Thus saith the Lord: A voice was heard
on high of lamentation, of mourning, and
weeping, of Rachel weeping for her children,
and refusing to be comforted for them,
because they are not.
Jeremiah 31:15
If anybody actually reads this, I'm sorry that I haven't been posting lately. It's been a tough winter, and I really haven't had the time or the energy to think much less put my thoughts down. I decided that the thing I would start back up with would be a though about yesterday's anniversary of Roe v. Wade, especially in light of what has happened recently in my neck of the woods that has cast some light on what actually goes on at the clinics that provide abortions throughout our country.
I'm sure that people throughout the world, not just in the Philadelphia area, have been hearing about this. I remember when this guy's office was raided back at the beginning of last year, the details then weren't as clear as they are now but it was known that horrible things were going on in that clinic. Now, of course, we know all the gruesome specifics. This "doctor" is charged with killing one woman and seven children, and that's just the deaths that can be documented. God only knows how many other women and born children died because of the conditions there, not to mention how many viable unborn children were killed and whose deaths will never be remembered because of the horrible mentality that exists in this country about the value of unborn life.
This man's practice was particularly horrible because he was known to take cases where the woman was far along in her pregnancy, cases where the child may very well be born alive in the course of the abortion. Still, he is not the only so-called physician who takes such late-term cases and the conditions that exist at regular abortion clinics are no doubt just as horrible. When you deny the humanity of one child it becomes easy to then deny the humanity of all children, and then even further to deny the humanity of pregnant women and indeed of all people. As far as Gosnell seemed to be concerned, the children he murdered were just lumps of cells and the women he neglected were only worth the amount of money they put in his pockets. Closing ourselves off to compassion for one human life risks destroying our compassion for all life, and that is certainly what we have here. That this was one clinic does not mean that the abuses seen there aren't present elsewhere, certainly they are not universal but they are probably more widespread than the media will ever let us think about.
On this weekend where we remember when the U.S. Supreme Court made conditional the very right to life, perhaps we should look at this case and think about how 38 years under the shadow of abortion has made our society colder and less concerned about humanity. Perhaps we should think about how many people in our country will ignore this story, or worse yet try to justify his actions. We should definitely pray for the women who are making these decisions, that they may not be coerced into destroying their children's lives and that they will accept the grace of God to say "yes" to life both for their children and for themselves. It is 38 years later and things in our country have only gotten worse over time, we need to pray that God will steer us back on a path of peace and love that will heal the wounds that have been created and bring us back to life.
About Me
- Andrew Mason
- NJ, United States
- I am a Catholic, a Northeasterner, a wannabe activist and occasional loudmouth. I am long on indignation and short on the words to express it. I feel unrepresented by both parties and disrespected by those with power in my own country. I am a son and a brother and a friend. These are the things that you need to know about me, if you really need to know anything about me.
The lesson of this incident is that government should get back into the regulation business (Pennsylvania is run by Republicans and any lack of regulation can be squarely placed in the hands of the Republican ruled legislature). Another lesson is that restrictions placed on abortion force women into difficult decisions and encourage this sort of thing. If it wasn't so hard to run an abortion clinic in this country, especially in a purple state like Pennsylvania and red states, women would have had other options.
ReplyDeletePeople knew about Gosnell long before it became public but those people don't have the power to arrest him or shut down his office. They complained and their complaints were ignored, not because of some over-zealous abortion advocacy but because our government doesn't like to regulate anything.
Planned Parenthood was advising people to avoid his office. Unfortunately, some women couldn't avoid his office. I heard a story of a woman who tried going somewhere else but was scared away by anti-choice protesters shouting "whore" and other such nonsense at her so she went to Gosnell's clinic where there were fewer protesters.
There are bad apples in any medical discipline. The difference is that nobody blames all plastic surgeons when one does something wrong (like happened with Kanye's mom) and nobody blames all doctors when one ends up killing a patient (like Michael Jackson's doctor). The difference is that if you're at the office of a plastic surgeon and something strikes you as odd or disgusting you can probably find another plastic surgeon. That's not true of abortion. In many places in this country women have to travel hundreds of miles, sometimes across several states, to get to a doctor's office. There's no way for them to then turn around and travel another hundred miles to get to a better one so they settle and risk their lives. If people like you didn't stand outside abortion clinics and scare doctors into closing up shop, this may have still happened but it certainly wouldn't have been as serious and it would have been much more likely that he'd have gone out of business before he did what he's accused of.
Make no mistake though, as much as vultures like yourself would like to make this about Freedom of Choice, this was actually caused by your movement. You made it hard for women to shop around for providers, you made it possible for a crappy doctor to stay in business by limiting competition through threats and intimidation.
It doesn't look like he had any trouble running his buziness, in fact it looks like the state had no problem letting him do so without any difficulty or regulation. It's nice of Planned Parenthood to steer its clients away from a demented quack, personally I think that they have an obligation to do so if they want to be consideredhealthcare providers (how would a PCP be regarded if he referred patients to a cardiologist who kept hearts in jars in his office?). Still, perhaps they could have shared some of those concerns with the state. I'm sure that Rendell would have been happy to listen. Bettrr yet, they could have accepted the regulation by the state that would have prevrnted this instead of decrying every attempt at state oversight as a violation of privacy. This clinic was probably as bad as it was because Rendell andothers were afraid of looking too "anti choice" by sending out inspectors.
ReplyDeleteBuziness?
ReplyDeleteReports have cited that Planned Parenthood DID report the guy to the state. The problem was that abortion providers were removed from the regular medical regulation apparatus not because of pro-choicers but rather because of anti-choicers who didn't want to consider it medicine.
I can't blame them for being wary of additional regulation. When additional regulations are put on other discipline, nobody has to worry that it's a stealth attempt to destroy that discipline. Abortion providers, however, do have to fear that. Every time the government comes and says they want more regulations, it's entirely possible it's an anti-choice politician trying to score points with the He-Man Women Haterz Club by destroying another clinic.