Stop the Killing. Stop the Crying.

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Trang Bang, South Vietnam, June 8, 1972 (Photo: Nick Ut, Associated Press)

Did I ever mention that I can’t stand to hear children cry? It’s rather odd, considering I’m a father of six, that I can’t stand the sound of a crying child. When my kids were babies, I’d take them for long walks, rocking them in my arms until they fell asleep, rather than hear them cry.

As they got older — and this was especially true with the twin boys, who would beat each other up for fun — my trick for dealing with this problem was to strike a pose of callous indifference to their pain: “Is it bleeding? Are there any broken bones? No? Then shut up or go to your room.”

The thought of my children actually being injured horrifies me, and seeing them suffer the inevitable dings and bruises of childhood — the stumble on the playground, the cut or scrape — was so traumatic that I can’t actually recall any specific incident. Evidently, I’ve blocked these psychic wounds from memory. And the fact that one of my sons is now a 20-year-old Army private in training to become a front-line warrior involves risks I prefer not to think about.

Ever.

All this is as a preamble to quoting Megan McArdle’s reflection on her admitted role in the media’s Gosnell blackout:

[T]he MSM has barely covered a story that could plausibly be named “The Trial of the Century”. And that demands explanation. So I’ll tell you why I haven’t covered it.
To start, it makes me ill. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the grand jury inquiry. I am someone who cringes when I hear a description of a sprained ankle.
But I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective—of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories—if the sick-making was done by “our side.”
Of course, I’m not saying that I identify with criminal abortionists who kill infants and grievously wound their patients. But I am pro-choice.
What Gosnell did was not some inevitable result of legal abortion.

Except that it is, just as legal abortion is the inevitable result of the Contraceptive Culture, which was sanctioned by the “penumbras, formed by emanations” that Justice Douglas miraculously discovered in 1965, and if you are “someone who cringes when [you] hear a description of a sprained ankle,” you really ought to think about why these results are inevitable, including The Law of Large Numbers.

Having spent many years thinking this through, and unwilling to deliver a sermon on the topic, I am content to let others think through it for themselves, if only I could get them to pay attention to what is actually happening — “What ‘Choice’ Really Means” — and trace these horrors back to their philosophical and historical origins.

It’s like the Soviet Union: Socialists had dreamed for decades about the utopia that would be ushered in by the overthrow of industrial capitalism and, when the Bolsheviks seized power, many of these idealists insisted that the brutality and misery that resulted were incidental or accidental or, at any rate, not inherent to the Marxist-Leninist project itself. It took many decades and many millions of lives lost before some in the intelligentsia of the West recognized the hopeless folly of the revolutionary ideal. Strange to say, there are still historians determined to re-write the past in an effort to redeem the totalitarian nightmare.

So also with “choice”: Long before the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, there were those who dreamed of a sexual utopia where the risk of pregnancy could be removed as a disincentive to commitment-free promiscuity.

This dream was then conveniently dressed up in the rhetoric of “rights,” so that anyone who criticized promiscuity could be depicted as an opponent of freedom, and even the most ancient of legal and social traditions that stood in the way of the revolution could be trampled down as hindrances to Progress. Sophists who deliberately misinterpreted the American Founding were eager to assist in this effort, so that All Men Are Created Equal and the More Perfect Union could be made to seem as if they mandated the judicial imposition of a new social order the Founders most certainly never envisioned.

Utopian dreams have an ironic way of becoming nightmares, don’t they?

Now we look back over the course of four decades that have seen the sanctioned slaughter of tens of millions of humans, and with the knowledge gained from direct experience — like the refugees who fled the Marxist nightmares of the past — are we not yet capable of saying that the Sexual Revolution was an error based on a false ideology?

Isn’t the trial of Kermit Gosnell a moment like when Kruschev confessed and condemned the crimes of Stalin, which many in the West had denied or minimized? Isn’t the blood-chilling testimony of what went on in Gosnell’s clinic like the scenes of desperate “boat people” fleeing Vietnam after 1975, or the horrors of Cambodia’s “killing fields”?

Megan McArdle is shocked by these tales from Philadelphia. Might she now notice the death of Jennifer Morbelli?

Yet I said I would not preach a sermon, and I’ve written more than 800 words, but again I ask: What does “choice” really mean?

“. . . it was like screeching, making this noise . . .”

Any loving father would rock that crying baby in his arms, because he could not stand to hear his children cry.

And just think what that loving Father might say to anyone who excused as “choice” this ghastly slaughter of His children.

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life . . .”
— Deuteronomy 30:19 (KJV)

 

 


57 comments

  1. Pro-Abortion types (call them what they are, not by the euphemisms they want us to use) don’t want to be reminded of where their philosophies lead, just as Calvinists don’t want to be shown the implications of their theology for the nature of God. It’s simple human nature to avoid the implications of what we want or say.

    One thing we should never do is knuckle under to them on changing the language. The pro-life person is the most pro-choice person alive. The Pro-Aborts, however, don’t want choice. They simply want the convenience of living life for themselves.

    I can’t remember who said that sin is simple selfishness. But, when it comes to the Pro-aborts, they are nothing if not supremely selfish, willing that a defenseless child would lose its life for the convenience of an irresponsible mother. Come to think of it, libtards are nothing if not selfish.

  2. McArdle’s excuse is lame in the extreme.

    As if the only way to talk about the issue is a graphic exposition of simple facts.

    Funny how so many people are able to talk about Sand Hook without resorting to graphic descriptions of terminal wound ballistics.

    That’s a mighty big elephant in her writing room.

  3. Well written. Very well written. I had just completed my post on my blog about this. As a former police detective the crimes Gosnell had committed IN THE OPEN stuns me and reminds me just how much we’ll “look the other way” in order to maintain political correctness. I wonder how many inspectors who did not do their job are now assuming accountability privately, or are they still hanging on their “I was just following orders” excuse.

    Also remember, Gosnell was running a pill for pain scam (trust me, very popular with a lot of doctors today) and had been for a while, again protected by politics, color and the democrats.

    Here is my post:

    http://truthandcommonsense.com/2013/04/12/is-the-gosnell-trial-pro-choice-supporters-newtown-media-blacks-out-the-death-of-hundreds/

    …

    Why? Simple. Newton fits their agenda. Gosnell flies in the face of
    their agenda. Given the choice on whether to act with ethics or
    morality or with a desire to tell the truth or hide the inconvenient
    facts they don’t want to share with the country, the MSM chose to be
    unethical cowards. They don’t want to talk about abortion or race or
    the abuses. They don’t want to talk about how Pennsylvania stopped
    enforcing basic health
    regulations in abortion clinics due to liberal political pressure. How
    many people have been injured or killed because of this PC madness?

    They love death by guns because it supports the “nobody should own a gun!” argument.

    They don’t want to talk about deaths by a sloppy criminal doctor and
    the grimy murder mill that was killing viable babies and their mothers.
    Here is a list of the “third rails” this case hits.

    1. Abortion

    2. Race

    3. City corruption

    4. Political correctness

    5. murder of babies

    6. mistreatment of mothers of lower income in abortion clinic

    You can see why “they” don’t want to talk about it. And to have Detroit papers claim it to be a “local story” in Philly as justification not to cover it just reinforces what we all suspect.

    There is no honor or truth on the other side. It is and will always be “The ends justify the means.”

    I conclude:

    …Read the links. This is as close to a horror show you’ll ever get.
    Here’s a question. Do you think a John Wayne Gacy would make national news? Or a Ted Bundy? Or how about that guy in Milwaukee that ate other men. Or how about Jodi Arias or Casey Anthony? Those “local” cases
    were front page news every day. Cable shows were dedicated to them.

    Here- the sound of crickets. Here’s a thought, don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining.

    Just saying…

  5. Yeah, like a legal abortion is so much more humane and clean. Like a legal abortion doesn’t cause pain and suffering to both the child and the mother. Like legal abortions haven’t caused women to die or to be infertile.

    Are those the legal abortions you were talking about Megan?

    Once you define the circumstance which allow one person to decide to kill another person by redefining who and what person hood is, you’re down the road to many ugly and hideous acts.

    Once a baby was redefined as only existing outside the mother’s womb, a whole new concept was born (so to speak).

    In Europe they have started to redefine the other point of life that of the end of life and they are beginning to find out that it’s not so easy to yell stop once the trains are rolling to the camp and the showers are being readied.

    Britain now ROUTINELY kills patients without anyone’s consent because of the medical opinion of a Doctor who may or may not have a financial interest in ruling one way or another. What’s next? Clinics popping up on the street corner providing a faster and more painless way of dying than putting your life in the hands of an penurious Medical system?

    But then Megan won’t be thinking about any of that because it’s, you know, icky and stuff and makes her cringe.

    And you have the nerve to call yourself a journalist, Megan? Are you a Mother? Do you have children in your family? Do you run when they cry?

    (I’m with you on the crying, Stacy, I think it’s wired in so that we try to do something even when we don’t what to do or want to for the children. Preservation and all that stuff.)

  7. Wow, very powerful and well written. It’s fascinating to watch the left do back flips trying to justify their silence on the Gosnell story. You’d think that those who claim to want abortion to be “safe and legal” would be out in front in the condemnation of Gosnell. Their silence has been deafening and proves that the “pro-choice” crowd doesn’t care about women. They only care about furthering the death culture, which is a very profitable one.

  8. “One thing we should never do is knuckle under to them on changing the language.” People like McArdle and other conservatives that believe in pro-abortion have either caved to the pressure from the liberal culture or have rejected God and are morally adrift.

  9. Leftists want so much to believe their ideology that they must eliminate science and fact from being to closely observed. The politically correct non-reporting of Gosnell exposes the corruption and black hearted bias required to be a successful journalist on the left. Does anyone over there have a conscience or a soul? Are they all veritaphobes?

  10. The Nazis, Soviets, ChiComs, Norks, Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese murdered at least a hundred million HUMANS in the last century pursuing some perverted goals.

    The USA has allowed more than 40 million HUMANS to be murdered in barely 40 years while pursing some other perverted goal.

    I have been to Dachau and I have stood in front of abortion clinics. They may look different on the outside but they are places of serial, mass murder.

    Look at our culture and society and tell me that God is not in the process of judging us through the obvious moral decay and perversion of our own society and culture.

  11. Excellent post. Choice for abortion is just the first step for “choice” for dealing with the old and decrepit parents. Once that bridge is crossed, we can move to a “choice” for eliminating those who make pesky posts or comments that do not reflect well upon the greater good. It is well-paved path to tyranny and death.

  13. Posted at Megan’s column on TDB:

    Megan, you have to, if you are to practice any honesty about your own convictions, realize that your pro-choice beliefs led directly to Kermit Gosnell, and to the many, many more like him across the country.

    The fact that you believe in aborting babies for the supposed good of a woman does not mean that caring,compassionate, competent human beings with consciences would suddenly start aborting babies, even if they are threatened with the loss of income and jobs if they don’t. It simply means that all the sociopathic butchers who once labored in the shadows
    have now come out into the light of day, largely free of the fear of prosecution and punishment for their greed and butchery. Look at how completely the state regulatory agencies responsible fail to oversee these people, simply out of political fear of their advocates.

    Whatever happened to the promise of “safe, legal, and rare.” I suppose for a progressive agenda item, one out of three ain’t bad.

    If the gun owners of America are expected to take the blame and shame every time a lunatic snaps and commits a tragic act with a handgun, why then should you not be expected to acknowledge your own blame and shame for Kermit Gosnell and his collection of foetal feet in jars, and the bloody butcher shops he and so many more run for profit?

  18. The majority of women and girls who undergo abortions are not doing so because they want to but because they have been FORCED to do so. Coercion is not “choice”. You’re right, we really need to stop letting the left butcher the language because we see what, I mean WHO, else ends up getting butchered as a result.

  20. The depth of the cultural infection was made clear to me a year or so ago, when I discovered that many of the women in the local parish Women’s Club were pro-abortion and Obama supporters. These same ladies march every year in the March for Life, organize building the float, etc. When one woman raised the subject, she was treated as a troublemaker.

    The reason Gosnell is subject to a media blackout is that the cultural indoctrination of “choice” requires maintaining the illusion that abortion is some minor procedure like having a tooth filled (not even an extraction). If people start thinking about babies, butchery, gore, infections, unsanitary conditions, it is difficult to maintain the illusion. So Gosnell could not be accorded the media attention of trials involving far less grisly murders and less prolific serial killers.

  21. Khrushchev doesn’t really fit the pattern, though. His “secret” speech, “The Crimes of the Stalin Era,” was not so much intended to bring the facts to light (everyone in the room pretty much knew, which is why they had all been afraid to talk even to each other under Stalin) as to consolidate power for Nikita Sergeevich.

    The reign of terror under Stalin is a more apt point of comparison to the reign of media censorship today: we are only allowed to know what the elite wants us to know, whether or not it is true is not a criterion.

  23. Irresponsible mother? Again only the women’s fault?
    Does it register in your narrow mind that she might think it is irresponsible to bring a child into this world she can’t afford? And most likely the mental anguish she is going through? While the male walks away, not concerned at all?
    I bet you don’t mind when our military drop bombs on countries and lots of children and pregnant women get killed. Our drones who kill innocent children all the time? Do you care about all the starving children in the world?

  25. Well-written Stacy! This whole mess makes me so sick but at the same time, the truth needs to be told; thank you for your coverage.
    We miss you having you in our home and talk about you often. We were just telling someone today about your keyboard! When I read your words above, I remembered the night you ran up the stairs to comfort Katharine when she was crying and having trouble going to sleep; I’m sure you are a great father to your children and we hope to meet your whole family someday soon! Keep up the good work; we appreciate you!

  26. So because a bunch of Islamist savages commit the actual war crime of perfidy by deliberately hiding among the civilian population, we should feel responsible? Bullshit.

  27. The only botched abortion is when both mother and baby survive.

    Not one for bumper stickers, but I just might put that one on my car.

  31. Good call. Not wanting to be bothered with a child? The only responsible option is to murder it.

  38. Like it or not, women are the ones that control sex. Virtuous women do not have sex outside marriage. Period. A woman that lacks virtue will act irresponsibly. It really doesn’t matter how you feel about that, it’s just the facts.

    The world view that morons like yourself have pushed has led to men acting in the way they act. Your world view has pushed irresponsible sex, and the men that have no care about the consequences are more than happy to allow you feminists to push your idiotic agenda. As a result, too many girls and young women have bought teh swill you push and are reaping a harvest of shame and misery.

    If you don’t like the facts, tehn I suggest you deal with reality instead of the stupidity of the left’s war on woman. I might add, the left is waging the actual war on women. We conservatives are waging war on feminism, which is a war against a highly destructive philosophy that has brought nothing more than loneliness and misery to women in this and many other countries.

  40. Some people have a hard time distinguishing between pro-war on terror libertarians and actual conservatives.

  41. Abortion is not really legal. The Supreme Court simply decides what they will and will not hear in the courts. Judicial Fiat really doesn’t carry any weight constitutionally.

  42. What McArdle doesn’t seem to realize (or want to think about) is that even ‘safe, legal’ abortions are pretty grisly if you described then accurately. How is vacuuming out the baby that much better than what Gosnell did?

  43. You hate abortion, you hate to hear kids cry, but it’s ok to nuke the North Korean children.

    I’ll never understand the hypocrisy of bloodlust

  45. It’s amazing how projection of your thoughts into someone else’s mind is used in an attempt to absolve yourself. Someone expresses horror at an horrific thing, and you decide, ipso fatso, that they are secretly thrilled when kids die.

    See, I’m thinking that it’s more irresponsible to choose your own shot at a comfortable life without feeding hungry kids, than it is to do what parents did before the days of abortion.

  46. It’s the coming solution to world hunger, evidently. From born alive abortions, to the economical efficiency of nerve gas is a step of only one political generation.

    But hey, folks, Obama and Biden laugh at such things, calling them “paranoia.” Why you must be crazy to think that history ever happened. Or worse, could possibly happen again.

    Bill Ayers and company were only joking about wiping out millions.

    Sire.

  47. Not only do Utopian dreams have an ironic way of becoming nightmares, but recall all the hateful things that those who advanced those dreams said about those who told them what a nightmare it was going to be.

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