Free Republic

President Obama continues to break barriers in his historical Presidency. Some of them infamous barriers, but he breaks them nonetheless. This past Friday was just such an occasion. Because, to my knowledge, for the first time, a sitting President brought the full weight of the office he holds face to face in support of an organization that killed 339,000 American children, the last year we have records for. Not only that President Obama beamed proudly, as he congratulated the "good work" this organization has done (while killing 339,000 children a year), and pledged continued support from you and me--the American...

When confronted with extravagant, Gosnell-like, Boston-like evil, we should pray that the perpetrators of evil would feel the sword of God’s justice. We should also pray that the wicked men and women involved would experience the incredible, life-changing, sin-forgiving mercy of God.

t’s shaping up to be a dramatic day in the courtroom for those keeping a watchful eye on the Dr. Kermit Gosnell case. According to columnist J.D. Mullane, a writer for the Bucks County Courier Times, the abortion doctor was acquitted this morning on three counts of murder. In a series of tweets from inside the courtroom, Mullane described the dismissals, noting that Gosnell still has five murder charges remaining against him (in sequence from oldest to newest): #Gosnell defense atty Jack McMahon asks Judge Jeffrey Minehart for abort doc's acquittal. Judge listens, takes recess. #Gosnell Judge Minehart acquits abort...

PHILADELPHIA, April 23, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kermit Gosnell's defense attorney argued today that it was “ludicrous” for an abortion clinic worker to believe a baby was alive simply because she saw it moving. Attorney Jack McMahon told the court Gosnell's former employee saw only a baby's final, involuntary movements, not any signs of life. “If we are going in this room to say a baby is born alive, because it moves one time without any other movement, that is ludicrous,” McMahon said. “This wasn’t a baby moving!” Lynda Williams said Gosnell told her the same thing – that the breathing...

A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday threw out three of seven murder charges against a Philadelphia doctor charged with killing viable fetuses while performing abortions. The judge, Jeffrey P. Minehart of the Court of Common Pleas here, granted motions for acquittal of the charges against the physician, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who ran the Women’s Medical Center, a West Philadelphia abortion clinic. Judge Minehart also granted a motion for acquittal in five charges of abuse of a corpse against Dr. Gosnell, who, according to prosecutors, killed fetuses that were alive after they were aborted by plunging scissors into their necks. Dr. Gosnell,...

President Obama will again embrace Planned Parenthood this week, headlining the group's annual gala even amid a growing national focus on abortion. Planned Parenthood, a lightning rod in conservative circles, announced Tuesday that Obama would give the keynote speech at its annual Washington event, joining Dr. Ruth Westheimer and actress Lena Dunham as "champions of women's health." "President Obama has done more than any president in history for women's health and rights," said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. "He understands that access to birth control and preventive health care are economic issues for women and their families." But the ceremony...

During the murder trial today for abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell, the judge dropped three of the murder charges related to the babies he killed. One of the three charges the judge dropped includes a 28-week unborn baby who was killed in an abortion-infanticide and eventually discovered in a freezer at Gosnell’s clinic. Another involved “Baby B,” about whom a Gosnell staffer testified was a newborn child who survived a failed abortion and was still breathing into a shoe box. The third murder charge thrown out was for “Baby G,” who was the subject of testimony of a former Gosnell staff...

When I read that President Obama refused to comment on the murder trial of abortion butcher Kermit Gosnell "because it's an active trial," I knew immediately he wasn't being truthful. In fact, the second I heard about Obama's excuse for dodging the question, I tweeted that ongoing investigations or trials did not preclude his publicly weighing in on the Trayvon Martin case or on the case of his friend and Harvard professor Henry Gates, about which he said the Cambridge police had acted "stupidly." If there ever has been a case of tainting the jury pool, Obama's public identification with...

Kirsten Powers has done a national service, by virtue of her now-famous USA Today column, of putting the news of the trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell on the national radar screen. This, of course, is the horror story of a cesspool in Philadelphia posturing as an abortion clinic, operating without inspection for 17 years. Gosnell, the doctor who ran the place, is formally charged with the murder of one woman and seven infants. However, the grand jury report and testimony of family and staff at the trial indicate that if there were records in this dump, where life and...

A couple weeks ago, I published a blog post discussing the reality of back-alley abortions 40 years after the legalization of abortion. The fact that abortion “clinics” are allowed to operate virtually unregulated in most states (either as a result of a lack of regulations or lack of enforcement) puts the health and lives of Americans in danger. In light of their demands that abortion be legalized for safety reasons, it is the ultimate form of hypocrisy that abortion advocates refuse to support regulations that would make facilities safer for women. The Gosnell trial highlights one such horrific instance of...

If you are the usual run-of-the-mill pro-abortion apologist, you are counting on media indifference, a cloud of smoke, and time to dull the impact of the sensational murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. After all, if the trial is very much under-covered and the edge is take off by fobbing the blame off on pro-lifers [!], then given enough time, it will “all go away”—or so they hope. There are a couple of problems with that optimistic assessment. For starters, there are so many incredibly violent to the point of nausea statement from the Grand Jury’s report that a considerable...

One of the perks of what I do is becoming friends with some of the great thinkers of our time, and one of those is Leon Kass. Kass is the reigning intellectual champion for upholding intrinsic human dignity. He also served splendidly for about six years as the chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics–receiving undeserved brickbats from the bioethical Left–despite, or perhaps better stated, because of–the Council’s incredibly good analytical work about the vexing bioethical issues of our time, including cloning, the definition of death, and the transhumanist impulse, among other issues. Kass was recently interviewed by the Wall...

Everyone in the country wants to know how it is that Kermit Gosnell was able to practice under such abhorrent conditions without anyone noticing. Pro-aborts blame pro-lifers. There have also been a lot of questions about how Gosnell was able to practice for 17 years without being inspected. Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic wanted to find out how difficult it was to file a complaint with the state of Pennsylvania. Apparently, it’s extremely difficult. How difficult is it to file a complaint against a rogue abortion doctor in Pennsylvania? It’s a question I had after reading the grand jury report...

Elizabeth Harrington at CNSNews.com reported on horrors described on the last day of testimony before the prosecution rested in the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Kareema Cross, a “medical assistant” who worked at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society clinic for four-and-a-half years, testified that she saw one late-term baby who survived an abortion "swimming" in a toilet and "trying to get out." "Did you ever see those babies move?” asked Prosecutor Joanne Pescatore. “Yes, once in the toilet,” said Cross. The baby “was like swimming,” she said.  “Basically, trying to get out.” Cross told the jury that when Shayquana Abrams...

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...

Toilet In Abortion Clinic Needed to be Lifted to ‘Get the Fetuses Out of the Pipes’ April 19, 2013 By Michael W. Chapman (Warning: Some of the material presented in this story is graphic.) (CNSNews.com) – A witness testified in the Gosnell abortion-murder trial that she saw one baby expelled alive into a toilet where it “was like swimming” and “trying to get out.” According to the grand jury report in the case, clinic workers testified that babies often expelled from their mothers into the toilet and that, in at least one instance, the toilet was lifted from the floor...

President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned speech Thursday at the memorial service for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. But that was to be expected. We all know Obama can give a stem-winder. What wasn’t expected was that this would be by far the toughest week of the Obama presidency—the first time I can remember the president being dealt an unequivocal policy defeat. Only the “shellacking” of the 2010 midterm comes close, and even there a case can be made that achieving the decades-old progressive dream of universal health care was worth losing the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof...

On the last day of testimony before the prosecution rests in the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, a former worker at Gosnell’s clinic testified that she saw one late-term baby who survived an abortion “swimming” in a toilet and “trying to get out.” Kareema Cross, a “medical assistant” who worked at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society clinic for four-and-a-half years, testified in a Philadelphia court today, telling of the horrors of babies who survived abortions only to have their necks snipped with scissors. “Did you ever see those babies move?” asked Prosecutor Joanne Pescatore. “Yes, once in the toilet,” said...

The trial of notorious Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell -- as close to a demonic presence as anything this country will ever see -- was almost a month old when the network blackout finally ended. CNN broke its silence, as did CBS. National newspapers sent reporters to the trial for the first time. They started covering it only because of a national outrage that they would so deliberately withhold this horror story from the public -- for political reasons. Kirsten Powers in USA Today insisted: "This should be front page news. When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop...

If abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell is found guilty of homicide, he will be unique among murderers-for-hire: He set his fees based on weight. "The bigger the baby, the more he charged," a grand jury explained. It recommended he be charged with eight counts of murder -- one patient, seven babies. Despite what amounted to a blackout at many media outlets until last week, you've probably now heard at least some of the details. According to the grand jury report, Gosnell's Philadelphia "clinic" was a filthy abattoir. It stunk of urine. Flea-ridden cats defecated freely, including in procedure rooms. Fetuses...