The quiet casualties

We're experiencing wall-to-wall coverage of the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon.  The public is rightly outraged at the (so far) loss of three lives, including an 8-year old child.  An ironic earlier photo of that young man holding a sign saying "no more hurting people" and "peace" evokes consideration of the innocence and potential that was snuffed out by as-yet unknown parties.

Yet compare this with the low-key coverage of the ongoing murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell (which is only now rising above background chatter due to pressure via social media).  Given the mass media's predisposition toward the macabre and sensational, one would think this case would  automatically have drawn "trial of the century" style coverage:

[He] 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.    (from the indictment)

Gosnell is charged with killing more than twice the number of people who died at the Boston Marathon.  Yet the coverage of the two isn't remotely comparable.  The "fact checking" website Snopes.com was compelled to give an entry to the case, because so many people were finding it hard to believe the grisly details they were recieving via email or Facebook that weren't prominent in traditional media outlets.

Even committed 'pro-choice' advocates have to admit the Gosnell case is a sickening one.  They are also quick to say he is not representative of those who perform legal abortions.  They are concerned the case could be used to advocate restricting abortion (...in much the same way recent shootings have been used to build emotional pressure to curtail 2nd Amendment rights.  The shoe pinches on the other foot, it seems...).

Is Gosnell's alleged callous disregard for life really a fringe perspective?  One has to wonder.  Last month, a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood seemed to advocate permitting infanticide (video at link).

There is at least a certain consistency (if not honesty) at work in that testimony.  If a pregnant woman is trying to abort her child, and the procedure results in a live child outside the womb, the Planned Parenthood representative seems to be saying it should be the woman's choice whether the child lives or dies.  Stated that way, it makes people squeamish.  But why does the living child have to be outside the womb before its death makes us feel remorse?   We recoil from tales of a 'doctor' snipping a baby's spinal cord with scissors, but not from the knowledge that every day children are fatally ripped from their mothers' wombs... mostly because they've been deemed 'inconvenient.'  Why is that?

In 2007, over 1,000 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan and Iraq -- a fact that received notable discussion in the press at the time.  That same year, 1,210,000 children had their lives cut short just as effectively as if they had been victims of a terror attack or a military campaign.  They died quietly, with no fanfare, front pages or online photo tributes.

We so often hear people asking why the world has gone crazy -- why theaters and schools are shot up and bombs planted at sporting events, why the gap between rich and poor has grown so wide, why our nation seems to wallow in a loss of happiness and optimism.  But any society that can toss aside a million children a year is one that is sick unto death already, so should anything else really be a surprise?

We will never know what 8-year old Martin Richard might have contributed to the world, had bombs not taken him away.  Nor can we know how many Einsteins, Salks, Edisons or Mother Theresas never graced the world because they were discarded.  Those who planted the bombs, and those who profit from the destruction of countless other young lives have at least this in common: trying to play God.  Their supporters are equally self-centered, thinking only of their agendas regardless of the expense to others.  Short of national repentence, we have no reason to expect our land to turn any corners for the better.

"Choose life, that you may live."