Thanks to >>> @jdmullane: WaPo, Wall Street Journal now in courtroom in Philly for #gosnell trial
— ★♥ Harriet Baldwin(@HarrietBaldwin) April 15, 2013
◼ Full Twitchy coverage of Kermit Gosnell
◼ Obama ignores Gosnell horrors with media’s aid: Pesky babies didn’t ‘just come out limp and dead’ - Twitchy
Hey, Obama you know what might save one life? Maybe you even just discussing the Kermit Gosnell situation. Not worth it, though, huh?
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) April 11, 2013
.@theleadcnn @jonfavs If Obama's role as father has inspired his gun control advocacy,why is he then silent on Kermit Gosnell's infanticide?
— Will Antonin (@Will_Antonin) April 9, 2013
@edhenrytv Will you get the WH stance on Kermit Gosnell, since Obama voted against a law in IL senate to stop this type of action?
— Ridge (@jridged) April 11, 2013
Yes, he did. Four times.
President Obama, as a senator in Illinois, voted to allow babies born alive in abortion attempts to be treated like medical waste and tossed aside. He voted to allow them to be left to die. Alone. Gasping for their first and last breaths, before the newly born life was snuffed out forever.
That’s right. He wouldn’t even want a child’s life to be saved were he or she to survive the abortion attempt. He believes that babies who are born alive during an abortion attempt should legally be left to die. In his own words:
As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child — however way you want to describe it — is now outside the mother’s womb and the doctor continues to think that it’s nonviable but there’s, let’s say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.Well, hey, “however you want to describe it.” You know, the “thing” who is not just coming out limp and dead. Monstrous Gosnell would have had too much of a burden, you see, what with those pesky babies not cooperating and insisting on having the human will to live and the strong spirit to survive.
◼ Kermit Gosnell and Roe v. Wade: Something Evil This Way Came - Lori Ziganto/Red State 1/20/11
◼ EXCUSES FOR IGNORING THE GOSNELL TRIAL POUR FROM THE MEDIA - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o
Now that the cast-iron embargo on the Kermit Gosnell abortion horror has rusted away, it’s time for the media to begin offering fanciful excuses for how they somehow failed to cover the trial of a man Terry Moran, anchor of ABC’s Nightline, called “probably the most successful serial killer in the history of the world.” But he didn’t say that on Nightline. He said it on Twitter. Moran’s network had not produced any original reporting on Gosnell at all. The topic of Nightline’s last installment before his Tweet was, “Hot Moms Incorporated: From Gisele to Gwyneth, new celebrity moms are losing the baby weight faster than ever.”
...Remember, we’re not talking about a lack of emphasis – we’re looking at absolute zero coverage from Big Media. And the example of Terry Moran illustrates that some media bigwigs were aware of the story and its importance, even as they refused to cover it....
The most laughable bit of Gosnell embargo spin is the feeble assertion by some left-wing media outfits that conservatives weren’t really talking about the Gosnell trial until the end of last week, either. That’s a knee-slapper for anyone who actually follows conservative media, but Jim Geraghty of National Review brutally slapped down a bizarre Washington Post story that tried to claim Geraghty’s magazine, and the Weekly Standard, didn’t cover the Gosnell trial much more than the Post did. Among other deficiencies, Geraghty noted that the Post performed a very selective Lexis-Nexis search that somehow missed a sizable number of items, they were apparently only searching the print editions of the two conservative magazines, and there are countless other sources to consider beyond those two publications – meant, presumably, to stand in as the conservative equivalent of the big liberal media networks. Beyond the longstanding interest of pro-lifers in this awful story, conservative media coverage of the Gosnell trial really caught fire after the first couple of days had gone by, and it became clear Big Media wasn’t going to cover its shocking revelations at all....
Do not allow apologists for the left-wing media to manufacture a narrative about this story escaping their notice. They knew all about it, and they keenly understood its significance. That’s why they didn’t report on it.
◼ "But, why wasn’t more written sooner?" - Althouse
...Come on. Add the obvious: The media perceive the Gosnell story as a threat to abortion rights.
By the way, why are we calling what he did "abortion"? Just as a matter of clarity in the language. The grand jury report says that his method of ridding women of their unwanted late-term pregnancies was to induce labor and deliver the child. That's not abortion. That's childbirth. We're not even in the gray area where a strange term like "partial-birth abortion" could be used. It was complete birth, followed by murder. Why don't abortion rights proponents come down hard on that distinction? He wasn't an abortionist (in most of these instances), but an obstetrician-murderer. If abortion rights proponents don't want to talk about that, I'd like to hear exactly why they have a problem.
◼ Abortionist's case raises troubling questions - Timothy P. Carney/Washington Examiner @TPCarney
...In his first U.S. Senate race, Obama used Carhart's procedure as a fundraising pitch. In a 2004 campaign mailing, Michelle Obama tried to rally the donor base by explaining how Republicans were trying to ban partial-birth abortion, "a legitimate medical procedure," as Michelle put it.
The most substantive difference between the partial-birth abortions on which Obama fundraised and Gosnell's abortions is this: Dr. Gosnell did the snipping outside of the mother's birth canal, while Dr. Carhart reaches his scissors inside the woman's vagina to snip the baby's spine.
This fact points us to the most likely reason the mainstream media ignored the story as long as possible: The Gosnell story has an inherent pro-life bias, because the Gosnell story leads us to discussing abortion procedures.
When you discuss the act of aborting -- even perfectly legal abortions -- you have to discuss the blood, the scalpels, the scissors. You might use terms like "dilation and extraction" or "dilation and curettage." Think through those terms ("curettage" is defined as "a surgical scraping or cleaning") and recall that what is being extracted or scraped has a beating heart.
Discussing Gosnell threatens to start a discussion on abortion procedures -- and that's not good for anyone in the abortion industry.
◼ White House: No Comment on Obama Opposing Anti-Infanticide Bill - Life News
The White House has no comment today on the Kermit Gosnell murder trial, but Obama spokesman Jay Carney also had no comment on the president’s record of failing to support a bill in the Illinois legislature that would prevent infanticides.
◼ New York Times Maintains Blackout on Philadelphia Abortionist Gosnell's Trial on Infanticide - Newsbusters
◼ White House: No comment on Gosnell, Obama’s vote against Born Alive Act - Joel Gehrke/Washington Examiner @joelmentum
“I would say that the president’s position on choice is very clear,” Carney said, echoing Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal, and rare” mantra.
In 2002, Obama voted against a Born Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois, saying the law would undermine Roe vs Wade by banning abortions of a “a previable fetus,” as the Washington Post noted (the WaPo fact-checker pulled together some relevant comments made by Obama on the topic). The bill said that “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.”
In 2008, Obama said that he would have supported a federal bill protect infants born alive as a result of botched abortions.
“I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported — which was to say — that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born — even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion,” he said.
The Washington Post points out that the federal law “happened to be an almost exact replica” of the state bill that he voted against.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center, in its fact-check, agreed. “Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported,” APPC found. “Both contained identical clauses saying that nothing in the bills could be construed to affect legal rights of an unborn fetus, according to an undisputed summary written immediately after the committee’s 2003 mark-up session.”
