Leon Kass: The Meaning of the Gosnell Trial

Wall St. J ^ | April 20, 2013 | SOHRAB AHMARI

[Steelfish]

April 19, 2013 Leon Kass: The Meaning of the Gosnell Trial Eminent bioethicist Leon Kass on the dangers of a world increasingly indifferent to matters of human dignity.

By SOHRAB AHMARI

The trial of Kermit Gosnell—a Philadelphia doctor charged in January 2011 with, among other things, murdering seven infants who survived abortions he performed—has been under way for a month. But it was only last week that the case was thrust into the national spotlight. Thanks to intense pressure from conservative critics of the media's apparent lack of interest in the case, the rest of the country has now glimpsed some of what went on for years in Gosnell's benignly named Women's Medical Society.

Investigators who raided the clinic in 2010 saw "blood on the floor" and smelled "urine in the air," according to the grand jury that indicted Gosnell. They also found "fetal remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic—in bags, milk jugs, orange-juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers." Members of Gosnell's staff testified that the abortionist would deliver babies who had been gestating for as long as 30 weeks, far longer than the 24-week limit imposed by Pennsylvania law. Gosnell or staff members would gouge the infant's neck with scissors to sever the spinal cord, according to the grand jury report. Gosnell referred to the method as "snipping."

These and other appalling details of the Gosnell trial elicit reactions that might be called revulsion or disgust or horror. The word that eminent bioethicist and physician Leon Kass prefers is "repugnance." This intense human reaction reflects a sort of deep moral intuition, he says, and it is one that deserves much more serious consideration than our too-sophisticated culture allows.

[GeronL]

I think the only coverage here in Dallas was an editorial in the paper declaring that the trial was not about abortion. I bet many liberals/sheeple reading it had never heard of the trial before that

[stevem]

After years of calling for abortions that are "safe, legal and rare," the Democratic Party in its 2012 platform dropped such language altogether in an attempt to appeal to its feminist base.

If they were to amend the platform to be at one with the true Democratic Party philosophy they would say: Any live birth is a failure of cosmic proportions.

[ops33]

The meaning of this trial, for me, is very simple. Abortion is murder.