In likely the only time she'll ever publicly utter the name of convicted baby killer Kermit Gosnell, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow ended her self-imposed blackout of the abortionist's trial and told her viewers he'd been found guilty of murder.
Media coverage of Gosnell's two-month trial was "polarizing," Maddow sniffed, perturbed that so many lesser evolved beings remain unconvinced about the necessity or niceties of abortion on demand. (Video after page break)
Maddow dispatched the Gosnell unpleasantries early in her show Monday and briskly at that, as if waving off a foul stench --
In Philadelphia today a jury found Dr. Kermit Gosnell guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, all the charges, of course, related to his squalid and illegal medical practice in West Philly. The revulsion at what went on in that quack clinic is, of course, universal, but the media coverage of his trial was polarizing.
Media coverage which most assuredly never extended, not until Monday, to the rarefied precinct at 30 Rock from which Maddow shares her pontifications. This despite the fact that abortion sits high atop her extended list of favorite subjects, up there alongside infrastructure, gay rights in Uganda, and that eagerly-awaited Friday night cocktail.
Maddow also assured her audience that "revulsion" over the monstrous acts committed in "that quack clinic is, of course, universal." It was the second time in as many sentences that Maddow inserted "of course" in her narrative, as if her viewers were well versed on the subject, though none had heard about any of this from her until that moment. Tossing in "of course" -- and twice at that -- was a bit much, even for Maddow.
She went on --
Anti-abortion activists tried to make Kermit Gosnell symbolize the legal practice of abortion more broadly, while the abortion rights world has described him as the kind of back-alley butcher that they are trying to keep women safe from by protecting the right to access safe and legal abortion services.
And among the many ways the "abortion rights world" maintains "safe" and legal abortion is by preventing abortion clinics from being inspected for health violations. Fox News points this out in its story on Gosnell's conviction --
Pennsylvania authorities had failed to conduct routine inspections of all of its abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell's facility was raided and shut down. In the scandal's aftermath, two top state health department officials were fired, and Pennsylvania imposed tougher rules for clinics.
Four former clinic employees have pleaded guilty to murder and four more to other charges. They include Gosnell's wife, Pearl, a cosmetologist who helped perform abortions.
Gosnell's human abattoir is the logical endpoint of our morally fraudulent approach to abortion, the proponents of which maintain they wish the procedure to remain "safe, legal, and rare," in Bill Clinton's cynically triangulating formulation, while at the same time resisting any and all restrictions upon the procedure. Gosnell's murders are not an aberrant abuse of the abortion license but an inevitable result of it.
Gosnell had thousands of enablers: every judge and justice who has declared every abortion sacrosanct, every politician who has blocked meaningful regulation and oversight of the practice, and every intellectual who has furthered the notion that what resides in a woman's womb is nothing more than a meaningless clump of cells. Barack Obama, who as a state senator worked against establishing protections for infants marked for abortion but outside the womb, must assume his share of guilt in this matter. So must those who voted for him because of his abortion absolutism rather than in spite of it.
Maddow looks at Gosnell and dismisses his practice as "squalid"; abortion foes condemn the procedure as inherently squalid. Maddow sees none of that; instead, what appears to her is its opposite. A high priestess of liberalism, she reveres legal abortion as nothing less than a sacrament.
