Disrupting the Narrative of the New Left, its allies in Academia, Hollywood and the Establishment Media, and examining with honesty the goals of cultural Marxism and the dangers of reactionary and abusive political correctness.
THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.”-George Orwell
Oh, Miley... It's not that you have to be black to twerk...it's that you've gotta have some junk to throw out there. All of her backup dancers had ample junk in the trunk, which only made Billy Ray's little girl look even more ridiculous. It's easy to forget that she's supposed to be a singer. That, of course, is probably the point... For me, though, the most disturbing thing was the non-stop tongue foo. What the hell was THAT? She's been doing this stuff all year long but last night's MTV Video Music Awards performance was the ultimate example of Miley's twerkin' jerkin' & Jersey Turnpikin' minstrel show.
The VMAs belonged to Miley Cyrus. Cyrus did her own striptease, down to a flesh-toned bra and panties; she stuck out her tongue a lot and humped, in turn, a gigantic teddy bear, a foam "We're #1!" finger, and Robin Thicke. But the shock that Cyrus was peddling wasn't sex. It was all about race.
Cyrus has spent a lot of time recently toying with racial imagery. We've seen Cyrus twerking her way through the video for her big hit "We Can't Stop," professing her love for "hood music," and claiming spiritual affinity with Lil' Kim. Last night, as Cyrus stalked the stage, mugging and twerking, and paused to spank and simulate analingus upon the ass of a thickly set African-American backup dancer, her act tipped over into what we may as well just call racism: a minstrel show routine whose ghoulishness was heightened by Cyrus's madcap charisma, and by the dark beauty of "We Can't Stop" — by a good distance, the most powerful pop hit of 2013.
Cyrus's twerk act gives minstrelsy a postmodern careerist spin. Cyrus is annexing working-class black "ratchet" culture, the potent sexual symbolism of black female bodies, to the cause of her reinvention: her transformation from squeaky-clean Disney-pop poster girl to grown-up hipster-provocateur. (Want to wipe away the sickly-sweet scent of the Magic Kingdom? Go slumming in a black strip club.) Cyrus may indeed feel a cosmic connection to Lil' Kim and the music of "the hood." But the reason that these affinities are coming out now, at the VMAs and elsewhere, is because it’s good for business.
While I agree that Miley is trying way too hard to let us all know that she's no virgin and also has black and gay friends, I disagree with the idea that she wasn't selling sex. Of course she was...
I should say that if Miley's goal here was simply to be provocative and get people talking about her in the mistaken belief that "there's no such thing as bad publicity," then I guess it was working for her. But since she wasn't exactly obscure before last night I don't really see the upside to making a complete fool of herself. I'm not even sure she realizes how bad it was...although if she doesn't it's not because people haven't let her know.
The recipient of this year's Madonna in a wedding dress/Britney in a glittery thong/Kanye West "I'mma let you finish…" water-cooler buzz is Miley Cyrus, who personified the concept of "trying too hard" with her performance on Sunday night's show. The whirling dervish of crass, empty-calorie provocation that was her performance of "We Can't Stop" and "Blurred Lines" with Robin Thicke shocked people for a number of reasons, but one accusation as absurd as the dancing Furries Miley was twerking with is the idea that her performance was racist.
It is the year 2013, which means that she-who-played Hannah Montana feigning masturbation with a giant foam finger is the pitch for a flood of cultural think pieces, all of which hit the internet Monday morning. A lot of the reaction was pegged to the forced edginess Cyrus littered her performance with, from simulating analingus on a seven-foot-tall black woman to grinding her butt on Robin Thicke's crotch while licking the air - the alternately concerning and fascinating reality that this is what a 20-year-old girl thinks constitutes being sexual.
And then there was Clinton Yates of the Washington Post leaping to Miley's defense against Jody Rosen's "minstrel" accusation.
Miley Cyrus is America's worst nightmare. Last night, with her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, she proved that many people in this country are still pre-occupied with slut-shaming and coded racial condescension in the context of entertainment.
Her performance of "We Can't Stop," a catchy and otherwise seemingly harmless pop song, that transitioned to a duet with Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," is clearly the most talked about moment of the show, but for all the wrong reasons.
Her bawdy performance, that featured Miley and other dancers twerking on stage, drew criticism as lewd, grotesque and shameful. MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski went so far as to say Cyrus "is obviously deeply troubled, deeply disturbed, clearly has confidence issues, probably eating disorder," on Morning Joe Monday. But what exactly is so disturbing about Miley Cyrus?
What's so disturbing? Gosh, whatever could it be...
Why must these Disney grown-ups assault us with their tortured post-teen angst every year? #Miley
— martha maccallum (@marthamaccallum) August 26, 2013
Isn't.. Robin Thicke old enough to be Miley's father.. did she really just twerk to him? #MindBlown#slutnation
— Connie Chan (@ConstanceChan) August 26, 2013
Is it just us or did Drake look 600% done with Miley Cyrus and her teddy bear twerk party? #VMAs
— E! Online (@eonline) August 26, 2013
hey @MileyCyrus...you aren't #ratchet. its depressing. pls stahp. Also, you can't twerk.
PSA from concerned internet citizen.
— Gary Sagoo (@Gary_FluxMuzik) August 26, 2013
I've never seen the recipe for disaster, but I'm sure one of the ingredients is Miley twerking and giant teddybear costumes... #MTVVMAs
— Brittney Schram (@DCC_Brittney) August 26, 2013
Future reference: the exact moment that western civilization collapsed > Miley's vma performance. #nohttp://t.co/9KopOGbwvr
— Kate G (@FilterlessThts) August 26, 2013
If Syria used chemical weapons against the VMAs, would we be so quick to condemn them?
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 26, 2013
But since the VMA's are technically about music, who better to pass final judgment than the Queen herself:
Just saw a couple performances from the VMA's last night. 2 words.... #pitchystrippers
— Kelly Clarkson (@kelly_clarkson) August 26, 2013
In a New York Times op-ed, Joe Nocera poses the question "Is Force Feeding Torture?" The answer, in my opinion, is absolutely yes. Anybody who thinks that water boarding is torture must come to the same conclusion.
The military claims that it is force-feeding the detainees in order to keep them safe and alive. According to The Miami Herald, about one-third of the detainees on strike - at least 35 men, though possibly more - are being force-fed. A handful are in the hospital.
But not long ago, Al Jazeera got ahold of a 30-page document that detailed the standard operating procedures used by the military to force-feed a detainee. The document makes for gruesome reading: the detainee shackled to a special chair (which looks like the electric chair); the head restraints if he resists; the tube pushed painfully down his nose; the half-hour or so of ingestion of nutritional supplements; the transfer of the detainee to a "dry cell," where, if he vomits, he is strapped back into the chair until the food is digested.
Detainees are also apparently given an anti-nausea drug called Reglan, which has a horrible potential side effect if given for more than three months: a disease called tardive dyskinesia, which causes twitching and other uncontrollable movements. "This drug is very scary," said Cori Crider, the legal director of Reprieve, a London-based group that represents more than a dozen detainees. "My fear is that it is being administered without their consent," she added. Although the military refuses to discuss the use of Reglan - or any aspect of force-feeding - that's a pretty safe bet.
This issue is already a major scandal internationally, especially after a mid-April clash between guards and prisoners, and I suspect that Obama understands the hypocrisy of his stated opposition to water boarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques that have been described as torture. In true Obama fashion, he is trying to finesse the situation. That effort will become much more difficult if he loses the loyalty of his most ardent fans - the media (which is happening, although not as comprehensively as one might hope).
Obviously his big speech last week was intended to provide a distraction from the many scandals exploding all around his administration by changing the subject. But the reason he has suddenly remembered that he promised to close Gitmo several years ago is because he has a public relations disaster on his hands.
This disaster will bring down bitter condemnation from Obama's own side of the political spectrum. The ruckus created by Medea Benjamin's heckling of his speech was a signal that the free pass Obama has been receiving from Code Pink and similar groups may at last be over. The brutal force-feeding of prisoners cannot be ignored and it will not be ignored anymore. Obama and his minions will try to place the blame on Congress. He'll do this because Congress does share some responsibility for keeping Gitmo open. There are valid reasons for maintaining such a detention center, which Obama himself apparently discovered upon taking office.
However, as Medea Benjamin pointed out in explaining why she protested, Obama is the main culprit here.
"With the men in Guantanamo on hunger strike, being brutally forced fed and bereft of all hope, I couldn't let the President continue to act as if he were some helpless official at the mercy of Congress."
Obama had a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in the Senate and total control of the House for his first two years in office and he not only failed to close Gitmo "on his first day" as promised but he didn't close it down during that entire optimal period. As late as December 2010 it was Democrats, not Republicans, who inserted a provision banning the transfer of Gitmo prisoners to the United States into an omnibus spending bill. Obama knew it and could have objected...but didn't. Force-feeding has been labeled a violation on the ban of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. The World Medical Association holds that it is unethical for a doctor to participate in force-feeding. Put simply, force-feeding violates international law. James Hamblin at The Atlantic poses the question: When does "suicide prevention" [the official excuse for the force-feeding] become torture?
Brian Mishara, Director of the Center for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia in the Psychology Department at the University of Quebec, put it succinctly in The New York Times: "In the case of Guantánamo, intervening to save or prolong a person's life without trying to change the person's reasons for wanting to die cannot be considered suicide prevention. Suicide prevention would involve intervening to change the person's desire to die (despite his circumstances) or changing the situation that he feels is intolerable. From the news reports I have seen, those steps are both absent, and therefore the military's force-feeding does not constitute suicide prevention."
In India, a woman named Irom Sharmila has been on a hunger strike for 12 years over a law that suspends some human rights protections in areas of conflict. She has been tube-fed through her nose by the Indian government -- for 12 years.
Will the United States keep these detainees alive for 12 years against their will? If 12 years sounds too long, then what is an appropriate amount of time to keep a prisoner alive by tube feed? Is this torture? Hundreds of physicians around the world have spoken out on behalf of the World Medical Association -- in addition to the American Medical Association -- in saying that what the U.S. is doing is inhumane. The U.N. Human Rights Commission has said in the past that forced feeding constitutes torture and violates international law.
Nocera's article in the Times concludes this way:
Here is the most infuriating part. President Obama is on record as saying that America should never practice torture. He has also, of course, called for Guantánamo to be closed down.
Without question, any effort he might make to shut down the prison would be met with resistance in Congress; it's already begun. But the practice of force-feeding detainees, which virtually every international body condemns as a violation of international law — and which they decry as cruel and inhuman? He could stop that in a heartbeat, with one call to the Pentagon.
After all, he is the commander in chief.
Isn't he?
I wonder if the useful idiots that comprise the Nobel Peace Prize committee are regretting their ridiculous decision to award their prize to Barack Obama merely for being Barack Obama and not George Bush. "President Drone Strike" is now "President Feeding Tube." Time for him to be held accountable.
This weekend Fox News Channel has been running a special on the Kermit Gosnell murder trial. Here it is, in case you missed it. Warning, the details within the video are graphic...
For further details, see here and here and here. FNC is to be commended for being the only television news channel to cover this case with any consistency. The Left's narrative about the abortion industry has been disrupted and the corrupt Establishment Media has been exposed once again as little more than a propaganda machine for liberal ideology.
Last Thursday, Daily Beast columnist and Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers - a liberal - ripped the Establishment Media a new one for failing to adequately report on the ongoing trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Butcher of Philadelphia, who is charged with murdering seven newborn infants and a patient seeking an abortion.
Powers is a former Democratic political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House, and she supports most liberal causes, but she hasn't spent her entire career in the media or the professional Left. She grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, understands the values of the Heartland, and is a practicing Christian.
Her article in USA Today provoked a variety of responses from members of the Establishment Media that helped break their deliberate and collective silence on the trial.
Megan McArdle of the Daily Beast acknowledged she "should have" written about the "horror Doc's" clinic. The Washington Post made the stunning admission that "we should have sent a reporter sooner." Dylan Byers, Politico's media reporter, flatly stated that "Gosnell should be front-page, top-of-the-hour news by primetime tonight." Conor Friedersdorf, a writer for the liberal website Atlantic Online published a column with the headline: "Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story." Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg compared the Gosnell story to an Eli Roth movie andconcluded, "It's remarkable that it took this long."
Sadly, it's not that remarkable. In fact, it's exactly what we've come to expect from the Establishment Media. If protecting The Narrative requires ignoring a story thenthat's the way it has to be. As if thejournalistic malpractice wasn't bad enough, the obedient proggies in the media refuse to even acknowledge their bias. They insist that they represent what's "mainstream" in this country and, therefore, anybody who disagrees with them must be "extreme." Take Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's legal analyst, for example:
"Well, the people making those [media] criticisms are by and large conservative. 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... 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."
A business decision, huh? That's interesting because everybody knows the rule: If it bleeds, it leads.As Valerie Richardson of the Washington Timesnoted last week:
"Not every murder trial receives prominent national coverage, but the Gosnell case would seem to contain all the ingredients of must-see television: a formerly respected community leader accused of unspeakable acts; the death of a young immigrant woman; a parade of former employees offering graphic testimony on the gruesome deaths of more than 100 just-born infants; and even the implication by the doctor’s lawyers that the charges have been motivated by racism. Dr. Gosnell is black and his clinic was in a mostly minority neighborhood."
There were other attempts at pushback. The chronically obtuse Kevin Drum of Mother Jones called the Gosnell trial the right-wing's pet rock for April. Irin Carmon of Salon.com scoffed at the idea of a Gosnell coverup. Another Salon writer, Alex Seitz-Wald, initiated the meme "where were conservatives before this week?"
Could it be, as conservative bloggers have charged since shortly after the trial began March 18, that the media had taken a pass because Gosnell — who stands accused of killing seven newborn infants and one mother — is an abortion doctor whose alleged crimes run counter to the mainstream media's supposed support for abortion rights?
That's the way the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group based in Alexandria, has framed it. In multiple commentaries published since last month, the group has hammered the lack of coverage, citing it as evidence of liberal media bias. "The media elite are passionate about abortion and passionate about defending it," says Tim Graham, the MRC's director of media analysis, in an interview. "This is a story that threatens the abortion rights agenda... It's bias by omission." Neither Grahamnor any of the other critics have offered evidence for their suspicions.
What's so particularly stupid about the claim that pro-life, religious and conservative press didn't cover Gosnell is that it doesn't account for the fact that tons of people did learn about the Gosnell case, despite the lack of mainstream media attention. Where does Farhi think everyone learned about this case if not there?
But what's also so stupid about the "but those guys didn’t cover it either" (in addition to it being laughably false) is that complaints about mainstream coverage are just that: complaints about mainstream coverage. Appealing to coverage decisions by ideological outlets doesn't change anything about the complaints of mainstream coverage. That the media take cues from ideological outlets is clear, as we saw with the Komen, Fluke and Akin outcries. But if they're going to take cues, they need to take cues from a wide variety of resources. Clearly, pro-life media is nowhere on their radar.
The most devastating part of the story, though, is what Farhi tries to characterize as something banal and mundane. It's the most self-indicting thing I've read since Sarah Kliff's tweet to me (curiously unmentioned in Farhi's story) dismissing Gosnell as "local crime." Check it out:
Martin Baron, The Post's executive editor, offers a more mundane rationale for the newspaper's lack of coverage: He wasn't aware of the story until Thursday night, when readers began e-mailing him about it. "I wish I could be conscious of all stories everywhere, but I can't be," he said. "Nor can any of us."
Added Baron, "We never decide what to cover for ideological reasons, no matter what critics might claim. Accusations of ideological motives are easy to make, even if they’re not supported by the facts."
Wow. But as some wise person said: If you're pro-abortion would you want details like this to get out?
The jury in the murder trial of Kermit Gosnell was told this morning that the embattled abortion practitioner kept at least 47 babies in odd places at his clinic such as cat food jars and other containers. …
But the most shocking portion of today's hearing revolved around Gosnell's habit of storing the bodies of babies he butchered in abortions.
"This morning’s testimony from the medical examiner discussed remains of 47 babies found in cat food and cherry lime ade containers," says Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue, who is in the courtroom listening to the trial. "All containers contained bloody fluid and human remains."
She said it took the medical examiner, Dr. Gulino, five days just to catalog the containers of fetal parts and the examiner also examined feet and lower extremity found in jars of formaldehyde belonging to five babies Gosnell killed. The ages of the unborn children ranged from first trimester to 22 weeks and the latter baby was possibly viable.
The problem is that the media apologists are battling a straw man. The column that started the firestorm over the media blackout didn't claim that the mainstream press had "never" covered Kermit Gosnell. I know, because I wrote it.
The column, and the ensuing outrage—and much of the outrage came from people with vaginas despite Carmon's egregious and divisive claim that it was just the patriarchy rearing its ugly head—was specific to the fact that the mainstream media had not covered the trial of Kermit Gosnell, which started March 18, 2013. I am going to repeat this, because a starling number of people on the left, including New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, either cannot grasp this or are intentionally ignoring it. Repeat after me: "The problem is that the trial has not been covered." That the Times ran one story about Gosnell in January is hardly relevant to the trial that started in March.
It is the trial that has included spectacular and headline-grabbing testimony from Gosnell's former assistants and workers. It is the trial that has been largely ignored outside of local media and activists on the right and left. This, despite the normal obsession with murder trials (Good Morning America has done a 10-part series on the Jody Arias trial). It is the trial—rife with grisly details about an abortion doctor who maimed and killed women and babies—that was ignored, despite The Washington Post's, The New York Times's, and network evening news's usual obsession with all things abortion related.
And it's not just the Establishment Media but the so-called feminist groups who are, typically, silent when topic is not exactly helpful to their agenda.
I can only think of a handful of times in my eight years as a Fox News contributor that I've discussed abortion. The people who obsessively cover it and anything vaguely related to it are those in the mainstream media and in the left-wing media, which is why their silence on this is so remarkable. Mollie Hemingway did yeoman's work chronicling how faithfully The Washington Post's health reporter, who covered Todd Aiken, the Susan G. Komen controversy, and the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, didn't write a single story on the Gosnell trial. No abortion regulation is too small for the mainstream media to cover; no stupid comment about abortion by any Republican goes unnoticed. So her disinterest in this trial is inexplicable.
But while the left has alternately attacked the right for its alleged lack of interest and for paying too much of the "wrong sort" of attention, I haven't heard a lot about the near silence from the feminist organizations that lecture us endlessly about how they stand for women's health. I find the claims now that feminists were deeply upset about poor minority women being abused and killed along with their babies a little tough to believe. A search for "Gosnell" on NOW's website yielded only two hits, both from 2011. Search for "Gosnell" on the League of Women Voters website and you will find nothing. The same search on the NARAL and Planned Parenthood sites returned the same number of hits: zero.
Media bias exists not only in how they cover stories, but in their choice of stories to cover:
It was fine to dwell at length on the Newtown, Conn., shootings, because those could be blamed on the evil NRA. But writing about these dead innocents might be a political liability instead of a political asset. It might have been awkward for President Obama.
Perhaps more dangerously, extensive coverage of the Gosnell trial challenges the absolutism of the pro-abortion crowd, as LauraW at Ace's place explains:
The problem with absolutism is that it shoots itself in the foot. Truly radical pro-choicers do not understand that the assumption that abortion primarily kills very tiny, unviable blobs, is the very thing that keeps abortion legal. It is in fact the only thing keeping a majority of people ignoring the subject.
In the case of abortion, this is the social/ political compromise that exists within the non-ideological crowd (most people): Many are willing to say that abortion is wrong (or at least not good), but the majority of these are also willing to allow it, as long as the understanding is that 'a clump of cells' is being eliminated.
As long as the belief persists among most reasonable people that the child has not been formed yet, and will not suffer, they will tolerate this practice even if they think it is wrong.
However, as soon as they understand that big, live, squealing babies are being murdered in abortion facilities, the spell is broken. There will be a closer look. And we know in our bones there are more Kermit Gosnells out there, don't we? It behooves all absolutists to observe the kneecapping that pro-choicers will give themselves if they continue to very stupidly get on the wrong side of this issue and actually argue for a more obvious and expansive infanticide.
The media progs who helped promote the bogus "war on women" nonsense last year must continue to be shamed for their misguided, dishonest and discredited bias and behavior.
Trevin Wax at LifeNews.com lists eight reasons for the Establishment Media's blackout of the Gosnell trial. I have added a couple of my own at the end.
1. The Gosnell case involves an abortionist.Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the abortionist must be portrayed as a victim of hate and intolerance, not a perpetrator of violence and racism. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps "abortionist" separate from testimony about dead women and children.
2. The Gosnell case involves an unregulated abortion clinic.Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the clinic must be portrayed as a "refuge" for women in distress, not a "house of horrors" where women are taken advantage of and their lives put at risk in addition to their unborn children. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps "abortion clinic" away from negative connotations.
3. The Gosnell case involves protestors who, for years, stood
outside 3801 Lancaster and prayed, warning people about what was taking
place inside.Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the protestors must be portrayed as deluded agitators and hate-filled extremists, not peaceful people who urge mothers to treasure the miracle inside them. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps the abortion protestors from looking like heroes.
4. The Gosnell case involves gruesome details about living, viable babies having their spinal cords “snipped” outside the womb.Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the details of an abortion procedure are to be avoided. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps people from asking why such violent killing is unjust moments after birth, yet acceptable at any other time during the pregnancy.
5. The Gosnell case raises the question of human rights. Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the discussion must always be framed in terms of a woman's "reproductive rights," not a baby's "human rights." But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps people from asking why "reproductive rights" should trump "human rights" – or why a doctor devoted to "reproductive rights" would (without any apparent twinge of conscience) violate human rights so egregiously.
6. The Gosnell case involves the regulation of abortion clinics.Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the clinic must be portrayed as under siege from anti-abortion extremists. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that will keep people from pushing for policy change and further regulation of Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics.
7. The Gosnell case exposes the disproportionate number of abortion
clinics in inner cities and the disproportionate number of abortions
among minority groups.Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the discussion must be framed in terms of providing "access" for low-income, minority women. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps people from wondering if perhaps some abortion providers are "targeting" low-income, minority women.
8. The Gosnell case competes with recent stories about states enacting broad laws banning many abortions. Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the choice of coverage must focus on the threat to a woman's "right to choose." But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that will keep Americans from joining together to enact more common-sense regulation of late-term abortions.
9. The Gosnell
case makes a mockery of the faux "War on Women" that liberals
fabricated last year on behalf of Obama's reelection efforts.The same media flunkies who seriously pushed the Romney "binders of women" meme as evidence of said "war" are reluctant todeal with the reality of Gosnell's crimes against women and children.
10. The Gosnell case has been ignored in large part because the Establishment Media has been coordinating with the White House to promote Obama's agenda.Since the opening of the Gosnell trial the media has been saturating us with non-stop coverage of the SCOTUS andsame-sex marriage and most recently Obama's relentless exploitation of the Newtown families. The horror story of Kermit Gosnell is both damaging to the pro-abortion lobby as well as being a distraction from Obama's agenda.
The details emerging from this trial are too graphic for us to even put into words, yet our society allows this same unspeakable torture of another human being to occur just so long as the baby is still inside the womb.
The Gosnell trial in conjunction with a Planned Parenthood lobbyist's recent admission that the abortion giant has no issue with this life-ending practice is lifting the veil of secrecy from an industry long shrouded from public scrutiny.
The Planned Parenthood lobbyist testified against a state law that would protect babies born alive after a botched abortion from being left to die, or worse yet, killed. She was asked about Planned Parenthood's position on whether an infant born in this situation should receive medical care, she repeatedly testified, "That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider."
Public outrage ensued. Planned Parenthood later removed their opposition to the bill, essentially arguing that this "extremely unlikely and highly unusual" set of circumstances doesn’t really happen.
A young woman who worked at Kermit Gosnell's abortion clinic as a teenager testified that she saw a baby's chest move even after the gruesome snipping procedure Gosnell used to end the baby's life. "The chest was moving," she testified. The baby was so large that another worker even took a cellphone picture of it. Prosecution experts, based on the picture, say the baby was well past 24 weeks, the legal limit for abortion in Pennsylvania.
Another former employee described how she heard a baby scream during a live-birth abortion. "I can't describe it. It sounded like a little alien," he testified, telling a judge and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury that the body of the child was about 18 to 24 inches long and was one of the largest babies she had seen delivered during abortion procedures at Gosnell's clinic.
According to a news report, Massof told the jury that women were often given drugs to speed up delivery of the baby so the abortion/infanticide could take place: He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, "it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place."
One day after a former employee described how she heard a baby scream during a live-birth abortion, another worker at the Kermit Gosnell "House of Horrors' abortion clinic testified that she saw a baby "jump" when she snipped her neck in an abortion. "It jumped, the arm," she said, showing the jury by raising her arm.
Another Gosnell clinic worker testified that she took photos of one particularly large baby, referred to by prosecutors as "Baby A," with her cell phone that was estimated to be about 30-weeks gestation. "Baby A" had been delivered alive into a toilet where she cut the baby's throat.
Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell's idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania. In her opening statement to the Common Pleas Court jury, Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore mused that the jars of feet were some kind of bizarre "trophy" Gosnell kept.
