I’ve been beating a particular drum lately because of the confluence of topics in the national conversation: gun violence in a few spectacular cases on the one hand, and the horror that has taken place at a particular abortion clinic on the other.
A guest post in the Chicago Tribune adds to the conversation.
As you read this piece, try something: in your mind, read all references to abortions-gone-wrong as “gun violence,” all references to abortion clinics as “gun clubs,” all references to Planned Parenthood as “gun manufacturers and retailers,” and all references to the abortion lobby as “the NRA.”
If you can do this successfully, imagine then the hue and cry that would dominate the news cycles for weeks until the Second Amendment were repealed and all gun owners jailed.
Some choice excerpts below (all bolding mine), but I recommend that you read it all.
“We have no idea how many facilities like Gosnell’s have remained out of sight, out of mind of [the Department of Health] for decades,” the [Philadelphia grand jury] report concluded. The department inspected Gosnell’s clinic only “sporadically” from 1978 to 1993 and never again until 2010. Why? Because “officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions,” the report said. Added an agency lawyer, “People die.”
…
The abortion industry tut-tuts it all as a deplorable, yet a single, isolated incident. It ignores the clinics being investigated for botched abortions or hazardous facilities in Alabama, New Mexico, Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado and Florida. There may be more, since abortion record-keeping is abysmal.
Even Illinois, by law, doesn’t keep records of infants born alive during an abortion, an Illinois Department of Public Health spokeswoman said in an email. Amazingly, Illinois abortion clinics hadn’t been inspected for up to 15 years before the Gosnell case broke, an Associated Press investigation found.
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In a fog of excuses for their failures, that clinic and the Northern Illinois Women’s Center in Rockford surrendered their licenses last year. That’s two out of nine clinics with serious health and safety problems — 22 percent of the state’s pregnancy termination centers. Hardly isolated incidents.
Then there is last year’s Tonya Reaves case; she allegedly bled for more than five hours from a uterine perforation in a Planned Parenthood office in Chicago before paramedics were called, too late to save her.
Astonishingly, the state health department doesn’t regulate Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion provider.
…
Today, who can confidently say exactly how carefully abortion clinics are regulated and inspected? Where are the independent audits, newspaper investigations, legislative hearings and proposals to strengthen those regulations? The abortion industry remains one of Illinois’ most powerful lobbies, frustrating any attempt to further protect women and infants from exploitation of the likes of Gosnell and who knows who else? Whether from apathy or outright hostility against pro-life advocates, we’ve placed too much trust in abortionists and their friends to regulate themselves.
Dear Lord, the shrieks that would justifiably be coming from so many quarters if the various federal and state agencies had so utterly failed or simply refused to execute the laws on the books for fear of restricting access, or if actual gun lobbies and actual gun manufacturers and retailers protected this manner of carnage by resisting all regulation of this Constitutional right!
There *are* regulatory laws on the books in both cases that have been ignored by law enforcement.
In 2010, 15,000 felons and fugitives attempted to illegally purchase firearms. Of those 15,000, only 44 were prosecuted by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. MOAR LAWS will not close that gap.
More restrictive gun laws and expanded background checks will not take the guns out of the hands of criminals. They’re criminals. The gun may be more expensive as the market tightens, but the criminal will pay it, especially since the same law means law-abiding citizens will reliably be lightly armed sitting ducks, less likely or able to shoot back.
With abortion laws, we have the message loud and clear from the grand jury report: “Officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions.” Making sure women got their abortion was more important than making sure women were not treated worse than cattle going to the slaughter.
But for effect, let’s edit that sentence a little: “Officials concluded that an assault weapons ban would be ‘putting up a barrier to citizens’ purchasing weapons.”
Jarring, no?
Some might say “back-alley abortions” are the equivalent in my equivalency to illegal gun purchases? Well, two things:
1) Abortion always takes an innocent human life and harms the mother even when done in optimal conditions, while guns only do so when misused and/or used illegally (i.e., there is never a time when abortion is good, while self-defense is clearly a good use of a gun).
2) Some claim that the reason women were forced to Gosnell was poor access to abortion due to poverty, the solution being expanded access to abortion, presumably through government dollars. That’s equivalent to saying, “Too many people are doing dangerous things to acquire the guns they feel they need so we need expand access to them.” No matter about people dying anyhow because, as the agency lawyer quoted in the grand jury report said, “People die.”
The question we should be asking is not, “Why were women forced to go to Gosnell?” but, “How could someone like Kermit Gosnell do what he did and get away with it for so long?”
A huge reason gun rights supporters oppose almost anything the government proposes these days is precisely because the government has proven itself incapable of such bedrock responsibilities as protecting the innocent and promoting liberty, but entirely devoted to expanding and protecting the made-up “right” to abortion and the control that same government has over everyone’s lives.
Say what you will, but resisting this topsy-turvy governance is precisely what the Second Amendment is there for.