The Media and the Gosnell Trial

April 12, 2013

Here is a stark reminder that “the news” as represented by the professional media is not “objective.” The media’s selection of things to include and push, and correspondingly, items to ignore and downplay, has a huge cultural effect, and that is the intent.

The Gosnell case brings to light things that are unpleasant. But more than that, it pushes forward uncomfortable questions. How can these killings be gruesome only because they were successful once the baby was outside the womb? If the killing on the table of an aborted baby is gruesome and murderous, how is that different from the killing of that same baby that same day if it happens to be successfully carried out while inside the womb?

These are the sorts of questions that the anti-life media want to avoid at all costs, even if the Gosnells among their heroes are clearly carrying out illegal activities. And in a sense, their instinct is fully in accord with the people they serve. This is not the news that the anti-life masses want to see, either. It is too uncomfortable and too damning, just as it was too uncomfortable and damning for the multitude of agencies who could have had Gosnell shut down years earlier. (On the latter, see the heading “The Failure to Stop It” on this page.) Rather reap the whirlwind than have sowing the wind come under the slightest question.

There are no safe abortuaries. Gosnell’s clinic killed later-term preborns than some other clinics, and in a sufficiently unsanitary fashion that some of the women died, as well. But all abortuaries are killing fields by design. The horror of Gosnell’s practices should be seen for what they are: an extension of the horror of all abortion. The baby in the womb is not less human than the baby on the table.