Gerald Warner: Feminism driving holocaust of abortion

THE case of Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist convicted of three charges of first degree murder in America, has brought home to some people a few of the ­realities of abortion, which is now a ­global holocaust promoted pre-eminently by the same government whose laws incongruously condemned Gosnell.

Kermit Gosnell's defense lawyer Jack McMahon speaks outside the justice center. Picture: AP

The photograph of a perfectly formed baby girl who survived abortion only to have her spinal cord cut and the account of the same treatment meted out to a baby, delivered into a lavatory bowl, who made swimming movements gave a flavour of the case. Of one aborted 30-week baby the twinkling-eyed mass-murderer quipped that it was so big it could “walk to the bus”.

The total incoherence and amorality of American law was epitomised by the fact that, had Gosnell taken care to kill the babies of whose murder he was convicted inside the womb rather than outside, he would have faced no murder charges. By what perversion of reason does a small rampart of tissue differentiate between non-human and human? The Gosnell case exposed the tangible realities of late-term abortion; but the notion that less developed but still human life has no rights in the womb is both scientifically and morally illiterate. It is time that humanity – if it still merits the name – addressed the massive crime of legalised infanticide.

The scale of this genocide challenges the imagination. Worldwide, abortion is now the leading cause of death, killing as many people as all other causes combined; one in five pregnancies ends in abortion. In the United States 55 million Americans have been aborted; in Britain the total is 7.9 million – the legacy of David Steel, a politician who undoubtedly “made a difference”. UK abortions are currently running at about 200,000 a year, of which 12,000 are Scots. Yet it is still not enough for Planned Parenthood, the Obama White House and all the other acolytes of the culture of death. Later this month a huge pro-abortion conference ­titled ‘Women Deliver’ will be held in ­Kuala Lumpur with the objective of promoting abortion around the world, especially in Christian and Muslim countries where infanticide still encounters resistance.

The United Nations is the leading agency of death. The Obama administration is spending billions of dollars on domestic abortions and “reproductive health” programmes overseas. So demented are the lethal propagandists that Planned Parenthood published a pro-abortion advertisement: “Your baby will thank you”. Nearer home, the current target is Ireland where the Labour Party has manipulated Fine Gael into introducing the weasel-worded Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill. The means by which life will be protected is by legalising abortion up to full term if the mother threatens to commit suicide, despite the fact that psychiatrists have testified that abortion could not cure suicidal ideation.

The cause célèbre to promote this measure was the hijacking by pro-abortion activists of the death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian dentist who died of septicaemia in a Galway hospital. Kitty Holland, an Irish journalist and daughter of pro-abortion activists, wrote a sensationalist story – about which she later stammered disclaimers in a radio interview – claiming refusal of an abortion was responsible for a death which an inquest showed was caused by late diagnosis of sepsis, contraction of E.coli and clinical communication failures. Dr Hema ­Divakar, president elect of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India, stated that abortion was not an appropriate treatment and “if the doctors had meddled with the live baby, Savita would have died two days earlier”.

The Irish government chose the president elect of the pro-abortion NGO International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, active in 124 countries, to chair its inquiry into the Halappanavar case. The coroner’s inquest, meanwhile, made nine recommendations, none of which advised any change in the law: one urged the Irish Medical Council to clarify its guidelines regarding the existing law, the other eight related to issues of clinical administration.

The motor of the global holocaust is feminism. A woman’s right to kill her child has become a totem of “empowerment”. The hypocrisy and euphemism are extravagant. In what other matter of life and death would the term “choice” be used when the individual whose life is at stake has no choice whatsoever? “A woman’s right to control her own body” is self-serving humbug: it is not her body that is shredded and incinerated but someone else’s. Could there be any more unnatural act than a mother – the person designated by nature to protect and nurture her offspring – destroying her baby? What hope for humanity if mother love is extinguished? If there is a hope, it is that moral revulsion is spreading and that the anaesthetised conscience of the Western world may awaken to end this abattoir society. «

Twitter: @GeraldWarner1