Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Rienzi on Gosnell . . . and the troubling rise in infanticide
"Gosnell's Crimes Not Uncommon" is the title of Prof. Mark Rienzi's piece in USA Today. Here's a bit:
. . . While murder rates for almost every group in society have plummeted in recent decades, there's one group where murder rates have doubled, according to CDC and National Center for Health Statistics data — babies less than a year old. . . .
. . . Gosnell's actions are readily explainable by a culture that embraces, and in some quarters celebrates, abortion as a constitutional right. Gosnell made his living by performing legal abortions, many of them late in the pregnancy. Is it really all that surprising that he might not have seen a significant moral difference in performing the abortion a few inches inside the birth canal rather than somewhere outside?
The law can be a potent moral teacher, which is a good thing. Laws against slavery and discrimination have helped reduce prejudice. Laws requiring accommodations for people with disabilities have helped them gain visibility and greater acceptance in society. . . .
It would be naive to think that our abortion laws do not carry a similar teaching power. . . .
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2013/05/rienzi-on-gosnell-and-the-troubling-rise-in-infanticide.html
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Rienzi says: "Gosnell made his living by performing legal abortions, many of them late in the pregnancy. "
No, Gosnell performed a great many ILLEGAL abortions. If you read the grand jury report, it tells us that when Gosnell determined the gestational age of the baby, if it was over the legal limit, he would record it as 24.5 weeks and perform the abortion anyway. Over a three-year period, Gosnell's files showed 80 cases of the recorded age of the fetus as 24.5 weeks. If we did not know from his staff (and from ultrasound images) that he falsified these figures, we would still wonder what the odds were that 80 women came to Gosnell just in the nick to have a legal abortion. The grand jury report also notes that it could also be a couple of weeks between the time the gestational age was estimated and the time of the abortion, because the women often took time to come up with the money.
The three abortions after which Gosnell is convicted of killing the born-alive infants were all ILLEGAL abortions. They were done when the pregnancies were past the legal limit. If Gosnell had managed to kill the fetuses while they were still in the womb, he would still have been breaking the law. True, he wouldn't have been guilty of first-degree murder, but abortion has never been prosecuted as murder.
The CDC information on murder rates for babies covers 1989-1998. The total number of infant homicides during that ten-year period was 3,312. The numbers seem to me small and uncertain. But here's an interesting fact: "Among homicides on the first day of life, 95% of the victims are not born in a hospital." Here's another fact, which Rienzi alludes to: "Mothers who kill their infants are more likely to be adolescents and have a history of mental illness."
So are we to believe that Roe v Wade and legalized abortion between 1973 and 1989 led to an increase in the number of adolescents with a history of mental illness who gave birth to their babies outside of a hospital and killed them? How credible is it that the legalization of abortion in 1973 causes more troubled adolescent girls who give birth at home to say to themselves, "Well, I could have had an abortion, so what could be wrong in killing my baby?" We're also told by Child Trends Databank, "The infant homicide rate increased from 4.3 per 100,000 in 1970 to 9.2 per 100,000 in 2000, before declining to 7.9 per 100,000 in 2010." What explains the decline after 2000? (And since the rate is declining, what explains the title, "Rienzi on Gosnell . . . and the troubling rise in infanticide."
Has nothing else changed since 1970 besides abortion (and contraception)? It seems to me that if the figures about the increase in infanticide can be believed, one huge factor may be the dramatic increase in the out-of-wedlock birth rate.
Rienzi says: "This is presumably why Planned Parenthood opposes legislation protecting children born during failed abortions, out of fear that if those babies are protected, the similar babies we allow to be killed inside the womb might have to be protected, too."
This is scarcely even worth discussing, particularly in light of the update to the story Rienzi links to, which is currently titled: "Planned Parenthood Still Opposes Florida Bill to Protect Infants Who Survive Attempted Abortions (Update: Planned Parenthood Withdraws Opposition to Bill)." I have asked this question, and never received an answer to it: In what state or states is it legal to kill a born alive infant, whether from abortion or any other cause? My understanding was the Planned Parenthood did not oppose the entire bill in Florida. They opposed the provisions that terminated the parental rights of a mother whose aborted baby was born alive, and they opposed as impractical the requirement that any born-alive infant had to be taken to an emergency room. If you listen to the infamous testimony of Alisa LaPolt Snow (a hired lobbyist, not a Planned Parenthood official), at one point she says, "We would like to support this bill." Clearly Planned Parenthood opposed only provisions of the bill, not the bill in its entirety.