Abortion and the MSM

Recently I became aware of the Gosnell prosecution.  What's that you say?  You've never heard of it? Well, join the club.  Once again, the MSM is doing a fine job of editorializing by omission.

These are the facts at issue:

It is hard to decide the most appalling images to emerge Thursday at the murder trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. What happened in his abortion clinic is beyond any morbid Hollywood horror.

Tiny severed feet and hands stored in jars over a sink in the “procedure” room.

Digitalis injected into the stomachs of pregnant women to stop the beating hearts of their unborn babies so that they would be born dead.

Survivor babies whose spinal cords were severed, whose brains were removed with suction, whose tiny bodies were placed in a waste bin for disposal.

Then there is commonwealth exhibit C-147, depicting a large baby balled in the fetal position, bloody, stuffed in a bin. “Big enough to walk me home,” joked Gosnell when he saw the child’s remains, testified Ashly Baldwin, a clinic employee.

Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing seven born-alive babies and causing the death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, an immigrant from Nepal who had sought an abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic. The clinic was busy, doing brisk cash business, catering not only to local women in West Philadelphia, but also women from the affluent surrounding suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery counties. Gosnell’s reputation for no-wait abortions was so well known, women would fly in from other states. (Taken from a local news outlet not affiliated with Fox News).

The funny thing is, until recently, there was precious little about this on the MSM.  Jodi Arias's trial, in which one man was viciously murdered, has been in and out of the news for months.  Until this case was about to go to trial, there was not one wit of it on the national news or even the major cities' newscasts or in their newspapers.

One has to ask, Why?  Unlike the gun control debate, which is thrown in the public's face at every opportunity, these gory details are kept from the public.  When Sandy Hook is discussed, the twenty-six so cavalierly murdered are often referred to in reverential tones as angels.    And truly, they were innocent souls, angels as it were.

But how are these aborted babies any different?  No, they weren't murdered with a semi-automatic weapon.  But they are dying hideously, cruelly, painfully, every bit as much as the souls lost at Sandy Hook.  Yet because there are those who do not accord humanity to the fetuses, this is equivalent to taking out the trash, worth nothing more than a passing dismissive mention that the lunatic fringe that opposes abortion rights is making a mountain out of a molehill.

But the question must be asked:  If a law-abiding minority can have their rights challenged nightly in the MSM for the action of a lone nutjob, why isn't a man -- a doctor at that -- who allegedly wasn't following the law being tried for the murder of eight people even rating a mention in any of the MSM?

The answer may well be found in the rest of the article quoted above:

I asked one of the court staff why so few are interested.

“If you’re pro-choice, do you really want anybody to know about this,” he said, motioning to the filthy medical equipment set up in the courtroom.

It’s a good point. As saturation coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school coverage has caused Americans to reconsider the limits of the Second Amendment, saturation coverage of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic would likely cause the same reconsideration of abortion rights.

The details are that horrifying.

Irrespective of whether there should even be a right to an abortion (admittedly, I'm against the pro-death contingent, with very limited exceptions), what about the MSM's selective editorializing on this issue.  If a pro-lifer had caused the deaths of eight people and were being tried for their deaths, there would be wall-to-wall coverage.  But because of the part in bold in the above quote, the MSM has elected to support the pro-death movement because that's where its agenda lies.  That, necessarily, removes its status as journalist and casts it into the role of editor.  If it's not giving comparable stories the same level of treatment, it is no longer practicing journalism.

Perhaps Gosnell is guilty.  I don't know, and I haven't looked into the case enough to say whether, with certainty, he should be convicted.  My inclination is that he should, but those are my biases. The evidence and an unbiased jury must determine that.

But the MSM should be taken to task for once again letting down the country.  It's positively shameful what the MSM in the name of journalism.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles