{"id":4608,"date":"2011-07-16T23:30:41","date_gmt":"2011-07-17T03:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/liveaction.org\/blog\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2013-03-30T17:43:46","modified_gmt":"2013-03-30T21:43:46","slug":"gossnell-cruel-and-unusual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruel and unusual"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>Dr. Kermit Gosnell is a Philidelphia-based abortion provider who stands accused of murdering seven newborn babies and one adult in his septic, vermin infested clinic. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. Capital punishment in Pennsylvania is a two step process: the condemned is first stabbed through the back of his neck with a pair of scissors, whereupon his spinal column is severed. Oh, I\u2018m sorry, I got my facts confused&#8211; I just described how Dr. Gosnell murdered his young victims. The state of Pennsylvania (or any other state) would be precluded from executing people this way by the Eighth Amendment, as it prohibits \u201ccruel and unusual punishment.\u201d This prohibition has led the Supreme Court to place significant limits on how and why convicts may be put to death. In <em>Wilkerson v. Utah<\/em>, the Court declared \u00a0that \u201cpunishments of torture,\u201d such as disembowelment or burning at the stake, were constitutionally impermissible.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3055\" style=\"width: 180px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3055\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3055 \" style=\"margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 15px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"Kermit_Gosnell_mug\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/liveaction.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Kermit_Gosnell_mug1.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"156\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3055\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell<\/p><\/div>\n<p>While these practices may be too gruesome to inflict on convicted murderers, they are par for the course when it comes to killing fetuses. In much of North America, stabbing, dismembering, or burning an unborn baby with saline all remain perfectly legal. Indeed, if Dr. Gosnell had simply paid more attention to basic hygiene, relocated to a state with slightly laxer laws, and (most importantly) killed his victims while they were still completely inside their mothers, he would probably still be in business today. Helping him operate would be two important myths that the abortion industry depends on.<\/p>\n<p>The first is that \u201cterminating a pregnancy&#8221; is a benign procedure. Analogous, perhaps, to terminating a non-responsive Windows program, termination certainly doesn\u2019t end a life or inflict suffering on &#8220;the pregnancy.\u201d Former Vermont governor, medical doctor, and primal scream enthusiast Howard Dean implied as much when, in 2004, he stated that, \u201cNo doctor is going to do an abortion on a live fetus. That doesn&#8217;t happen. Doctors don&#8217;t do that. If they do, they&#8217;ll get their license pulled, as well they should.\u201d This is a curious statement. According to the National Abortion Federation, most abortions take place during the first trimester. However, the Mayo Clinic\u2019s online pregnancy guide indicates that near the end of the first trimester, a fetus has developed a heartbeat and brain activity&#8211;two things typically seen in live individuals. Adding to the confusion are the words of former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson, who has described what she saw while assisting with an ultra-sound guided abortion. In her 2011 book, <em>Unplanned<\/em>, she wrote of watching a monitor and seeing a 13 week-old fetus struggle and kick while being pulled apart. Since struggles, kicks, and heartbeats are usually considered to be signs of life, it would appear that Dr. Dean employs a unique lexicon in which the words \u201cabortion,\u201d \u201clive,\u201d and \u201cfetus\u201d carry denotative meanings at considerable variance from those that they are commonly understood to hold. Well, either that, or I guess he could have just been lying.<\/p>\n<p>The second element of chicanery involves the concept of choice: according to some, unexpectedly pregnant women simply don\u2019t have it. Referring to his daughters during a campaign speech, then Senator Obama remarked, \u201cI am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don\u2019t want them punished with a baby.\u201d To be fair, Obama was talking about contraception. However, when discussing his opposition to the federal partial birth abortion ban (\u201cpart of a concerted effort to roll back the hard-won rights of American women\u201d), the president suggested that the only way for a woman to escape the \u201cpunishment\u201d of an unsupported pregnancy or having to raise an unwanted child is through abortion. In other words, paying someone to kill her baby in a manner similar to what is typically portrayed in an Eli Roth film is her only realistic course of action. Left unsaid is that there is a network of organizations known as crisis pregnancy centers (you can find one in your area to donate to or volunteer with online), who seek to help women through difficult circumstances. Also concealed is the present shortage of healthy infants available for adoption. Keeping this information obscure is an important way that the champions of \u201cchoice\u201d convince women that they\u2019re options are limited.<\/p>\n<p>Even if he is sentenced to die, Dr. Gosnell will meet a far more humane end than his young victims could have hoped for. But no matter what the outcome is for him, we cannot allow it to remain business as usual for his colleagues and their political helpers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Kermit Gosnell is a Philidelphia-based abortion provider who stands accused of murdering seven newborn babies and one adult in his septic, vermin infested clinic. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. Capital punishment in Pennsylvania is a two step process: the condemned is first stabbed through the back of his neck with a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":25841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[20,767,639],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cruel and unusual - Live Action News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cruel and unusual - Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dr. Kermit Gosnell is a Philidelphia-based abortion provider who stands accused of murdering seven newborn babies and one adult in his septic, vermin infested clinic. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. Capital punishment in Pennsylvania is a two step process: the condemned is first stabbed through the back of his neck with a [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-17T03:30:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-03-30T21:43:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/kermit-gosnell.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"262\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"240\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Adam Peters\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Adam Peters\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Adam Peters\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/8d3737c5474673ef3d509010e3cc517b\"},\"headline\":\"Cruel and unusual\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-07-17T03:30:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-03-30T21:43:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/\"},\"wordCount\":776,\"commentCount\":15,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Barack Obama\",\"Kermit Gossnell\",\"Pennsylvania\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Opinion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/\",\"name\":\"Cruel and unusual - Live Action News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-07-17T03:30:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-03-30T21:43:46+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gossnell-cruel-and-unusual\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Cruel and unusual\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/\",\"name\":\"Live Action News\",\"description\":\"Covering Human Rights, Abortion, &amp; 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