President Remains Silent on the Kermit Gosnell Murder Trial

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In April of 2002, then state senator Obama said he was confident no law was needed to protect babies that might be born alive during a failed abortion. Now President Barak Obama is still silent on the murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell.

Obama opposed the state born alive infant protection bills all three times they came before the Illinois state senate. When the 2003 version of the Illinois proposal was assigned to the Senate Health and Human Services committee chaired by Obama, he opposed the bill and it failed four-to-six in committee.

Jill Stanek, a Chicago nurse who helped raise concerns in Illinois about babies born alive after botched abortions, is not surprise by the President’s silence on the matter. “Kermit Gosnell would have been one of the abortionists in which Obama had ‘confidence,’” Stanek wrote on her website Monday. “Gosnell was committing abortions in Pennsylvania at the very time this bill was being debated in Illinois. Who knows, perhaps Gosnell was ‘snipping’ the spinal cord of an abortion survivor at the moment Obama testified to his sterling character. After all, the grand jury report stated Gosnell likely killed ‘hundreds’ of abortion survivors during the three decades he was in business.”

Stanek further noted, “Although President Obama had no trouble commenting on the ongoing Trayvon Martin case, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said today Obama wouldn’t be commenting on the Kermit Gosnell mass murder case because he ‘cannot take a position on an ongoing trial’ or ‘comment further on an ongoing legal proceeding.’”

The New York Times has shown a similar bent toward what it says it can and cannot report on. A quick Google search shows that the Times ran almost 300 articles concerning Trayvon Martin and two about the Gosnell case during the same time period.

Gosnell’s murder trial began in March and is expected to last at least until the end of April. The grand jury report released in January 2011 provided vivid detail of “live, breathing, squirming babies” being born and then terminated. While he is being prosecuted for the deaths of seven babies, the grand jury report estimates hundreds were killed.

“By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care,” the grand jury report said. “But that was not what the Women’s Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that ‘snipping.’”

“Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings,’” the report continued. “Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the ‘snipping’ was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. But all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all. Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files.”

When a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney about the trial and Obama’s position while in the Illinois legislature, Carney responded; “The president is aware of this. The president does not and cannot take a position on an ongoing trial.”

Fox News reporter Ed Henry asked: “The president as a state senator in 2003 voted against a bill that would provide medical care as I understand to babies who would be born after a botched abortion like this. The president at the time said he couldn’t support it as a state senator because he felt like any doctor in that situation would take care of a child. When you hear this kind of evidence, it suggests there is at least one doctor who apparently did not. I understand that you can’t deal with the deliberation of the case. But is there some legislative solution or at least a conversation that needs to happen in Washington because on guns you were just saying, we need common sense reform. We need to save lives. In this case do we need to be saving lives as well?”

Carney again refused to comment on the case, saying the President could not speak to ongoing criminal investigations. The President has spoken to the Trayvon Martin and other cases since taking office. Apparently he just can’t speak to those in which he has proven to be on the wrong side of an issue.