Arguably the worst murderer in US history is over one month into his trial, yet most people only started to hear about it a few days ago. For those who haven’t heard yet, Dr. Kermit Gosnell ran an abortion clinic in the US that was “dodgy” to the highest extreme, including apparently routinely carrying out illegal late-term abortions and killing babies that survived the procedure after they had been taken from their mother, were breathing and could quite easily have survived. The conditions in his clinic were appalling, and he was apparently making over $1m per year from it.
All highly shocking, and the report I’m about to link gives a fuller analysis as to what happened, but I warn you it includes images of killed babies for which he is apparently responsible, and which are clearly well developed. Here’s the link.
I’m going to focus here on only one question: why has the mainstream media in the US and throughout much of the world not been making this front page news since the trial started two months ago? Why is the story only now finding prominence thanks largely to Twitter?
I give here three potential answers:
- Fear of the pro-abortion lobby – It will be quite difficult to report on this case without sounding anti-abortion. After all, the main element of it is a man carrying out abortions. There are various aspects to it that would be criticised even by the pro-abortion lobby, of course, but if you don’t want to come across as being anti-abortion, it’s best not to touch this one. In particular, to criticise late-term abortion as being wrong raises the question of how far back you have to go for it to start being right, and if you don’t want to touch that issue you’d be better off not touching this one.
- The press is (in general) pro-abortion itself and knows that this doesn’t help their case – they’re suppressing it deliberately as the shocking facts would make most people seriously consider their views on abortion. It’s very difficult to look at the images of the babies aborted (i.e. killed) after leaving the womb and to maintain the view that as long as they are killed while still inside the womb that is ok.
- A genuine belief that this isn’t really big news – If one already holds the belief that a developing baby isn’t really a person in its own right, and that a woman has the right to choose to terminate it as it’s part of her body, then consistently there isn’t much of a difference as to whether the abortion is carried out while the baby is inside the body or just after it’s been taken out. Therefore, the news story is reduced to simply being about a man who had an unhygienic clinic, which is understandably not as big a story as others would claim it is.
I think it’s likely that more than only one of these is at play (and maybe I missed some other factors?) but I would speculate that the most relevant reason is 3., with a bit of 1. thrown in to make it not worth the risk of reporting the “dirty clinic” story. If that’s true, it really is very sad as it means our culture has largely bought the lie that a developing baby is just a part of the woman’s body and not a person in its own right.
If any good is to come from this it would be a realisation among people about that lie, and a return to a situation in which the rights of the developing baby to survive outweigh the rights of the woman who would prefer not to keep it.
What do you think of the media quietness? Comments appreciated.
Anselm Hart's blog 