Pro-lifers asking: Why isn't the Gosnell trial bigger news in the traditional media?

Great Debates
41

[quote=“Hershele_Ostropoler, post:37, topic:655557”]

Gosnell’s patients were interviewed and actually said they didn’t want to go to Planned Parenthood because protesters, and Gosnell’s clinic had none. People saying that’s what happened aren’t just speculating. Uniquely? Maybe not, but that’s the protester-less clinic these people knew about and could afford.

Also, given the position you appear to be taking on the issue, is “safe from protesters” really the phrase you want to use?

I think before anyone accepts the premise that folks went to this clinic because they wanted to avoid protesters, you should read the grand jury document.

It led me to believe that the reasons the patients went to this filthy, fraudulent and dangerous clinic was that anyone with cash could get an immediate “abortion” (I use the quotes advisedly because allegedly procedures were performed that must be called “murders” by anyone on either side of the debate) at whatever stage of pregnancy and without regard to safety, and because it cost less (not surprising since he was allegedly saving money by letting unlicensed people perform the procedures and give anesthesia, reusing disposable supplies, and some other horrible cost-saving measures).

To blame abuses like this on protesters is akin to saying that gun crimes are caused by gun control advocates. Not logical and trying to spin something that simply should not be spun.

42

George Tiller’s clinic in Kansas had protesters every day. His business was still quite brisk. Before he got murdered and his story became a national cause for the media.

People went to Gosnell because they knew that he’d do abortions immediately for cash, and wasn’t scrupulous about whether your baby was viable or not. When planning to participate in a murder, you generally take your chances when hiring a hitman.

43

When you typed this, did it sound like “well, she had it coming” in your head?

44

Not at all. Just pushing back against the ridiculous excuse that desperation caused by the pro-life movement caused them to go to Gosnell.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t abort viable fetuses. Gosnell did. And he served so many women that I’m sure word got around about where to go if you needed a dead baby. The pro-life movement had nothing to do with that.

45

Because it’s totally ridiculous to think that women might fear people who have a history of murder and threatening murder. And who scream and rant and fling insults and all the rest. :rolleyes:

46

No, what’s ridiculous is thinking that the pro-life movement drove them to this particular clinic, when in fact the fault lies with the pro-choice movement for opposing even simple inspections. And I’m sure the authorities weren’t totally ignorant of Gosnell. When they want to they shut down illegal barbershops, supposedly because unlicensed barbers are a major public health threat. They didn’t want to inspect Gosnell because they likely knew they would have to shut him down if they did. They probably didn’t know he was a murderer, but they had to know he was unsanitary what with all the women being hospitalized with infections because of him. If it had been a McDonald’s sending that many people to a hospital, the health department would have descended on them in a heartbeat. Since it was an abortion clinic, they looked the other way.

And THAT"s why this isn’t a local crime story. aside from being a mass murder, it’s also a story of extreme government negligence.

47

Let me guess; the kinds of “simple inspections” that are carefully designed to make it impossible for any legal clinic to operate, and will force even more women to go to places like this back alley “clinic”.

The women were women, poor, and black. So naturally the local government either didn’t care, or were actively rooting for the women to die.

48

Der Trihs,

Why did you put simple inspection in quotes? Is the idea of a thorough inspection of a medical facility offensive to you in some way? What would be the possible drawback to responsible inspections? Less dead people?

49

In other words, if one believes they must be legal to prevent back alley type of stuff such as incompetence and unsanitary conditions, shouldnt we want to and be eager to then actually regulate and (God forbid) provide inspections to ensure the regulations are being followed? A regulation doesnt do any good if it is only written on paper but not enforced.

50

I’m always surprised murdering babies doesn’t attract more attention. There was a story on the BBC a few years ago about a maternity hospital in Kharkiv where the doctors kidnapped newborns, murdered them and sold their liquefied parts to a clinic in the Caribbean for use in fraudulent stem cell treatments. Didn’t bring much attention at all. No-one cared.

51

I remember the story when it broke, with the horrific details being given prominent coverage in the front of the news section (for instance, in the very same USA Today which just ran an op-ed criticizing the media for not giving enough attention to the trial).

I agree that wider trial coverage would likely bring out facts that the anti-abortion movement would prefer not to acknowledge - highlighting the extreme contrast between conditions at this clinic and the professional women’s health clinics that they try so hard to shut down.

52

I believe it’s a total strawman to say that pro-choice people are against all regulations of abortion clinics. I have never ever not even once heard that coming from a pro-choice person.

Some of us are indeed against the implementation - not the inspection, but the implementation - of needlessly onerous regulations which are designed to make it too expensive to run a clinic in the first place.

One of those is needlessly wide hallways. There’s been a push to mandate that abortion clinics have hallways wide enough to maneuver two hospital beds and IV poles and people between them. Hospitals need this because they have lots of reasons to transport multiple people in their beds with lots of equipment - take 'em to x-ray, take 'em to the GI Lab, move them out all at once in an emergency, etc. Abortion clinics don’t need this, because they generally don’t have bedbound patients who can’t get up and walk in an emergency. They don’t use the same type of beds in the same number with the same accessory equipment. They need hallways wide enough for a paramedic team to get in and out with a Stryker (stretcher) - which are about half as wide as hospital beds.

A paramedic team can get an obese hoarder out of an apartment building; they don’t need a whole lot of room. If this place had so much crap in the hallways that it impeded the paramedics, that’s wrong and bad. But it’s not an argument that the hallways need to be as wide as hospital hallways, it’s an argument that they need to not clutter their hallways with crap.

I’m certainly not against regulation and inspection. I’m all for it. What I’m against is onerous regulations that don’t positively impact patient care.

I think your car should be regulated and regularly inspected. That doesn’t mean I’d support proposed regulations that you have to hire a chauffeur and only use the car between the hours of 3 and 6 am. Those are stupid regulations that make your life harder, not safer, designed to reduce or eliminate the use of the thing they’re ostensibly regulating.

53

What are basing the idea that his murder was a national cause for the media? If you google (in quotes) George Tiller, you get 434k results. Kermit Gosnell gets 528k results. If you just go by news tab, Tiller gets 388 results, and Gosnell gets 13,800. Certainly, this is a highly imperfect measure, but I think it does speak to the fact that the Gosnell story was hardly ignored when it happened. Even if you restrict the date range to exclude all the recent media backlash, you still get articles from nearly every media source. What makes you think one case was largely ignored while the other was a national cause? And I am asking that honestly. You may be right, I really don’t know.

54

Because they’d be neither. They’d be attempts to harass legitimate clinics out of existence, while ignoring operations like that of this Gosnell person.

Hardly; killing women is part of the point. Eliminating legal abortion and forcing women to go to people like Gosnell will kill women, which will please the anti-abortion scum.

55

The problem in the Gosnell case was not lack of regulations – it was that they were not enforced.

Pro-choicers are not against regulations designed to ensure facility safety and patient care, however, TRAP laws, mandatory ultrasounds, forcing providers to disseminate inaccurate medical information to patients, mandatory waiting periods and other ridiculous measures like banning sex selective abortions or prosecuting abortions as “tampering with evidence” are typically driven by lobbyists and written into law by legislators that have no medical training.

In Virginia, Republican legislators took the counsel of a lobbyist rather than take the counsel of actual medical professionals when it came to setting policy.

*"The Medical Society of Virginia and the Virginia American College of Obstetricians testified in favor of repealing the ultrasound bill, echoing Northam’s concerns.

Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia and a top anti-abortion lobbyist, also testified at the hearing. She accused abortion providers of “hiding the picture” of the ultrasound from women in order to prevent them from changing their minds and to increase profits, according to The American Independent’s Reilly Moore."*

In Texaswomen going over the border for abortion in Mexico where it is illegal, but apparently easier than obtaining an abortion in Texas.

“In 2011, Texas lawmakers made deep cuts in financing for family planning for low-income women. And a new law that requires a woman seeking an abortion to receive a sonogram 24 hours ahead of the procedure — that is, to make at least two visits to the abortion clinic — may be prompting some to seek alternate abortion methods.”

In Mississippi:

"On July 1st a law went into effect requiring abortionists who work in Mississippi to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Privileges can be denied for any reason, and so far no Jackson hospital has granted them to any of the clinic’s doctors. Supporters claim that the law is a simple health-and-safety measure, but occasionally the masks slip. After the law passed, Bubba Carpenter, a state representative, boasted: “We stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi.” Phil Bryant, the governor, said as he signed the law: “If it closes that clinic, so be it.”"

As for Dr. Gosnell being ignored in the news? I think not. I have been following the case since it first came out in the NYT, Huffingtonpost, even the SLTribune reported it.

56

Your response does not make sense in light of my comment, which was to ask what is so offensive to you about actually enforcing regulations? Regulations are just words on paper if they are not enforced. It is a strawman to state that simply enforcing the existing regulations would be akin to eliminating legal abortion. If a medical clinic cannot or does not want to cover the cost for maintaining scrupulous medical practice, they should not be in business.

Ah, those pesky rules, what a pain in the…just to keep women alive…

57

Yes, most regulatory efforts aimed at abortion seek to limit access. But we do need more actual enforcement and regulation than we have now. The issue is how do you do that without making abortion cost prohibitive. I tend to think States and the Federal government should provide funding to maintain top of the line clinics that attract good doctors, and to subsidize construction costs and patient costs for low income women.

That way you can have and enforce needed regulations without it limiting access.

But to say there was no media coverage issue with Gosnell is simply untrue. The Atlantic writer who first questioned the coverage of the story is a far left guy writing for a left leaning magazine. No one is saying this story has received no coverage but that a case where a physician murders multiple people over many years, all under the nose of regulators would be a story on par with Shipman, Kevorkian etc and so far it has not been. It’s crazy to suggest it is for any reason other than that most journalists lean left and do not want to “confuse” the topic of abortion. If this guy had been a GP killing patients it’d be a sensational story when you combine it with the repeated State regulatory failures.

No one is saying it hasn’t been covered, just that it hasn’t been pushed by the media like they push stories they want people to see as a big deal. Examples recently would be Newtown, the sequester, Trayvon Martin etc. Trayvon Martin in particular is such a routine local crime story as to be totally unknown if not for a national media effort.

Now, why haven’t the conservative media outlets pushed the Gosnell story? I don’t know, most conservative news outlets are not very good aside from the WSJ and they mostly don’t follow crime stories unless they are financial. Maybe the reporters at Fox are inept and never heard of this. Or maybe they never reported on it because it is a Philadelphia thing which is synonymous with low income and black…doesn’t fit the missing white child of the week story Fox likes.

58

I am fairly up on the news (I heard about this case when it broke), and I had no idea who Harold Shipman was (assuming that who you are talking about). I suppose I could have just missed the coverage, but I find it hard to believe that Kevorkian and Shipman were covered to a comparable degree. Kevorkian has an HBO movie for example. I doubt more than 10% of people would know who Shipman is.

Most cases like the above are pushed either because they resonate with the average person, are sensational enough to get people to keep watching/reading, or because it fits into a common narrative or relationship. Most of the above stories can be framed as adversarial, and have a decent slice of the public on both sides.

Nobody wants to delve into details about dead babies regardless of how you feel about abortion. After a while, people will just turn off the TV. The average person cannot relate to what seems to have happened to many of these women, and I would bet very few of them are desirous to push this story by becoming the face of this story. There is also nobody on Gosnell’s side.

I think many didn’t keep covering it because there were few new details, few people to interview, and few people interested in continually hearing about it. There are few natural, illegitimate questions that arise from this case that need investigated. I suppose you can make some point about how there should be more oversight, but I am not that would have done a great deal to stop a guy who is clearly a nutcase.

59

Harold Shipman was one of the most prolific serial killers ever…I can’t think of another overseas serial killer that received front page level coverage in the United States.

60

I realize that now. What I am saying is you seem to be lamenting the notion that Gosnell has not received the coverage Shipman did. My response was just that I don’t think Shipman received all that much coverage. I suppose I was relatively young at the time, so maybe I missed it. Actually, I shoudl say I do remember hearing of the case, but it didn’t resonate enough for me to remember any of the details or the name a decade or so hence.

I guess my question was do you think it’s me, or do you honestly think a healthy minority of people would know the name Harold Shipman? If not, why is it such a crime that Gosnell is being covered in a similar fashion?