By Kirsten Powers
Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations?
It's not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18,
there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on
every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell's
former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did
during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart.
NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that,
Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, "described how he snipped the
spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is
separating the brain from the body." One former worker, Adrienne Moton, testified that Gosnell taught her his "snipping" technique to use on infants born alive.
Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified "It would rain fetuses.
Fetuses and blood all over the place." Here is the headline the
Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100
babies born and then snipped: "Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion
clinic."
"Chaos" isn't really the story here. Butchering babies
that were already born and were older than the state's 24-week limit for
abortions is the story. There is a reason the late Democratic senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan called this procedure infanticide.
Planned Parenthood recently claimed that the possibility of infants surviving late-term abortions was "highly unusual." The Gosnell case suggests otherwise.
Regardless
of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one
second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or
completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is
merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a
legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.
A Lexis-Nexis search
shows none of the news shows on the three major national television
networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The
exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.
The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times
saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial's first day.
They've been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.
Let
me state the obvious. This should be front page news. When Rush
Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop media hysteria. The
venerable NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams intoned,
"A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush
Limbaugh," as he teased a segment on the brouhaha. Yet, accusations of
babies having their heads severed — a major human rights story if there
ever was one — doesn't make the cut.
You don't have to oppose
abortion rights to find late-term abortion abhorrent or to find the
Gosnell trial eminently newsworthy. This is not about being "pro-choice"
or "pro-life." It's about basic human rights.
The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace.
Kirsten Powers is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, a Fox News political analyst and columnist for The Daily Beast.
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