Pro-choice reporter covering Gosnell trial changes mind on abortion
“That's the power of the Gosnell trial,” reporter JD Mullane told former Gov. Mike Huckabee during a recent appearance on the Huckabee Show.
Mullane, a pro-life columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, has been present in the courtroom from the very beginning of the Gosnell trial. His regularly-updated Twitter account has become the go-to place for breaking updates on the case.
“There is one journalist sitting in that courtroom who writes for a local publication who has told me that he is very liberal, very pro-choice,” Mullane told Huckabee, “but after sitting through the testimony in the Gosnell trial, he's reconsidered. He's changed his mind.”
Testimony in the case has featured former employees of Gosnell describing how “hundreds” of babies, many of them past viability, were born alive in the clinic only to have their spinal cords snipped by Gosnell or one of his assistants. Employees described babies moving, breathing, screaming, and even "swimming" in a toilet after being born alive.
“For 40 years abortion in this country has been waged in the court of public opinion. This is a court of law. And the testimony that comes out of there is under oath,” said Mullane. “None of the evidence is doctored. It's for real. It's a capital case. And the testimony of one witness is far heavier than all the pro-choice editorials and op-eds that have ever appeared in, say, the New York Times.”
Pro-life activists have charged the mainstream media with ignoring the Gosnell trial over fears that publicity will hurt the cause of legal abortion. Mullane suggested that their fears are well-founded.
“Gosnell pulls the curtain back from the inherent violence of abortion,” Mullane said. “You can't sit in that courtroom and learn about what abortion does to the unborn child and to the woman in many cases … you can't sit there day after day and week after week and listen to that testimony and not be changed, and not have a change of heart, or at least reconsider your position.”
The seasoned journalist told Huckabee that the Gosnell trial has been the worst story he has covered in his 26-year career.
“This is the worst on many levels,” he said. “Not only because of what was going on in Gosnell's clinic in West Philadelphia, but also because of the indifference of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Department of Health, which did not inspect any of the state's 22 abortion clinics for 17 years.”
Mullane pointed out that in Pennsylvania nail salons are subject to tighter regulations than abortion clinics. He also took pro-abortion former Gov. Tom Ridge to task for suspending all inspections of abortion clinics for political reasons.
“Gov. Ridge has been silent on the Gosnell trial,” Mullane said. “I suggest that if the governor watches this program that he stop into Courtroom 304 to see how his policy turned out.”
“I sincerely hope he does,” interjected Huckabee.
Mullane also described the surprise in the courtroom when Gosnell’s attorney Jack McMahon abruptly rested his case last month without calling any witnesses.
“We were expecting another week, maybe two weeks of defense testimony,” said Mullane.
“When McMahon announced that he rested his case, I saw a couple jurors look at each other puzzled,” added the reporter. “Because, you know, after five weeks of grisly testimony, you want the man who is accused of all this carnage to at least get on the stand and to say, ‘Here's why I didn’t do it. Here's why this is all nonsense.’ But he didn't do that.”
Source: Lifesite News
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