Female politicians "have resorted to flexing their womb-manhood."

Writes Kathleen Parker, riffing on Sarah Palin's statement that "goes something like this: 'I’m more fertile than you are.'"

(If you scroll down you'll get to the actual quote: "I say this as someone who’s kind of fertile herself." Palin was reacting to Jeb Bush's recent awkward reference to the fertility of immigrants. Parker seems to like to rewrite quotes: What Jeb said "sounds an awful lot like, 'Hotahmighty, those people can’t tie their shoes without getting pregnant.'")

It wasn't just Sarah Palin who flexed her womb-manhood to make a political argument. Parker also points to Nancy Pelosi:

When challenged about the difference between late-term abortion and the killing of babies who survived late-term abortions at the hands of the convicted murderer Dr. Kermit Gosnell, Pelosi hid behind the skirt of her own bassinet.

Rather than answer the question, she invoked her five children and declared any discussion of abortion “sacred ground” to her Catholic sensibilities. Fecundity, apparently, triumphs over moral reasoning.

Parker acts as if Pelosi were claiming authority solely by virtue of her motherhood and declined to engage in "moral reasoning," but Pelosi was saying I believe in Catholic doctrine. She didn't just say she had 5 children. She said "my oldest child is six years old the day I brought my fifth child home from the hospital." That's offered as proof that she believes the doctrine — including the proscription against birth control. In my book, that translates into a statement of morality. Maybe some people don't think that's "moral reasoning," because it's the acceptance of religious doctrine (and not individual philosophizing). But clearly Pelosi was saying: I have very deep beliefs about morality here and my life as I've lived it vouches for the sincerity of these beliefs.

Parker's next sentence is:

Most likely, Pelosi is deeply troubled by what her politics requires and what her Catholic mother-heart tells her is true. 

Catholic mother-heart? Pelosi claimed she is a believing Catholic. Beliefs exist in the brain as well as in the emotions. You can call the emotions "heart," but it's still not just something her heart is telling her. It's religious doctrine that she knows and purports to accept. Now, of course, it's very easy to say that Pelosi cannot square her support for abortion rights with her Catholic beliefs. And Pelosi deserves that hit because she did have a how-dare-you shaming tone in her voice and she refused give an elaborate response to the questioner who wanted to hound her about Gosnell.

But I know what the answer is. It's that when the question is about enduring a pregnancy, the beliefs of the woman within whom that pregnancy exists are what matters. The true moral answer is that you should never have an abortion — that's the Catholic's religious belief — but the legal answer is that every woman has freedom of belief and her own beliefs control what she does with her body.

I think this is like what Jesus said about divorce:

The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

I know that Moses didn't say it, but one might say abortion is permitted because of the hardness of your hearts.

With 2 references to hearts — Parker's "Catholic mother-heart" and Jesus's "the hardness of your hearts" — I am reminded again of the Supreme Court's notion of what it called "the heart of liberty": "the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." That's the basis of the right to have an abortion: the individual's freedom of belief.

But where was Kathleen Parker going with this column? Two highly partisan women used their own personal fertility to leverage a political argument. Noted. The 2 women are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but they were arguing about different issues: immigration and abortion. Now, we know Palin is pro-life, and Parker declares Palin's position "more palatable," but she proceeds to knock her for "her coquettish reminders that her field is still tillable," which, Parker says, "diminishes her credibility as anything other than a one-liner comedienne." I take it that's Parker's way of stating the conclusion that women ought to refrain from flexing their womb-manhood.

I think it's fine to include one's own personal experience as part of a political argument. It's a problem if you do it badly. (You don't want your audience to perceive you as coquettish!) And it shouldn't be your only argument. (You don't want to seem to be saying I have more children then you, so shut up.) But talking about real-world experience gives depth, color, and credibility to a politician's speech. As with any political speech, you need to do it well.

"What's so 'ugly' about the mockery?"

Asks grinder, in the comments to the post — "Texas Congressman: Masturbating Fetuses Prove Need for Abortion Ban" — about pro-abortion-rights bloggers mocking the statement of Rep. Michael Burgess, a former OB/GYN, who commented on the "purposeful" motions of 15-week-old unborns who may "stroke their face" and "have their hand between their legs."

I answered in the comments:

The Congressman described the fetus's humanity: It does something that we are invited to recognize as part of our shared human condition and therefore to appreciate its reality and to feel empathy.

The mockers are taking this delicately stated image of the fetus touching or holding its genitals and turning it into a picture of a baby masturbating — "jerking off," "spanking the monkey" — and asking us to laugh at it, even as we are expected to accept its being killed. The very thing that the Congressman used to call us to think of it as human, they would laugh at before killing it.

If you are going to take it into your hands to kill a human being, you don't diminish it and laugh at it first. For example, an execution — assuming it is permitted at all, as it is in the United States — is carried out with somber respect. Even as this human being will be killed, we must demonstrate that we understand the profundity of what we are doing.

Picture executions where the condemned person is subjected to mockery first. (That was done to Jesus, by the way.) Some would say any death penalty is wrong, just as some would say that any abortion is wrong. But few would say that ridiculing the condemned being — dehumanizing him — is acceptable.

In their eagerness to deny that the fetus is a person, abortion rights proponents — some of them — are making sport of it.

This reminds me of Kermit Gosnell joking about a large fetus, saying that it was big enough to walk to the bus stop. Think about why that was considered shocking by many people.

Let's remember that, under the law, the abortion right — in the Supreme Court's idealized image — is based on the idea of the woman's entitlement to define her own concept of "the mystery of human life." This is a "philosophic exercise" that "originate[s] within the zone of conscience and belief." This is a deeply serious matter — to the Court. But who believes it? Abortion opponents resist the idea either because they are sure the fetus is a human being or because they wouldn't trust the woman to base her decision whether to abort on sincere conscientious beliefs about the humanity of the unborn. Those who support abortion rights seem — for the most part — to have forgotten the nature of the decision that is reserved, under the law, for the woman. Laughing at the unborn is egregious evidence of this forgetting.

Here's an idea for an abortion regulation that I've never heard anyone else discuss, but which occurred to me as I've read and reread the Supreme Court cases. A woman seeking an abortion must sign a statement: I have reflected on the nature of the procedure I am about to undergo, and I attest to my sincere belief that it will not kill a human being.

"Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell agreed today to two life sentences and waive his appeal rights..."

"... in exchange for the state taking the death penalty off the table.... Seeking the death penalty was overkill...."

"Justice was served to Kermit Gosnell today and he will pay the price for the atrocities he committed."

"Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell."

The Naral spin on the Gosnell verdict, quoted in a NYT report, which I arrived at via National Reviews Kathryn Jean Lopez, whose blog post is "Fetus. Fetus. Fetus. Fetus. Fetus. Fetus." ("The New York Times piece on the Gosnell verdict screams euphemisms over the trial results.")

I'm not quite getting Lopez. Did the NYT rewrite its piece? What I'm seeing at the NYT begins (boldface added): "A doctor who was responsible for cutting the spines of babies after botched abortions was convicted Monday of three counts of first-degree murder in a case that became a sharp rallying cry for anti-abortion activists."

ADDED: Apparently, the NYT did rewrite it!

Gosnell guilty.

On 3 counts of murder.

Acquitted on one.

The Kermit Gosnell jury has been deliberating for 7 days.

Still no verdict.

"You have a choice, a real choice... to roll with the tsunami of simplistic press and rhetoric..."

"... or the choice to stand against the power of that tsunami," said Jack McMahon, delivering the closing argument for Kermit Gosnell.

He also called the case "the most extraordinary hype and exaggeration in the history of the justice system," which is itself an extraordinary exaggeration.

It's hard to find a good account of what McMahon's argument really was. The NYT article gives a better hint at the legal substance of it:

The doctor’s defense lawyer, Jack J. McMahon, argued Monday that none of the remaining four cases had resulted in live births. Because the women were given injections of the drug digoxin, which causes “fetal demise,” Mr. McMahon argued, any postdelivery movements were involuntary spasms.

“Every single piece of scientific evidence in this case has shown stillbirth,” he said.

But Edward Cameron, an assistant district attorney, countered that testimony showed Dr. Gosnell did not always use digoxin and that it did not always work as intended. He quoted a former clinic worker with medical school training but no doctor’s license who testified that the drug “wasn’t giving the desired effect, the heart was always beating.” The prosecutor cited Pennsylvania law stating that if a baby delivered during an abortion “shows any sign of life, it’s considered alive — a heartbeat, breathing, a cry, movement.”

I'm skeptical that Twitter drives traffic to websites. But if it does, this ought to work...

What's more disgusting than late-term abortion? This scheme to exploit it by hiring actors & secretly taping doctors. wapo.st/11wBHIW

— Will Saletan (@saletan) April 29, 2013

Via Twitchy, which calls Saletan "soulless."

"Are there more abortion doctors like Kermit Gosnell?"

"And do we want to know?"

"In a surprise move, the defense in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial has rested without calling a single witness."

"The news comes on the heals of a clarification by Judge Jeffery P. Minehart about a mix-up in the dismissal of one of the murder charges yesterday."

It's all in the closing arguments. What would you argue if Gosnell were your client?

The intersection of Comics Curmudgeon and Dr. Kermit Gosnell.

Comics Curmudgeon, April 23, 2013, reads "Beetle Bailey":

Haha, are you tired of dry, lifeless hamburgers, Sarge? Why not enjoy this burger? It’s made up of flesh that’s been shredded into innumerable tendrils by an enormous industrial meat grinder; yet somehow, impossibly, that flesh is still alive, still moving, those tendrils writhing and squirming. The abomination has no eyes, so it cannot see, yet somehow it still senses the presence of another living thing, and so it drags itself impossibly across the plate, leaving an oozing trail of blood behind. It moves ever so slowly, and Sarge is paralyzed in terror as it twitches towards him. It hungers, he knows; it hungers for revenge, and to feed. He feels the clammy touch as the leading edge of this pulsating meat-mass touches his hand. He wants to run, wants to scream. But he cannot.

NYT, April 23, 2013: "Philadelphia Abortion Doctor Is Cleared on Some Counts."

Dr. Gosnell’s lawyer, Jack J. McMahon... dismissed prosecutors’ arguments that an arm movement by one of the fetuses, known as Baby C, indicated that it was alive. He said that the movement was “one spasm” but that the fetus was not breathing....

But Edward Cameron, an assistant district attorney, said that Baby C responded and “pulled back” when touched by medical staff. “That’s voluntary movement, and that’s all the law requires,” Mr. Cameron said. “That baby was alive.”... Mr. Cameron also highlighted the case of Baby D, which he said was 10 to 15 inches long and had a head “as big as a pancake.” It was moving when it was delivered into a toilet, Mr. Cameron said.

"Can you think of any reason why the neck was severed if that baby was not born alive?"

The prosecutor takes a different perspective on what Kermit Gosnell's lawyer had asked the medical examiner: "Based on the totality of the evidence... you cannot testify to anyone that this fetus was born alive?"

Also: "Former employees testified last week that Dr. Gosnell gave different explanations for why he kept up to 30 specimen jars containing fetal feet." What were the explanations? Some special reason for keeping the feet? Fetus feet... feetus... a sick pun?

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

Serial killers often like to keep "trophies" from their victims.

Ruth Anne Adams said:

You must know that a strong pro-life symbol is the thing called "Precious Feet." I bet Gosnell knew that, too. 

Dr Weevil said:

Yes, a lot of prolifers wear lapel or dress pins depicting the soles of unborn babies' feet. The point is that they are utterly and obviously human even when the baby is only a few months along. The friend of a friend I first saw wearing this said that they're actual size, too, which is part of the point. (I forget what number of weeks they were actual size for: I'm sure anyone interested could find out.)

I'm sure Ruth Anne is right: Gosnell kept the feet of his victims rather than some other body part as a sick sick joke aimed at prolifers.

"But, why wasn’t more written sooner?"

Asks Melinda Henneberger at The Washington Post.

One colleague viewed Gosnell’s alleged atrocities as a local crime story, though I can’t think of another mass murder, with hundreds of victims, that we ever saw that way. Another said it was just too lurid, though that didn’t keep us from covering Jeffrey Dahmer, or that aspiring cannibal at the NYPD.

Yet another said it’s because the rest of the country doesn’t care about Philadelphia — that one was especially creative, I thought....

That would explain covering the cannibal cop. It happened in New York. As they say: Only in New York! But who cared about Milwaukee?

I say we didn’t write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. 

Come on. Add the obvious: The media perceive the Gosnell story as a threat to abortion rights.

By the way, why are we calling what he did "abortion"? Just as a matter of clarity in the language. The grand jury report says that his method of ridding women of their unwanted late-term pregnancies was to induce labor and deliver the child. That's not abortion. That's childbirth. We're not even in the gray area where a strange term like "partial-birth abortion" could be used. It was complete birth, followed by murder. Why don't abortion rights proponents come down hard on that distinction? He wasn't an abortionist (in most of these instances), but an obstetrician-murderer. If abortion rights proponents don't want to talk about that, I'd like to hear exactly why they have a problem.

"But I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective..."

"... of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories — if the sick-making was done by 'our side.'" 

Says Megan McArdle. She rejects the excuse that it's not a national issue — that murder is a matter for state law. I would say that there are plenty of general policy issues you can extract from that story — at least as many as we get from the Newtown murders and the George Zimmerman case (to name 2 stories that have received massive national press).

The linked piece dithers, but I think it's a confession that she just didn't want to have to think about it. It was squeamishness and a political commitment to abortion rights that she didn't want rumpled.

Let's talk about the morality of the seen and the unseen. This is a shallow morality that infects our lives. If the human entity is inside the womb, and it is cut into pieces that is one thing, but if it's "partially born" so that a nurse sees it clenching and unclenching its fists as it meets its demise, it's another. And if it slips entirely out, and everyone sees a living child and then the doctor severs its spine, then everyone is supposed to know it's murder. From the inside, these deaths are all the same. But no one sees from the inside of that now-dead brain. Why not shine a bright light on Kermit Gosnell and yell monster? Make it clear to everyone that you think he is so different from properly professional abortionists.

If you don't, you reveal that you have a nagging suspicion that he is not. And that's the one thing you don't want anyone to see.

IN THE COMMENTS: Matthew Sablan says:

The thing is, you don't even have to frame the story about abortion. I fully acknowledge Gosnell is probably not what most abortion providers do. It needs to be framed as another example of how the state failed to protect its people.

I respond:

I agree that's the way those who support abortion rights should cover it. But why did they not jump at the opportunity to display so vividly that health care services to the poor (or to women) are not what they should be and no one cares?

They didn't want to risk that. There's a deep fear — true shame — about this other matter that I'm talking about. 

"Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story."

"The dead babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failures. It is thoroughly newsworthy."

"Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that," [says the grand jury report]. "But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."...

Is it even conceivable that an optometrist who attended to his white patients in a clean office while an intern took care of the black patients in a filthy room wouldn't make national headlines?

But it isn't even solely a story of a rogue clinic that's awful in all sorts of sensational ways either. Multiple local and state agencies are implicated in an oversight failure that is epic in proportions! If I were a city editor for any Philadelphia newspaper the grand jury report would suggest a dozen major investigative projects I could undertake if I had the staff to support them....

That's Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, challenging the news media to explain their noncoverage.

"It didn't have eyes or a mouth but it was like screeching, making this noise."

"It was weird. It sounded like a little alien."

The nurse — who'd been "handed a 18- to 24-inch-long newborn in a glass pan by an assistant who asked for her help" — said she was "so 'freaked out' that she left the room and did not know what happened to the baby."

"Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere – because they were too pregnant."

"For Dr. Gosnell, they were an opportunity. The bigger the baby, the more he charged."

[Adrienne ] Moton, the first employee to testify, sobbed as she recalled taking a cell phone photograph of one baby left in her work area. She thought he could have survived, given his size and pinkish color. She had measured him at nearly 30 weeks....

Gosnell later joked that the baby was so big he could have walked to the bus stop, she said.