As a show that is unabashedly anti-abortion, it's not surprising that those on "The Five" promote anti-abortion lies and propaganda. Such is the case with their newfound outrage over an alleged media "blackout" of the trial of a Philadelphia doctor who performed illegal late term abortions. Not content with the publicity that this case has received, the anti-abortion lobby is trying to shame the media into more coverage in order to promote the meme that Gosnell's hideous clinic is the norm for abortion clinics and thus provide fodder for their campaign to end abortion. Fox News wasted no time in covering this faux outrage which was promoted, in part, by Fox's anti-abortion liberal Democrat (?!) Kirsten Powers."The Five" jumped on board after not having mentioned the trial at all. They followed this up with more anti-abortion agitprop including the Fox enabled lie that President Obama supports the kind of abortions performed in a clinic that is clearly not representative of America's abortion providers. If there is any doubt that Fox "News" is a conduit for those whose policies would create lots more Gosnell's, this show should dispel it.
Kimberly Guilfoyle recounted how she was one of the few press people allowed into the trial which, for her, is one of the "most disturbing" cases she has witnessed. Eric Bolling then pontificated. Forget Hitler cuz according to Bolling, "Gosnell is one of the most evil people to have ever walked the earth, bar none." Bolling lied when he said that the mainstream media is "ignoring" the case when data shows that it was covered by other media.( Fox covered it the least.) Bolling then proffered this gem: If they [the left] went in and saw all the things you saw in the courtroom and saw a Palin for president or Romney for president sticker, don't you -- the left would be -- every show on the left would be about that, about an evil conservative doctor." (WTF?)
Greg Gutfeld, who thinks that women who have abortions are "morally inept" proffered this gem: "Maybe if the fetus was in Gitmo it would get an editorial in The New York Times." (Hardeharhar) Andrea Tantaros followed up with this gem: "Or needed birth control." Gutfeld expressed dismay that "pro-lifers" are being blamed for Gosnell because they "scare people" away from abortion clinics. (Hey Greg, how would you like it if you had to pass a screaming gauntlet when you access health care?) And in a truly LOL moment, Gutfeld, who mocked efforts to raise awareness of hunger in America, then feigned concern for the poor minority community: "I mean, this is a crime against not just children but poor minority children. Where is Sharpton? Where is Jesse Jackson? Donna Brazile's first instinct was to go on Twitter and to criticize "The Five." These are black babies that are dying." (Funny, the gang don't seem to have the same concern about GOP attempts to further dismantle their safety net)
Bob Beckel praised Kirsten Powers who "called out the mainstream media." Tanataros criticized the president for not being sufficiently angry and mentioned his call to Sandra Fluke. Bolling cited how Obama expressed a connection to Trayvon Martin. Just when you think that Bolling can't get any more stupid, think again. He suggested that if Newtown can be blamed on the NRA, the Gosnell trial could be blamed on Planned Parenthood. (WTF?) Planned Parenthood offers safe, legal abortions - no connection to Gosnell.
Gutfeld then played the discredited and truly despicable Obama-supports-infanticide card: "And he [Obama] felt it was wrong to get in between the patient and the abortionist if the baby was born alive and he said that the abortionist would never let that happen. That's why he is on very thin ice when he can't talk about this sort of stuff." Lie - Obama objected, as did some Republicans, that the Illinois "born alive" bill conferred personhood on fetuses and would thus have prohibited abortion in the state. He also felt that the law would force doctors to revive non-viable fetuses. At the time of the bill, promoted by the anti-abortion lobby, there was already a state law that protected "born alive" fetuses - a law supported by Obama. There is NO connection between Gosnell and Obama's opposition to the Illinois bill.
After Gutfeld said that fetuses don't have a voice, Guilfoyle said that "The Five" does and that's why they'll keep on covering it.
While those "pro-lifers" on "The Five" are concerned about poor, minority children, they don't seem to be as concerned about poor, minority women who went to Dr. Gosnell because Medicaid doesn't cover abortion and Gosnell offered low prices. Thanks to "pro-lifers," abortion is becoming less accessible and affordable. "Pro-lifers" want to shut down Planned Parenthood and that will mean that poor, minority women will have less access to contraception and that, in turn, will result in more unplanned pregnancies and more unsafe abortions like those done by Gosnell. But the pro-lifers on "The Five" care about poor, minority babies - women, not so much!
You fail to understand that women’s reproductive choices ARE legal, whether you personally approve of them or not. The issues in the Gosnell case are not about whether women have a right to terminate a pregnancy. They have to do with what happens when poor women become desperate, particularly when they don’t have any options or don’t know what those options are, and people like Gosnell take advantage of them.
Your comparison to heroin use is odd, but beyond that, it’s simply offensive to compare someone choosing to take addictive narcotics with a woman making reproductive health choices. The comparison with assault weapons is even sillier, and it’s odd that you would try to shoehorn that into your response.
Science absolutely does not “prove” that a fertilized egg is just as human as a fully developed fetus. It is a collection of cells that are starting to form. It is not a baby with any consciousness or sense of identity. If you’re saying that just a collection of cells is the same as a fully matured new baby, then you must also believe that amoebas are intelligent life forms, that bacteria and viruses are intelligent life forms, and that all forms of life on this planet, including plants are life forms that should be getting the same protection. Which is a ridiculous argument. As is your statement about the “baby’s right to live” when what you’re discussing is again, a collection of cells starting to form.
The laws we already have on the books make very reasonable and proper restrictions on when during a pregnancy we all agree that the baby has developed far enough that terminating it is impermissible. And those are some of the ones being used to prosecute Gosnell, and they will likely result in a long and severe sentence for him.
It is not up to you or anyone else to tell a woman what her priorities are in the event that she gets pregnant. Who are you to determine what her situation is? Who are you to lecture that woman? Women make the hard choice to have abortions for a variety of reasons, and not just because the pregnancy was “inconvenient” or an “accident” and it is frankly offensive to hear someone tout that as a primary motivator. In many cases, the woman in question cannot afford to go through a pregnancy and/or cannot afford to care for a newborn child. In many cases, the woman would like to have the child but has a medical problem that will make it unsafe for her to do so. It is not up to you to tell that woman to carry a child to term whether she likes it or not.
Your argument about handicaps is specious. If you mean that the parents shouldn’t have the right to terminate a pregnancy if the doctor tells them that the fetus has a variety of major issues that will potentially give the child an extremely difficult and/or short life, your argument is even more specious. It is not up to you to tell those parents that they should bear a child just to watch that child suffer. There are some really serious birth defects that can render a child unable to see, hear or even breathe upon birth. There are defects where the child’s organs simply don’t form, and those organs can include the brain. Who are you to tell the parents that they should bear a child under those circumstances?
In the case of a late-term abortion, this isn’t something that anyone does lightly and you know it isn’t. That’s a situation where there are complications that come up, once again either threatening the mother’s life, or insuring a situation where the developing baby is already compromised for a number of reasons. That’s when a doctor is forced to discuss options with the parents about what can be done to save the mother’s life and ease everyone’s pain. Kermit Gosnell’s little setup was nothing like this, and deliberately trying to fog the difference between a medical clinic and a man taking advantage of poor women is deeply, deeply offensive to anyone who understands these issues.
Your idea of somehow conflating parental responsibility to apply to a collection of cells in the process of formation is a heck of a reach. Your attempt to describe abortion as an automatic felony is both uniformed and again, offensive. We’re not talking about a 2 year old child. We’re talking about an undeveloped fetus that a mother chooses not to carry to full term. That is NOT a felony and you should know that. That is a medical procedure and a decision made by a doctor and a patient – one that you don’t get to make for them. If you’re thinking this is a matter of law, then you need to look at the Supreme Court rulings on the matter – they’ve repeatedly affirmed that women and their doctors are well within their rights to make this choice. If your goal is to overturn that, good luck. Right wing state legislatures have been trying for decades, and they always lose, even while they rile up their more hardheaded fans. Your logic about wanting the undeveloped fetus to have the “highest level of legal protection” smacks of the same thinking that we now see prompting right wingers to propose more and more legislation to chip away at the basic right already affirmed by the Supreme Court.
And while we’re on the subject of more and more legislation, I thought that right wingers wanted LESS government, not more.
Let’s be very clear about what the Gosnell case is, and what it’s about. It’s the story of a man who was taking advantage of poor non-white women in Philadelphia who didn’t understand what their abortion options were. He was taking their money to perform procedures way past the time that any real doctor would ever do them. It is already illegal around the country to perform these procedures on fetuses that have passed a certain number of weeks, and what Gosnell was doing was essentially delivering slightly early babies and then killing them. He also inadvertantly killed one of the mothers as well. He was arrested and charged in 2011 and the end of this trial could see the man get the death penalty. And the point of the story is that this is a rare case where uninformed and disadvantaged women were so desperate that they turned to someone like this. If the right wing had its way and abortions were banned outright, you’d see a whole lot more Kermit Gosnells doing things like this in the shadows.
In 2011, the matter was covered, particularly on CNN, but not as much on MSNBC or Fox. Fox actually had the lowest time on the story of those three channels. Print media covered it too, with Planned Parenthood condemning Gosnell’s actions and Katha Pollitt in The Nation clarifying what the story meant about poor women’s access to health care. Around this time, the judge in the case issued a gag order, trying to stop all the sensationalistic stories and allow the trial to proceed in the courtroom and not in the press.
Flash forward to 2013 and suddenly the right wing is up in arms that this story isn’t front page news. Never mind that it’s a gory, unsettling, revolting story that no newspaper would plaster on its front page. Never mind that it was already covered two years ago and there’s a gag order. Never mind that it will certainly get a blip of coverage when the verdict and sentence are announced. No, these guys want the story to be front and center NOW. But not because they want to actually talk about women’s rights to health care or the realities of what happens when those rights are chipped away.
No, just as the article above discusses, they want to make Kermit Gosnell’s place some kind of example of a typical abortion clinic. Which is ridiculous on its face, unless you’re so emotionally caught up in the issue that you can’t see it. And that seems to be the case with a lot of right wing media personalities. And it’s even sillier that they want to bring up a “gotcha” vote that the Illinois GOP tried to foist on state Democrats including President Obama back in the day.
The reality of late term abortions is that they aren’t done unless there’s a heck of a medical issue requiring that something be done. For example, you could have a very sick mother or fetus, where continuing the pregnancy could kill the mother. You could have a fetus with severe enough birth defects that it cannot survive delivery. In cases like this, usually even right wing couples will weigh that decision and end the pregnancy – both to save the mother’s life and to spare the suffering of a non-viable fetus that wouldn’t last more than minutes outside the womb. But you won’t hear about this in all the talk on right wing stations about late term abortions. If you were to listen to those voices, you’d think that these women were just cavalierly deciding to to undergo what is a serious medical procedure. It’s clear that these voices neither understand the procedure nor the difference between a real clinic and the quick cash operation Kermit Gosnell was running.
It is important that this false narrative be challenged every time it raises its head.
A terrifying but very real possibility. That panel is made up of people who are truly evil to a variable degree. I’m particularly disappointed with Beckel.