The Kermit Gosnell case: When politics kills

It's astonishing that the coverage (or lack thereof) of Kermit Gosnell's abortion house of horrors has become a bigger story than the story itself. But such is the world we live in today. Had this happened 20 or so years ago when things were slightly less polarized, I imagine the story would have received a level of attention approaching that which it deserves. As has been already pointed out elsewhere, this story has so many sensational aspects to it that, under other circumstances, would have had editors everywhere working their entire reporting staff around the clock to cover every angle of it. Even after you get past the horrifying mental imagery of "rain[ing] fetuses" and babies surviving abortion only to have their spines "snipped", there's still the story of the politically-driven systemic failure of even the illusion of any kind of oversight of the abortion industry.

Right-of-center bloggers and commentators have opined that there's a left-wing media blackout on the story, and I think that's true, but only up to a point. The coverage on ostensibly right-leaning Fox News has been pretty thin outside of their opinion programming, and even today, just as the story is really gaining momentum and traditional media outlets beginning to acknowledge their dereliction, the latest item is buried "below the fold" on the foxnews.com web site.

Inevitably the story will turn to how this was allowed to happen. The gun-grabbing left likes to point to some imagined culpability of the National Rifle Association whenever there's a horrific mass shooting like Aurora or Newtown. But at some point, the Abortion Unlimited crowd will have to answer for the very real culpability of groups like NARAL for their militant cowing of politicians to the point that they fail to stop a serial murderer like Kermit Gosnell.

Gun owners...the new drunk drivers

It occurs to me that the campaign against American gun owners can be compared to the campaign against drunk driving of the early 1980s. I came to this realization during an e-mail exchange I was having with a group of co-workers on the whole gun control debate, and the more I think about it, the more apt I think the comparison is. I'll just paste below a portion of an e-mail I sent on that thread:


...The larger point is that if the gun control lobby’s goal is, truly, to place “reasonable” limits on private ownership of firearms, they’ll have to do so with a Constitutional amendment. As things stand now, they get to hop in front of the TV cameras whenever something horrifying like Sandy Hook goes down, gnash their teeth and rend their garments…and let the donations pour in. But if they got their way, they’d have two choices: Cease operations and hit the unemployment line or…push for even MORE restrictions.

Take a look at MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers). I’m old enough to remember when they came into being. Before MADD, getting popped for drunk driving generally meant having the cops take your car keys and getting tossed into the drunk tank until you sobered up. It was only if you actually damaged property or injured or killed someone as a result of drunk driving that there were any real consequences. Then MADD was founded by a lady after (IIRC) her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. This lady was tireless in her efforts to make drunk driving a national issue, and she succeeded. Pretty soon, every state had laws on their books limiting blood alcohol content to .10. Victory! This lady could now get on with her life, right? Not so fast there, Skippy. MADD eventually decided that .10 was too high, and pushed for levels of .08 as a standard. Once again, MADD got their way, and now just about every state sets the legal limit at .08. Along the way, the penalties have gotten more and more severe, we have roadblocks set up specifically for the purpose of finding tipsy drivers, and there’s talk about lowering the BAC limit to .04.

It. Never. Ends.

Note: At the time of writing that e-mail I excerpted here I was writing off the top of my head, so some clarification is in order. First, it's Mothers Against Drunk DrivING, not DrivERS as I originally wrote. Second, it was, indeed, the mother's daughter who was killed by a drunk driver. The woman who founded MADD is Candace Lightner, and she left the group after five years because they didn't know when to quit.