“This is what illegal abortion looks like”
by digby
I’m going to let Katha Pollit speak for me on this Kermit Gosnell matter:
Blood-spattered floors. Cat feces. Broken equipment. A 15-year-old giving anesthesia. Two women dead, countless more maimed and injured. Third-trimester fetuses delivered alive whose spines were then severed by the doctor. This was the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia. This is what illegal abortion looks like.
She wrote that in January of 2011, by the way.
This nonsense about there being some pro-abortion media conspiracy to black-out this trial is idiotic, to say the least. It has all he hallmarks of a right wing hissy fit designed to make this macabre psycho the face of Planned Parenthood. But the fact of the matter is that women’s rights advocates like me were horrified and disgusted by this horrible crime and spend huge amounts of energy trying to ensure that it never happens. As Pollit said in her piece:
It might seem odd that Pennsylvania, where antichoice legislators have laden abortion with restrictions, should have been so uninterested in the Women’s Medical Society. But actually it makes perfect sense. As Carol Tracy put it, “The problem here was that Pennsylvania has always focused on eliminating abortion, not on abortion as healthcare.” In fact, as she points out, the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, the primary vehicle for regulating abortion, is part of the criminal code. “Since abortion isn’t seen as medical care, they didn’t have the appropriate locus for oversight.”
What fueled Gosnell’s business were the very restrictions the legislature was so keen on passing—parental notification, waiting periods, biased counseling and, most important, a ban on state funding for abortion for low-income women. Would women have gone to the Women’s Medical Society if Pennsylvania paid for abortion with Medicaid funds? Would they have had late procedures if they could have afforded earlier ones? Maybe some underage girls went to him to avoid the parental notification rules that supposedly protected them. Only women who felt they had no better alternative would have accepted such dangerous, degrading and frightening treatment. In a way, that’s the saddest part—that women didn’t feel they could turn around and leave.
And make no mistake, if the anti-abortion zealots have their way there will be many more clinics just like this one. Abortion will always be with us, it’s up to us whether they will be performed at fetid and brutal criminal enterprises or safe and legal health care clinics.
Sarah Posner has written an excellent piece dissecting the entire story and putting it all in perspective. Highly recommended.
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