The Philadelphia abortionist, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, was found guilty Monday of murdering three babies born alive in an abortion clinic. (Gosnell severed the necks of the newborn babies.) He was acquitted in the fourth baby’s death, and found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of an adult patient.
Planned Parenthood applauded the verdict. “The jury has punished Kermit Gosnell for his appalling crimes.”
The abortion rights organization should have stopped there. But it didn’t.
“This verdict will ensure that no woman is victimized by Kermit Gosnell ever again,” said Planned Parenthood spokesman Eric Ferrero. “This case has made clear that we must have and enforce laws that protect access to safe and legal abortion, and we must reject misguided laws that would limit women’s options and force them to seek treatment from criminals like Kermit Gosnell.”
So what’s missing from this Planned Parenthood statement? That’s right: any reference to the murdered infants. Because in the disturbing and distorted world of Planned Parenthood, murdered infants cannot be mentioned, even in the case of an abortion doctor who is convicted of murdering three of them.
One can see how the Gosnell trial has complicated life for those in the abortion industry. They know that Gosnell’s actions are morally repellant–yet Planned Parenthood cannot utter a single word of sympathy for the murdered infants. So the solution is to applaud the verdict but ignore the lethal actions that led to the verdict.
Planned Parenthood’s commitment to abort any child, for any reason, at any point in pregnancy (or post-delivery) is simply unshakeable. The organization seems to view abortion like a secular sacrament, as a demonstration of emancipation. There is something quite twisted in all this. And it tells you a great deal about Barack Obama that he is so impressed with the lethal work of Planned Parenthood that he is the first sitting president to address the group. And why not? As a state senator in Illinois Mr. Obama opposed legislation that would grant legal protection to a newborn child that had been marked for abortion but survived.
Of course, a story like this shouldn’t obscure the fact that liberalism is the philosophy that defends the weak, the vulnerable, and the defenseless. Except for when it comes to snipping the necks of newborn children.
Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.