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Why is this considered a non-story?

RSF should make a billboard about this.
 
i'm surprised mebane wants more federal money going to how abortion clinics perform their jobs.
 
"Yet, accusations of babies having their heads severed — a major human rights story if there ever was one — doesn't make the cut."

USA Today makes joke in bad taste.
 
DeacHoops said:
if the only things that were ever posted on this board were things where action was required, there would be far less to talk about. most of what we talk about is just current events, not some sort of call to action. why is it such a bad thing that mebane posted something that we can't necessarily do anything about?
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He's the one who brought up doing something about it, not me.
 
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/2013/04/a-wapo-reporter-explains-her-personal-gosnell-blackout/

Read it before you begin formulating your arguments for dismissing it.

Here is one provocative paragraph:

And what policies could possibly be under discussion with this Gosnell trial? Other than, you know, abortion clinic hiring practices? And enforcement of sanitary conditions? And laws on abortion practices that extend to killing live infants by beheading them? And the killing of their mothers? And state or federal oversight of clinics with records of botched abortions? And pain medication practices? And how to handle the racist practices of some clinics? And how big of a problem this is (don’t tell anyone but another clinic nearby to Gosnell was shut down this week over similar sanitation concerns)? And disposal of babies’ bodies? And discussion of whether it’s cool to snip baby’s spines after they’re born? And how often are abortion clinics inspected anyway? What are the results of inspections? When emergency rooms take in victims of botched abortions, do they report that? How did this clinic go 17 years without an inspection? Gosh, I just can’t think of a single health policy angle here. Can you?
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http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/041013-651428-media-ignore-trial-of-kermit-gosnell.htm

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2013/04/11/8-reasons-for-the-media-blackout-on-kermit-gosnell/
 
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If there's a massive conspiracy as suggested among clinics, health inspectors, first responders, doctors, emergency room workers, and mothers, then yeah. That would probably be a story.
 
HeavyPetter said:
He's the one who brought up doing something about it, not me.
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i think sometimes a topic comes along that's just so indescribably awful, that the natural reaction is "we have to DO something!" admittedly, there's nothing that we can really do about this. it's in the hands of the people who CAN, the courts and legal system. but sometimes something is just so terribly that even if it's not necessarily rational, you still just feel like you've got to do SOMETHING.
 
Part of what can be done is to create public pressure upon legislators and law enforcement officials to deal decisively with such atrocities and not to allow them to continue for 17 years. Part of that pressure comes from and should come from news organizations who report the facts for all to see. The Civil Rights movement was a movement of people who pressured the media to report what was actually happening which in turn aroused the people to pressure government officials to act. Thus change occurred, eventually.

I do not agree that ordinary folk cannot make a difference in this kind of evil. But they have to know about it. That is the job of media and media (at least the major media outlets) have largely failed. What is astounding is that people are saying that it is OK that they failed. That reflects ambivalence about evil at best and at worst a measure of acquiescence.
 
mebanedeac said:
Part of what can be done is to create public pressure upon legislators and law enforcement officials to deal decisively with such atrocities and not to allow them to continue for 17 years. Part of that pressure comes from and should come from news organizations who report the facts for all to see. The Civil Rights movement was a movement of people who pressured the media to report what was actually happening which in turn aroused the people to pressure government officials to act. Thus change occurred, eventually.

I do not agree that ordinary folk cannot make a difference in this kind of evil. But they have to know about it. That is the job of media and media (at least the major media outlets) have largely failed. What is astounding is that people are saying that it is OK that they failed. That reflects ambivalence about evil at best and at worst a measure of acquiescence.
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Mebane, do you see these incidences as more evil than abortion that is legal currently in the US?
 
mebanedeac said:
Part of what can be done is to create public pressure upon legislators and law enforcement officials to deal decisively with such atrocities and not to allow them to continue for 17 years. Part of that pressure comes from and should come from news organizations who report the facts for all to see. The Civil Rights movement was a movement of people who pressured the media to report what was actually happening which in turn aroused the people to pressure government officials to act. Thus change occurred, eventually.

I do not agree that ordinary folk cannot make a difference in this kind of evil. But they have to know about it. That is the job of media and media (at least the major media outlets) have largely failed. What is astounding is that people are saying that it is OK that they failed. That reflects ambivalence about evil at best and at worst a measure of acquiescence.
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No one is saying it's OK that law enforcement didn't know about this or stop it sooner.
 
mebanedeac said:
Part of what can be done is to create public pressure upon legislators and law enforcement officials to deal decisively with such atrocities and not to allow them to continue for 17 years. Part of that pressure comes from and should come from news organizations who report the facts for all to see. The Civil Rights movement was a movement of people who pressured the media to report what was actually happening which in turn aroused the people to pressure government officials to act. Thus change occurred, eventually.

I do not agree that ordinary folk cannot make a difference in this kind of evil. But they have to know about it. That is the job of media and media (at least the major media outlets) have largely failed. What is astounding is that people are saying that it is OK that they failed. That reflects ambivalence about evil at best and at worst a measure of acquiescence.
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i agree that the more people should push for legitimate abortion operations and the federal government should use our tax dollars to more stringently regulate legal providers by covering the cost.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
Mebane, do you see these incidences as more evil than abortion that is legal currently in the US?
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I believe that abortion is precisely what Mary Elizabeth Williams said that it is in the following quotation.

All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby” and “this kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?
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(article from Salon.com)

This is the most honest statement by a pro-choice advocate that I have read. Abortion is selective killing. It is wrong. Note how she admits that the trimester arguments are stupid. It was a baby at conception and it was a baby when it was killed. Period.
 
so wait... i'm confused. i thought your argument was that if we better regulated abortion clinics we'd be less likely to see this happen. you seem to think that if we get rid of abortion we'd be less likely to see crappy, sadist abortion doctors run amok? trollololol.
 
HOW WILL WE EVER PROPAGATE THE SPECIES IF THE LIBRULS MAKE US ALL GET GAY MARRIED AND ABORT ALL OUR BABIES!?!?!?!?
 
deacphan said:
so wait... i'm confused. i thought your argument was that if we better regulated abortion clinics we'd be less likely to see this happen. you seem to think that if we get rid of abortion we'd be less likely to see crappy, sadist abortion doctors run amok? trollololol.
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OK, I'll bite.

My point is that killing babies is murder.
 
mebanedeac said:
OK, I'll bite.

My point is that killing babies is murder.
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And that's what he is being charged with...

you need to stick to the "why is this not a big deal" argument, don't make it about the legalities of abortion. Play the "would media be covering it if he killed then with an AR-15" card or something
 
According to Ms Williams abortion is killing babies. What the "Doctor" did is the most egregious form of what happens thousands of times a day in abortion clinics: babies die excruciating deaths.

My point is that the mainline media has largely buried the story because they don't want those dots connected. More basically however as a culture we have embraced killing babies as acceptable. We don't want to be confronted with that reality. Even for most who have posted here, it is not a big deal. It is a political argument or position. This story makes it more about real "human" life and thus it is disturbing. But that's what abortion is about: it is about killing babies.

Ms. Williams has clarified the issue. The question is whether or not it is ever right to do what Dr. Grosnell did?
 
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