Kansas ‘born-alive’ abortion bill is unnecessary. But that doesn’t mean it’s harmless | Opinion
It’s not true that all stories about babies being slaughtered after surviving an abortion procedure are apocryphal: It happened hundreds of times in a filthy clinic in West Philadelphia, according to the grand jury report on the ghoulish career of baby butcher Kermit Gosnell.
Only, there is already a law against murder, which is why Gosnell is serving life without possibility of parole.
A decade ago, he was found guilty of killing three babies — yes, after they were born alive — in an office that smelled of cat urine, where the furniture was stained with blood and the doctor kept a collection of severed baby feet.
And according to the grand jury report, Gosnell was responsible for many more deaths than those for which he was convicted. As often as possible, it said, he induced labor for women so pregnant that, as he joked, the baby was so big he could “walk me to the bus stop.” Then, hundreds of times over the years, he slit their little necks.
The report said the doctor “regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy —and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels — and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.”
Anyone who knew what that “something” was was an accessory to murder, and should also have been prosecuted.
Those who oppose abortion rights regularly cite Gosnell.
But anyone who knows about any homicides perpetrated by any Kansas Kermit Gosnell should notify the police.
It did happen, so it could again. But even Gosnell’s victims didn’t happen to survive an abortion; he induced labor and then committed murder.
And are those opponents of abortion rights who claim they know firsthand of other such cases really saying that they witnessed a murder and failed to report it? Because that would be both criminal and surprising.
You’d think that any Kansas lawmaker who knew of even one such case would want to make international news by both alerting the authorities and proving wrong all of those doctors and supporters of abortion rights who say this does not happen in modern abortion care. Which is not what Gosnell was providing.
Instead, what lawmakers have done — in clear opposition to the will of Kansans, as expressed in last year’s landslide vote to preserve abortion rights in the Kansas Constitution — is pass a law that will subject abortion providers in Kansas to additional criminal penalties if they do not provide care to infants “born alive” in an abortion. The Kansas Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the bill.
State Rep. Ron Bryce, a Coffeyville Republican, has said that he supported the bill in part because almost 40 years ago, he responded to a code blue and found a crying infant who had survived an abortion in Fort Worth, Texas.
The infant wasn’t receiving care, according to Bryce, though a “code blue” is a call for immediate medical intervention. He said he sent the baby to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, where he died of “irreversible brain damage he had sustained due to lack of oxygen.” Surely, anyone who saw a colleague refuse urgently needed care to any patient of any age would have to report that, not just to the hospital, but to the police.
And though we do see this new Kansas law as unnecessary, that doesn’t mean there’s no harm in it, as women could be forced to endure and doctors forced to perform lifesaving measures in cases of severe malformation and incompatibility with life.
