The Story You May Not Have Heard (Warning: Graphic Reading)

Guest Blogger: Jason Helopoulos

If I told you that in a small building, in a major metropolitan city, within a state of these United States of America there were over 100 children born into this world and then summarily executed, would you expect there to be a national outcry? Would you expect that there would be candle vigils outside this ghastly and horrific place? Would you expect that our President would call a press conference and ask the nation to be in prayer? Would you expect this to be the subject of discussion over the water cooler at work? Would you expect it to be the main story on the nightly news, the front cover of your daily newspaper, the lead story on NPR, and the subject of call-in talk radio shows? If you would expect this, then your expectations would be unrealized. Our country is in the midst of a national crisis, a crisis of conscience, a crisis of avoidance, and a crisis of morality. And the response is deafening silence.

On March 18th a trial began. The trial of West Philadelphia abortionist “doctor,” Kermit Gosnell, who readily practiced infanticide. As the testimonies from this trial are made public, our stomachs should be turning, our hearts should be grieving, and our heads should be bowed. I am no sensationalist. I find no pleasure in grotesquely reported and detailed accounts. However, this is one trial and the details of which every citizen of this country should know. And we should be led to national grief.

The report of the grand jury that investigated Gosnell’s clinic states, he “catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere–because they were too pregnant. For Gosnell, they were an opportunity. The bigger the baby, the more he charged.” Massof, a “right hand man” of Gosnell’s, testified that 100 or more babies were born alive in this abortion clinic. And he described how the babies, born into this world, were summarily executed. He stated that the abortions were “literally a beheading.” He testified that he would snip the spinal cords of the babies. During his testimony, he asked the jury to feel the back of their necks, so he could direct them to were the spinal cord was severed with surgical scissors to ensure the baby’s “demise.” He testified, “I felt like a fireman in hell, I couldn’t put out all the fires.” No doubt he did. Moton, a female employee, reported that she took a picture of one baby boy, because he was so large and appeared so viable. She measured him at “nearly 30 weeks.” She testified that Gosnell later joked that the “baby was so big he could have walked to the bus stop.” Sherry West, a former employee, testified that on one occasion she was handed a 18- to 24-inch-long newborn in a glass pan by an assistant, who asked for her help. She said, “I saw it, and I thought, ‘What do you expect me to do?’ It didn’t have eyes or a mouth but it was like screeching, making this noise. It was weird. It sounded like a little alien.”

Massof is said to have kept severed feet and other body parts in jars at the clinic. If this reminds you of the infamous doctors of the 20th century, who were put on trial at war’s end, your mind is not fanciful creating false comparisons. And the outrage that our nation demonstrated then, should readily be found now.

All of this on the heels of a video that surfaced last week. In this video a Planned Parenthood representative is testifying before a subcommittee of the Florida legislature. In her exchange with these legislators, she refuses to answer a question regarding whether a physician should treat a baby who has been born alive in a “botched abortion.” The Planned Parenthood representative stated that the decision should be left to the patient and the healthcare provider. One keen legislator responded to her, “Wouldn’t at that point the patient be the child struggling on the table?” Her response, “That’s a very good question. I don’t know how to answer that. I would be glad to have some more conversations with you about that.”

Where are we at when a child born into this world can be executed and the fathers and mothers and leaders of that society are not shaken to their bones with disgust? Where is the outcry? Where is the national dialogue and grieving over infanticide in our enlightened 21st century culture? Where is “Rachel weeping for her children?” “Refusing to be comforted because they are no more.”