baby. Letâs stop playing Orwellian word games. We are talking about human beings here.
How is this OK? Even liberal Europe gets this. In France, Germany, Italy, and Norway, abortion is illegal after 12 weeks. In addition to the life-of-mother exception, they provide narrow health exceptions that require approval from multiple doctors or in some cases going before a board. In the U.S., if you suggest such stringent regulation and oversight of later-term abortions, you are tarred within seconds by the abortion rights movement as a misogynist who doesnât âtrust women.â
Speaking as a liberal who endorses more government regulation of practically everythingâbanks, water, air, food, oil drilling, animal safetyâI am eternally perplexed by the fury the abortion rights contingent displays at the suggestion that the government might have a serious role to play in the issue of abortion, especially later-term abortion. More and more, the abortion rights community has become the NRA of the left: unleashing their armies of supporters and lobbyists in opposition to regulations or restrictions that the majority of Americans support. In the same way the NRA believes background checks will lead to the government busting down your door to confiscate your guns, the abortion rights movement conjures a straight line from parental consent to a complete ban on abortion.
Such an attitude makes having an honest conversation about abortion almost impossible. That is just one of the many reasons I hate talking about it. Additionally, there is no upside in our media culture to challenging this sacred cow. More likely, there is a price to be paid, which is why so few people take it on. However, I cannot legitimately say I am a person who cherishes human rightsâthe animating issue of my life and a frequent topic of my writingâand remain silent about our countryâs legally endorsing infanticide.
I simply have to believe we are better than this.