Moral Differences

 

Evading the question: what is the moral difference between what Kermit Gosnell did and what takes place in a “late” abortion?

By Dave Andrusko

PPFA President Cecile Richards

NRL News Today paid a great deal of attention last week to Texas’ HB 2, which among other important provisions would provide protection for unborn children who are capable of feeling pain, beginning at 20 weeks fetal age (equivalent to 22 “weeks of pregnancy”), the beginning of the sixth month.

I got behind and am only now returning to an important post written by the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack: “Cecile Richards Can’t Explain Difference Between Gosnell Killings and Elective Late-Term Abortions.” The two topics go hand in hand.

Richards, of course, is the president of PPFA and the daughter of Anne Richards, who was the pro-abortion governor of Texas before losing to pro-life George W. Bush in 1994.
The context for McCormack’s post was a small rally held last Thursday at the U.S. Capitol to lament pro-life legislation, including most specifically bills such as Texas HB 2, which has passed the Texas House and Senate, and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 1797) which passed the United States House of Representatives last month.

Convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell

McCormack, who is fearless, asked Richards what’s “the difference between what [abortionist] Kermit Gosnell did outside the womb to a baby at 23 weeks and a legal late-term abortion [performed] at 23 weeks on that same baby?”
Richards essentially said one was legal, while what Gosnell did (killing babies aborted alive by severing their spinal cords) was not—and besides, “it is very rare for a woman to need to terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks.”

McCormack tried to address that answer in a larger context in the couple of nanoseconds he knew he’d have, ending with THE question which, of course, Richards ignored: “Are there any legal limits you do support on abortion, Ms. Richards?”

McCormack immediately adds that Richards is hardly alone in her unwillingness (or is it inability?) to explain the difference. He asked a similar question of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) in June–what is the “moral difference then between 26 weeks elective abortion [what a Maryland abortionist does] and the killing of that same infant born alive [by Kermit Gosnell]?”
Pelosi cut McCormack off but not before making a number of very revealing comments (“Giving Pelosi a Mulligan–Again”).

Forget that Pelosi fundamentally misrepresented what Act H.R. 1797 would do. What else is new? 
Of more significance is that the instant McCormack asked for an explanation of the moral difference, Pelosi immediately changed the subject, falsely insisting that with H.R. 1797, Republicans “are saying that there’s no abortion. They want to make it a federal law that there be no abortion in our country.”

Why?
First, because Pelosi (and Richards) know perfectly well there is solid support (in the 60%+range) for this protective measure. So, whatever you do, don’t talk about legislation that addresses the agony a pain-capable baby endures when torn apart.

Second, they are making a transparently evasive response–one’s legal, one is not—so as not to reveal their complete and utter fealty to the overriding principle that nothing should ever get in the way of any abortion for any reason (or for no reason at all) at any time in pregnancy.

By answering a question that was not asked (the legal difference), Pelosi, Richards, and an army of abortion apologists studiously avoid the question that WAS asked: not what is the legal difference but what is the moral and ethical difference between what happens to a baby at Gosnell’s House of Horrors and what happens to a baby who is the victim of a late abortion?

Source: NRLC News