Infanticide

 

Infanticide and its Planned Parenthood enablers

 

By Dave Andrusko

Alberto Giubilini

If you, yours truly, or any other pro-lifer says that the Abortion Lobby is extreme on abortion, we can expect our comments to be radically discounted, rather like prices at a fire sale. But what if our benighted opposition is either (a) so dumb, (b) so confident, (c) so caught up in their own self-righteousness, or (d) so unafraid that words tumble out of their mouths that make our description of them seem restrained by comparison?
Marc Thiessen, a columnist for the Washington Post, connected the dots yesterday in a fine piece that can be read at www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-defending-infanticide/2013/04/08/36e44294-a061-11e2-9c03-6952ff305f35_story.html. The headline is “Planned Parenthood’s defense of infanticide” but Thiessen thoughtfully weaves in several of the stories National Right to Life News Today has covered over the past two years.
First, judging by my email, our readers are fully aware what Alisa LaPolt Snow, a  Planned Parenthood lobbyist, told an incredulous Florida House subcommittee. If you actually watch their exchange, it’s as if the legislators are worried they’d be accused of harassing Snow were they to say something like, “Are you off your rocker?,” or words to that effect.
As Thiessen reminds us, Snow was asked, “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?” Her reply? “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.” Cool as a cucumber or, better put, cold as ice.
After an uproar Planned Parenthood cut its losses. It grudgingly conceded they’d “provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.” Of course, does anyone believe this? Do PPFA clinics even have equipment to treat babies—intended for death—who survived the onslaught?
Thiessen ties this to the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell which is premised not on the ACCIDENTAL birth of a child but on what the prosecution says was Gosnell’s routinely pattern: deliberately delivering viable unborn babies alive and then killing them by slitting their spinal cord. In both cases, there has been little publicity outside “conservative” or pro-life circles. (See  “So what would you say to a representative of a major media outlet that has not covered the Kermit Gosnell murder trial?”)
Thiessen then brings to the attention of his readers what few Americans know (primarily those who read NRL News Today): “Across the border in Canada, the government reports that between 2000 and 2009, 491 babies were left to die after they were born alive during abortions.” He then raises a deeply disturbing question: “There are no similar statistics here in the United States, but according to the Abortion Survivors Network there are an estimated 44,000 abortion survivors living in the country today. How many more did not survive for lack of medical care?”
And  then there is “October Baby,” which told the story of an abortion survivor who does not know how she was born, or even that she is adopted. Her search for the woman who aborted her is powerful.  We wrote about it many, many times here. If you have a chance to rent the film on DVD or watch it on Netflix, by all means do. Thiessen helps us understand that a film like “October Baby” allows all those people who will never meet real abortion survivors, such as Melissa Ohden, to have a sense of what this means.
And as appalling as it was, no doubt few people outside our circles remember the outlandish essay by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva that offered an intellectual gloss on infanticide which they re-labeled “after-birth abortion.” Thiessen rightly observes, “This is Orwellian. The term ‘after-birth abortion’ is an oxymoron. You can’t kill an unborn child after it has been born.”
His conclusion combines shock at Planned Parenthood with one of those “at least we ought to be able to agree on this” pleas for the rest of us. Thiessen writes

“The fact that Planned Parenthood aggressively lobbies against legislation requiring medical care for such children is appalling. The fact that a Planned Parenthood official testified that killing such children is permissible is shocking. And the fact that most major media outlets — including The [Washington] Post — all but ignored her comments is distressing.

“Our country is deeply divided over the question of abortion. But can we not all at least agree that killing a born child is murder — not a question that ‘should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician’?”

Source NRLC News