Taranto: Back-Alley Abortion Never Ended

"...the claim that Roe v. Wade made America safe from back-alley abortion stands exposed as a cruel hoax, and a deadly one for women and children alike,"  writes James Taranto, drawing this little known bloody history about abortionist Kermit Gosnell from the pages of the Philadelphia murder indictment report:

It was called the Mother's Day Massacre—the brainchild of Harvey Karman, an eccentric California man without medical training who had served 2½ years in prison for performing illegal abortions in the 1950s. Karman teamed with a young Philadelphia doctor who offered to perform abortions on 15 impoverished women, each between four and six months pregnant, who were bused to the Philadelphia clinic from Chicago on Mother's Day 1972.

Abortionist Gosnell Means Libs Lose their 'War Against Women'

Remember the 'war against women' ... and the 'women's health' mantra? Both were blown to bits, argues Noemie Emery, by the Grand Jury's report on abortionist Kermit Gosnell: "one patient 'was left lying in place after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon,' another 'was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus' ... a third 'went into convulsions ... fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor.'

All this was covered up or ignored by pro-choice supporters, by the state, and by a representative of the National Abortion Federation who inspected the clinic, was disgusted.

Other clinics knew Gosnell's reputation and referred clients to him, the health of women being less important than the unfettered right to abort past delivery. Any "choice" advocate who uses the word "health" in this context after these horrors deserves to be stoned off the stage.

Slapping the 'Bitter Clinger' Label on Liberals

"Mr. Obama's remark about rural Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion is the coin of the realm in his crowd," writes Daniel Henninger in the WSJ.

But let's put their shared consensus another way: Somehow it became a conventional view in contemporary American politics that it is non-urban conservatives who in every case have to accommodate their beliefs to a national culture created by people who live somewhere else. "They" must adjust on abortion, guns, school prayer, sexual mores and all the rest of it. Liberals, meanwhile, not only feel no need to concede anything but use the commanding heights of the press and academia to define anyone who dissents from their ever-evolving national culture as a political fringe obsessed with people, one might say, who aren't like them.

Truth About Abortion Makes Media Sick, Silent

"Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations? It's not your fault," writes liberal commentator Kirsten Powers in USA Today. "Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell's former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart."

Powers lambastes the mainstream press for ignoring the Gosnell murder trial.

NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that, Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, "described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body." One former worker, Adrienne Moton, testified that Gosnell taught her his "snipping" technique to use on infants born alive.

Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified "It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place." Here is the headline the Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100 babies born and then snipped: "Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion clinic."

"Chaos" isn't really the story here. Butchering babies that were already born and were older than the state's 24-week limit for abortions is the story. There is a reason the late Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called this procedure infanticide.

She doesn't let the abortion industry off the hook, either.

Planned Parenthood recently claimed that the possibility of infants surviving late-term abortions was "highly unusual." The Gosnell case suggests otherwise.

Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.

The truth is that the Gosnell trial makes everyone sick. (The full Grand Jury report is here, but don't read it on a full stomach.) In the end the only differences in the barbarianism of the Boston Marathon terrorist and Kermit Gosnell are the ages of their slaughtered victims and the duration of their atrocities (Gosnell has been doing his evil deeds for 40 years).

Concludes Powers: "The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace."