Posted in Weekly column from Archbishop Chaput, on April
26th, 2013 at http://catholicphilly.com/
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The Gosnell Story And
Its Lessons
+Charles J. Chaput,
O.F.M.Cap.
Archbishop of
Philadelphia
Some stories, no
matter how unsettling, just can’t be ignored — even when some people are
determined to look away.
The murder trial of
Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell will soon go to jury. And like every
other criminally accused person under the law, Gosnell is innocent until proven
guilty. Whatever the verdict though, there’s no ambiguity about the kind of
business he ran at his West Philadelphia “Women’s Medical Center” — an abortion
clinic that critics have likened to a meatpacking plant or a butcher shop, with
unborn children delivered into a toilet, and jars of fetal body parts stored
around the facility.
Dr. Gosnell was
originally charged with one count of infanticide and five counts of “abuse of
corpse” for killing fetuses born alive by plunging scissors into their necks.
Without explanation, the judge in the case accepted a motion to acquit Gosnell
of these charges earlier this week. Gosnell still faces four counts of first-degree
and one count of third-degree murder. Eight of his coworkers have already
pleaded guilty in the case, including three to third-degree murder.
Or so said The New
York Times in a report dated April 23. The date is important.
Gosnell’s trial began March 18, more than a month ago. The Times
coverage, while modest, is significant. Why? The answer is
simple. The Inquirer – Philadelphia’s hometown paper – has done a good
job following the trial. But most prestige national media have seemed
remarkably eager to ignore the story until shamed into covering it.
Gosnell is much more
than a “local” story. The continuing debate over legalized abortion is a
hot-button national issue that drew half a million pro-life demonstrators to
Washington in January. The battle over abortion restrictions continues in every
state. Forty years after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, resistance
to permissive abortion remains high. And the vivid details of the Gosnell
clinic tragedy have the kind of salacious appeal that few national media would
normally avoid — if the issue were anything else. But abortion is too
often, and in too many news rooms, exactly the kind of topic that brings on a
sudden case of snow blindness.
The real story in the
Gosnell trial is bigger than the ugly allegations against Gosnell himself; it
includes the failure — the allergic disinterest — of some of our most important
national media. A headline in The Atlantic magazine, April 12, states the
obvious: “Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story: The dead
babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failures. It
is thoroughly newsworthy.”
The
Atlantic story by Conor Friedersdorf is worth reading. But don’t stop
there. Read
this by Kirsten Powers, columnist for The Daily Beast, in USA Today.
And these
excellent analyses by journalists Terry Mattingly, Mollie Hemingway
and George Conger.
The irony is that much
of the media’s lethargy in covering the Gosnell case really doesn’t surprise.
It’s part of the fabric of a culture that simply will not see what it doesn’t
want to see about the realities of abortion. And it leads to the kind of
implausible claim made recently by one local commentator that “no sense of
guilt is warranted” by the media because “there is no causal connection between
coverage of [the Gosnell] case and bias.” It’s hard to imagine a more untenable
alibi.
The brutality in
abortion is intimate, personal and permanent. It violates women, and it kills a
developing human life every time — whether the venue is a “Women’s Medical
Center”-style meat factory or a soothing suburban clinic. What makes the
Gosnell story unique is that it should distress anyone with its
details, pro-choice or pro-life, regardless of religion or politics.
But of course, people
need to know about an evil before they can do anything about it.
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