by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Another Philadelphia abortionist testified for the prosecution today in Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial. While pro-choice bloggers are crowing about access to abortion in Philadelphia, today’s witness notes that he is one of 4 abortionists left in the city:
  

  Dr. Charles Benjamin is one of about four abortion providers left in Philadelphia in the wake of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s arrest two years ago. His testimony was received by “an influx of reporters.”

  Benjamin, by his own count, has performed 40,000 abortions over a 30-year career. He doesn’t do them after 21 weeks, or three weeks shy of the 24-week limit in Pennsylvania, he said.

  Gosnell is accused of performing illegal, late-term abortions and running a dangerously outdated clinic staffed by untrained workers. Benjamin said that he has registered nurses on staff to monitor patients, and that only he or a nurse anesthetist give anesthesia, unlike Gosnell’s clinic, where workers hired to clean instruments or handle paperwork have testified that Gosnell trained them to administer potent intravenous drugs….

  An influx of reporters attended the trial Monday, spurred by criticism that some broadcasters were not covering the trial. A gag order prevents lawyers from speaking outside and no cameras are allowed inside the courtroom.

• James Taranto’s best of the web column is focused on Gosnell today:
  

  Some pro-abortion commentators have denied that the horrors of the Women’s Medical Society [pictured left] implicate their ideology. While they have little to say about the babies Gosnell allegedly killed, they certainly don’t approve of the way he treated his pregnant patients, at least two of whom, according to the grand jury, ended up dead, with untold others mutilated or infected. No, these advocates assure us, they want abortion to be “safe and legal.” (The Clintonian “rare” is not heard anymore. In a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed last month, Kate Michelman of NARAL Pro-Choice America came right out and said that she wants abortion to be “common.”)

  But the grand jury – which described its members as covering “a spectrum of personal beliefs about the morality of abortion” – directly blamed “pro-choice” politics for the regulatory failure that allowed the clinic to remain open for decades….

• The Philadelphia Inquirer has a piece on how Gosnell cared for his turtles and fish. While I’ve seen at least one individual claim it’s a puff piece which promotes Gosnell, I see it as highlighting the absurd nature of a man who cared more for turtles and fish than infants who survived abortion:
  

  … [D]ominating the waiting room… were huge glass tanks containing Gosnell’s collection of angel fish and turtles.

  Their importance to the 72-year-old doctor was evident at 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2010 when a task force of state and federal agents raided Gosnell’s clinic as part of a probe of illegal trafficking in prescription narcotics….

  Gosnell was met by the agents as he arrived at his clinic. He… carried a bag containing his dinner in one hand and a large, brown-paper shopping bag in the other.

  Gosnell… asked if he could bring his dinner while he answered questions in his office. Certainly, the detective replied. Could he put his clams in the refrigerator? Gosnell asked.

  The large shopping bag was filled with fresh clams and, again, the detective said yes.

  Gosnell put the bag in the refrigerator but emerged with two clams. Wood said he walked to one of the aquariums, cracked open the clams on the spot and began dropping pieces of clam meat into the water for the hungry turtles….

  That night was the last for Gosnell’s medical clinic although he still had access to the building and continued caring for his wildlife until January 2011 when he and nine employees were charged with performing illegal late-abortions. Gosnell was charged with murdering fetuses born live and has been in custody ever since.

[Photos via philly.com and buytaert.net]

by Jill

CBS News covered the Gosnell case history and trial this morning. It was a good report until the end, when Jan Crawford said:

But looming over this case is the debate over abortion rights. Opponents say it illustrates the brutality of abortion and how it’s taking a human life, while supporters of abortion rights, who have condemned Gosnell, say it highlights the need for clean, safe places for women to have legal abortions.

What does “highlights the need for clean, safe places for women to have legal abortions” mean, in response to news of an abortionist who operated a legal clinic that was unclean and unsafe? This was also a clinic that the National Abortion Federation inspected and rejected but did not report to authorities.

Reporters must question abortion proponents. Does this mean they will begin supporting abortion clinic regulations, rather than fighting them tooth and nail? Does this mean the NAF will start turning in unsafe clinics it finds?

[HT: Bryan Kemper at Stand True]

by Jill
 

CNN’s Anderson Cooper tackled the case of mass murderer abortionist Kermit Gosnell on his April 12 show.

Cooper fairly and with credible disgust gave an overview of Gosnell’s crimes and the unwillingness of Pennsylvania state agencies to shut him down…
 

Cooper followed that segment by interviewing David Altrogge, maker of a documentary revealing Gosnell horrors, 3801 Lancaster, which we have highlighted as a previous pro-life video of the day.

Cooper also interviewed CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who blindly insisted there was no media bias involved in not covering Gosnell.

“They are saying the liberal media is trying to protect abortion rights by not showing this horror show. I don’t buy that at all,” said Toobin. “It’s a business decision. We are not operating with the political agenda here. We pick stories, by and large, for reasons that we think people would be interested. I don’t think we’re covering this up.”

If it was a business decision, then what exactly made CNN et al decide that talking about serial infanticide on the scale of “hundreds,” according to the grand jury report, was not sexy enough? What could possibly be more sensational than that?

We know there are journalists out there infuriated by their employer’s current behavior: The change must start with you.

Your anonymity will be protected.

~ PJ Media, encouraging journalists to anonymously blow the whistle if their editors opted to spike the trial coverage of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, April 12

[HT: Ace of Spades]

I expect more Gosnell political cartoons will roll out this week, but here are the first three. I’m also including two flashbacks from January 30, 2011, when the Gosnell mass murders were first publicized. Vote for your favorite at the bottom of this post.

by Lisa Benson at GoComics.com…

 by Chip Bok at GoComics.com…

 by Tim Hartman via The Blaze…

 by Glenn McCoy at Townhall.com (1-30-11)…

 Giving credit where it’s due, even liberal Signe Wilkinson at GoComics.com was incensed at the time (1-30-11)…

Oh, that marvel of conception as you stirred together semen and ovum - What a miracle of skin and bone, muscle and brain! You gave me life itself, and incredible love. You watched and guarded every breath I took.

~ Job 10:10-12, The Message translation

by Hans Johnson

Here’s a follow-up to the popular Super Bowl commercial, “So God Made a Farmer.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ7AfSO2fKs[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Michael Sevier and LauraLoo]

UPDATE 4/14, 5:15p: Elizabeth at Patheos has written a great related piece, “Is MSM awareness of Gosnell a wave in tide of God’s mercy?” (HT: Kirsten Powers)

4/13, 11:03: There is a fine line between righteous indignation and gloating.

I would identify the charges levied against the media for ignoring the Kermit Gosnell mass murder trial as righteous indignation.

We pro-lifers engage in this a lot. There is daily evidence that MSM ignores or distorts stories on abortion.

But in the case of Gosnell we are seeing something rare, mea culpas, such as at the Washington Post and The Daily Beast. Some of the blinders are lifting, thanks in large part to Kirsten Powers, who has pointed out the Gosnell case is so obviously over the top.

In the days to come there will likely be plenty of room for righteous indignation regarding the media’s treatment of Gosnell, such as this ridiculous piece.

But I am also now trying to be sensitive to those mea culpas as well as those in the liberal press who are doing a bit of soul searching, such as Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic:

Until Thursday, I wasn’t aware of this story. It has generated sparse coverage in the national media…. I still consume a tremendous amount of journalism. Yet had I been asked at a trivia night about the identity of Kermit Gosnell, I would’ve been stumped and helplessly guessed a green Muppet. Then I saw Kirsten Power’s USA Today column. She makes a powerful, persuasive case that the Gosnell trial ought to be getting a lot more attention in the national press than it is getting….

But I agree that the story has been undercovered….

Inducing live births and subsequently severing the heads of the babies is indeed a horrific story that merits significant attention. Strange as it seems to say it, however, that understates the case.

For this isn’t solely a story about babies having their heads severed, though it is that. It is also a story about a place where, according to the grand jury, women were sent to give birth into toilets; where a doctor casually spread gonorrhea and chlamydiae to unsuspecting women through the reuse of cheap, disposable instruments; an office where a 15-year-old administered anesthesia; an office where former workers admit to playing games when giving patients powerful narcotics; an office where white women were attended to by a doctor and black women were pawned off on clueless untrained staffers. Any single one of those things would itself make for a blockbuster news story. Is it even conceivable that an optometrist who attended to his white patients in a clean office while an intern took care of the black patients in a filthy room wouldn’t make national headlines?

But it isn’t even solely a story of a rogue clinic that’s awful in all sorts of sensational ways either. Multiple local and state agencies are implicated in an oversight failure that is epic in proportions! If I were a city editor for any Philadelphia newspaper the grand jury report would suggest a dozen major investigative projects I could undertake if I had the staff to support them. And I probably wouldn’t have the staff. But there is so much fodder for additional reporting.

There is, finally, the fact that abortion, one of the most hotly contested, polarizing debates in the country, is at the center of this case. It arguably informs the abortion debate in any number of ways, and has numerous plausible implications for abortion policy, including the oversight and regulation of clinics, the appropriateness of late-term abortions, the penalties for failing to report abuses, the statute of limitations for killings like those with which Gosnell is charged, whether staff should be legally culpable for the bad behavior of doctors under whom they work…

There’s just no end to it.

To sum up, this story has numerous elements any one of which would normally make it a major story. And setting aside conventions, which are flawed, this ought to be a big story on the merits.

The news value is undeniable.

And those in the press doing a combination of the two, like David Weigel at Slate:

Let’s just state the obvious: National political reporters are, by and large, socially liberal. We are more likely to know a gay couple than to know someone who owns an “assault weapon.” We are, generally, pro-choice. Twice, in D.C., I’ve caused a friend to literally leave a conversation and freeze me out for a day or so because I suggested that the Stupak Amendment and the Hyde Amendment made sense. There is a bubble. Horror stories of abortionists are less likely to permeate that bubble than, say, a story about a right-wing pundit attacking an abortionist who then claims to have gotten death threats….

If you’re pro-choice, say, and you worry that the Gosnell story is being promoted only to weaken your cause, you really should read that grand jury report. “DOH could and should have closed down Gosnell’s clinic years before,” write the investigators. Why wasn’t it? Were state regulators nervous about igniting a political fight about abortion? Is the regulatory system incompetent or under-funded? And are there other states where the same could be said? Social conservatives are largely right about the Gosnell story. Maybe it’s not a raw political story. It’s just the story of a potential mass murderer who operated for decades as government regulators did nothing.

As a pro-life Christian, I am burdened to pray particularly hard for community wisdom right now. How do we continue to hold feet to the fire yet coax along those whose cold hearts are being pierced by this extreme example of where abortion leads? Because, after all…

He has sent me to announce forgiveness to the prisoners of sin and the restoring of sight to the blind, to forgive those who have been shattered by sin, to announce the year of the Lord’s favor.

~ Luke 4:18-19

Your thoughts? I think the operative word here is “gloating” – to pray against that. Because God hates religious pride as much as secular pride.