Thread by markomalley.
A teenager from another state may get permission to travel out of state for an abortion without their parents ever knowing. That’s the decision recently released by the Kentucky Court of Appeals.
In a 2-1 ruling last week that was sealed, the majority on the appeals court said they felt obligated to make the decision despite “significant reservations” about allowing Kentucky judges to essentially keep parents from 49 other states in the dark about whether or not their teenage daughter can travel to the Bluegrass State for a secret abortion without their knowledge or consent.
The appeals court reversed Jefferson District Court Judge David Bowles who ruled he did not have proper jurisdiction to consider whether an Indiana girl had the right to get a secret abortion with a Kentucky judge’s permission, using the judicial by[pass provision in the state’s parental notification law that the Supreme Court currently requires.
The Courier-Journal newspaper obtained a copy of the decision and indicated Bebe Anderson, senior counsel for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights supported the decision, as does Derek Selznick, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the ACLU of Kentucky.
Margie Montgomery, executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, tod the newspaper she is worried Kentucky could become a haven for teen girls seeking to escape telling their parents about their pregnancy and abortion. She said she was surprised to hear the bypass provision didn’t already limit it to Kentucky residents and said she would work with the state legislature to fix the problem.
Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council also condemned the decision.
“In a 2-1 ruling last week two Kentucky judges decided that young girls from other states may ask Kentucky judges to give them permission to have abortions without their parents’ knowledge or consent. This means if a young girl in Indiana wants to avoid getting her parents permission, which is required by law in that state, they can go judge shopping in Kentucky for a judge who will allow her to abort her unborn child and her parents need never know,” he said.
McClusky says the decision makes it more important for Congress to pass a bill like the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act that prohibits taking a minor girl to another state for a secret abortion that violates the parental involvement laws of her home state.
“Another avenue the 111th Congress needs to pursue is passing legislation requiring parental notification. The problem is that many abortion clinics lure young girls from their home states that have parental notice laws to states where they can get abortions without their parents knowing,” he explained. “Often the man who gets a young girl pregnant takes her to the clinic. To counter this type of human trafficking they should reintroduce the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.”
Chief Judge Jeff Taylor of Owensboro and Judge Michelle Keller of Covington were in the majority and they admitted to the judge shopping that concerns McClusky. But they said Kentucky’s law makes it so “every minor” gets the bypass and that the law does not place any limits on it to Kentucky residents only. They said the Supreme Court makes it so states can’t prohibit non-residents from obtaining abortions.
Judge Joy Moore of Burlington said Kentucky judges have no “business making any decisions regarding a minor from another state seeking an abortion without parental consent.”
She cited as her basis for rejecting the claims that Kentucky’s abortion laws say “it is in the interest of the people of the commonwealth that every precaution be taken to insure the protection of every viable unborn child being aborted.”
Threads by TSgt, tcg, EternalVigilance and me.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Eyewitness News has learned that a West Philadelphia doctor, his wife and eight other suspects are now under arrest following a grand jury Investigation.
Sources say Dr. Kermit Gosnell faces eight counts of murder in the death of a woman following a botched abortion at his office at 38th and Lancaster Avenues, along with the deaths of seven other babies who, prosecutors allege, were born alive following illegal late-term abortions.
Four of the suspects, some improperly licensed, also face multiple counts of murder for allegedly killing the newborns.
All of the suspects are now behind bars after warrants were served overnight.
Dr. Gosnell, who has practiced in the West Philadelphia neighborhood for decades, is also the target of a federal grand jury investigation into illegally prescribing prescription drugs.
Investigators say during a search of his home, they found $240,000 in cash.
The doctor, in past interviews with CBS 3, has proclaimed his innocence, predicting if charged, he will be acquitted.
The Philadelphia District Attorney has scheduled a press conference for 10:30 a.m. to officially announce details of the arrests and the grand jury presentment.’
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...news reports were filled with stories concerning the events which occurred in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania involving one Dr. Kermit B. Gosnell. He has been criminally charged for the commission of eight murders. Seven children were killed by this man after they were born. This butcher executed them by utilizing a procedure he referred to as "snipping". He severed their spinal cord with surgical scissors which he inserted into the back of their necks. The eighth charge involved the death of one of the mothers from an apparent overdose of anesthetics administered during one of the executions.
...The truth is what "Doctor" Gosnell did is no different than what is done in every procured abortion. The only difference is that it is hidden from view, at least from most of us. The same sonogram technology used for baby's first picture is also being used to guide the instruments of execution or the injection of the chemical weapons. The same deadly "snipping" using surgical scissors is being done within the womb. The same body parts found in the House of Horrors in Philadelphia are suctioned and scraped out of the wombs of women who have been lied to by evil organizations like Planned Parenthood who then try to make it all sound so "clinical".
...We are killing our children based upon the sole criteria of convenience and "wantedness". That is the effect of legal abortion on demand. Usually, the disposal of their little bodies is hidden from our eyes. We do not want to see what an abortion really looks like. When people show graphic images of the remains of a child killed by abortion, they are called "extremists". However, today, the veil was removed for all to see and the House of Horrors reveals our National shame...
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...
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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, January 20, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A massive, photograph-laden Grand Jury Report released Wednesday has detailed the bone-chilling practices of a Philadelphia abortionist, who clinic workers testified had delivered “hundreds” of living, breathing newborn children before severing their spinal cords or slitting their necks to complete the abortions.
Abortionist Kermit Gosnell was arrested Wednesday for eight counts of murder. One of the charges was for the botched-abortion death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, a Nepalese refugee. The other seven were for children who police had discovered, by examining their remains, had been born alive and then killed.
District Attorney R. Seth Williams released the 281-page report that was the basis for the murder charges against Gosnell and nine of his associates. Included in that report were photos of some of Gosnell’s victims.
In the report, the Grand Jury notes that several agencies and groups became aware of what has become known as Gosnell’s “shop of horrors,” but did nothing. They also provide extremely explicit descriptions of botched abortions, late-term abortions and infanticides rarely seen in court documents.
“Pennsylvania law requires physicians to provide customary care for living babies outside the womb. Gosnell chose instead to slit their necks and store their bodies in various household containers, as if they were trash,” stated the report.
The report provided detailed testimony from clinic staff who said that “killing large, late-term babies who had been observed breathing and moving was a regular occurrence” at the filthy clinic: one staffer said such events happened “hundreds” of times.
Another clinic worker, Tina Baldwin, told the jurors that Gosnell once joked about a baby that was writhing as he cut its neck: “that’s what you call a chicken with its head cut off.”
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...
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Slate’s Will Saletan, who definitely pitches his beliefs tent in the pro choice camp, goes into details about the Philadelphia abortion/infanticide mill, which I posted about the other day. He first notes that some pro choice absolutists believe in abortion through the ninth month–and quotes and links them. That’s worth discussing, but rather than repeat that here, I’ll let those interested read the piece, which I link below, for themselves.
He then recites the awful details of what happened at the “clinic,” as alleged in the grand jury report. From Saletan’s “The Baby Butcher:”
According to the newly released grand jury report, [Kermit]Gosnell accepted abortion patients without regard to gestational age. “Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere—because they were too pregnant,” the report explains. “More and more of his patients came from out of state and were late second-trimester patients. Many of them were well beyond 24 weeks. Gosnell was known as a doctor who would perform abortions at any stage, without regard for legal limits.”
This meant killing viable babies. “We were able to document seven specific incidents in which Gosnell or one of his employees severed the spine of a viable baby born alive,” the grand jury concludes. One victim was killed at 26 weeks. Another was killed at 28. A third was killed at 32. Some of the dead were 12 to 18 inches long. One had been moving and breathing outside the womb for 20 minutes. The report alleges hundreds of such atrocities. One employee admitted to severing the spinal cords of 100 babies, each one beyond 24 weeks…
You can argue that what Gosnell did wasn’t conventional abortion—he routinely delivered the babies before slitting their necks—but the 33 proposed charges involving the Abortion Control Act have nothing to do with that. Those charges pertain strictly to a time limit: performing abortions beyond 24 weeks. Should Gosnell be prosecuted for violating that limit? Is it OK to outlaw abortions at 28, 30, or 32 weeks? Or is drawing such a line an unacceptable breach of women’s autonomy?
I want to focus on different question: How is what happened in Philadelphia morally different than what Peter Singer’s values would allow?
Peter Singer has repeatedly stated there is no moral difference between a late term fetus and an early neo-nate–such as at a Princeton conference about abortion that I discussed here at SHS (a post in which I was mainly concerned with his contention that a human being doesn’t have “full moral status” until after age 2). Here’s a relevant Singer quote to our discussion today from the Princeton conference:
Maybe the law has to have clear bright lines and has to take birth as the right time [to outlaw killing], although maybe it should make some exceptions in the cases of severe disability where parents think that it is better for the child and better for the family that the child does not live…The position that allows abortion also allows infanticide under some circumstances…If we accept abortion, we do need to rethink some of those more fundamental attitudes about human life.
Singer takes a very casual view of these matters, including late term abortion. In a 2001 Salon interview, he breezily accepts late term abortion if the mother has “a good reason,” which includes balancing the genders within a family! From the interview:
There’s a difference between early and late abortions. If you have a late abortion, where the fetus might feel pain, then I think you should have a good reason. Because then you’re inflicting pain. As you go through the third trimester, you need to have more serious reasons to end a pregnancy. For instance, I would not support ending a pregnancy only because you want a boy and you’re going to get a girl, because it would reinforce sex discrimination. But if you already have two boys and you want a girl, that could be enough reason for abortion.
And here is what he wrote in a 2007 newspaper column:
Arguably, the fetus first becomes a being of moral significance when it develops the capacity to feel pain, some time after 20 weeks of gestation. We should be concerned about the capacity of fetuses to suffer pain in late-term abortions. On the rare occasions when such abortions are necessary, they should be performed in a way that minimises the possibility of suffering.
Admittedly, birth is in some ways an arbitrary place to draw the line at which killing the developing human life ceases to be permissible, and instead becomes murder. A prematurely born infant may be less developed than a late-term fetus. But the criminal law needs clear dividing lines and, in normal circumstances, birth is the best we have.
So, let us assume that the Philadelphia clinic was run with proper sanitary methods, employed painless killing techniques, and exercised clinical excellence to care for the women, I repeat: How is what “Dr” Gosnell and staff are alleged to have done–late term abortions and induced-premature-birth-and-kill infanticides–any different than what Peter Singer’s “practical ethics” would allow? (Realize that Singer’s recent acceptance of “birth” as a line is not a moral assertion, but just a hedge to keep from having to defend the killing of healthy infants, a “legal” line that he said at Princeton should not be absolute in any event.)
Recapping: Singer supports late term abortion if the the reason to kill is “good,” which, considering his example cited, is a very low standard indeed. He strongly implies that a full term fetus has greater moral worth than a prematurely born baby. Besides, we are repeatedly told we have no right to judge a woman’s reasons.
So, to answer my own question, other than technical issues of clinical procedures and sanitary methods, I can’t think of a single reason Singer’s values would not permit a “professionally” operated abortion/infanticide abattoir. And that should tell us all we need to know about Peter Singer’s values.