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.