Kermit Gosnell and Reproductive Care
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
Philadelphia Police Department, via Philadelphia D.A. Office, via Associated PressDr. Kermit GosnellRep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said today that the Kermit Gosnell trial proves that federal funds should not be used for abortions — an especially odd conclusion to draw given that riders attached to appropriation bills already prohibit the use of federal funds for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest.
Writing in The Washington Post, Jordan Sekulow and Matthew Clark of the American Center for Law and Justice said the trial put the “horror of abortion” in perspective. “How can killing a newborn infant be illegal and shocking to the collective conscience, yet ending that same life moments, days or weeks before be perfectly legal and socially acceptable as long as the baby is still in the womb? There is no logical answer.”
Now, for the record: If Kermit Gosnell is found guilty of the appalling crimes with which he is charged, he should go to jail for the rest of his life.
But the effort to use this case to “prove” that abortion is wrong, is wrongheaded. If anything, the case highlights the need for safe, affordable and available women’s reproductive health care.
Dr. Gosnell preyed on poor women, who — due to the above-mentioned riders — could not use Medicaid money to pay for abortions and did not have easy access to better care. The abortions he is charged with performing were illegal in Pennsylvania — after the 24-week point at which a fetus is considered to have a chance to survive outside the womb. And he is charged with performing abortions in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, as well as using unqualified assistants. A Times report in 2011 described the way state officials for years ignored women’s complaints about the nightmarish clinic that Dr. Gosnell ran.
Lately, the right-wing has used the Gosnell trial not only to attack abortion rights generally, but to attack the media. They claim that journalists have ignored the trial, and that the “media blackout” is proof of persistent bias.
Over the weekend, we were attacked on Twitter for running an editorial about the re-opening of a women’s health clinic in Wichita — four years after the clinic doctor, George Tiller, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist — but not one about the Philadelphia case.
Again for the record, The Times has run six articles on the Gosnell case, including a long one in 2011 (which of course is well before this weekend’s silliness about coverage). The most recent article, on March 19, reported on the opening of the trial and the charges against Dr. Gosnell.
But last I checked, there’s no rule that a newspaper, or that paper’s editorial page, has to run one piece about a bad clinic for every piece celebrating a good one.
Dr. Tiller was performing safe and legal abortions when he was gunned down in the foyer of his own church. The reopening of his clinic, which will not perform late-term abortions, is an act of courage on the part of Julie Burkhart, a former colleague of Dr. Tiller, and others. She is already receiving death threats from people who believe that murder is an acceptable way of protesting legal, constitutionally protected abortions.
Through this sort of intimidation and through legitimate political action, anti-abortion forces have been alarmingly successful in restricting women’s access to reproductive health services, including birth control, cancer screening and other services. That is the real issue.
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