Today my husband and I watched the movie, “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer.” I borrowed this DVD from our local library and didn’t know much about the case… not surprising because there have been few reviews and very little media attention. Why? Well, Gosnell was an abortion doctor, and evidently, nobody likes to criticize abortionists.
The thing is, Doctor Gosnell did not just perform abortions, he performed them in a dirty clinic that had not been inspected for 17 years, despite complaints. Why? Well, nobody wants to shut down abortion clinics because that would interfere with the reproductive rights of women. He was convicted of causing the death of one patient, and of “snipping” the spinal cords, and thereby killing a number of infants who had been born alive. There were probably many more victims.
For me, the most revealing moments of the film were when an doctor who performs legal abortions described the procedure. She explained that at her clinic, no abortions were performed after the legal cut off of 24 weeks, and no infant had ever been born alive and killed. Why? Well because in the procedures she performed, babies (or fetuses if you prefer) are injected with a drug that stops their hearts while they are still in the uterus. The doctor waits to make sure the heart is no longer beating and then removes them. This is not murder because the child is already dead when it is delivered. Does it make sense to say this trial was not about abortion? Clearly it was, at least if “you have ears to hear.”
Is it just me or is all of this just another example of stinkin’ thinkin’? It is somehow okay to ignore medical malpractice because it might cast abortionists in a bad light? How is this protecting women? It is somehow okay to administer a lethal injection to a child while still in the womb, but becomes a crime to kill it after it breathes air for the first time? Where is the logic in this?
The jury agreed that Gosnell was a murderer. I wonder if any who started as “pro-choice” changed their opinions in the course of the trial. I wonder if many people will watch this movie and be brought face to face with the “stinkin’ thinkin'” of our society. At the end, the policeman who first brought the charges asked an investigative blogger why she had helped him and the D.A.. She answered something to this effect, “I was after the truth, and it’s still the truth even if I don’t like it.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate, John 18:38
It seems that this is still a good question.
Lutheran Ladies Connection 