Is Gosnell America's "Biggest Serial Killer"?

This post contains quotes, summaries, and descriptions from the grand jury report regarding Kermit Gosnell. Much of this information is very disturbing, including graphic descriptions of violence.

NBC published a review of the Gosnell movie by Robin Marty. She didn't like the film. In particular she took exception to the moniker "America's Biggest Serial Killer," saying:

In the film and in real life, Gosnell was tried on eight charges of murder and convicted on three. That’s a large number to be sure, but a small fraction in comparison to, say, Gary Ridgway (pleaded guilty to 48 counts of murder) John Wayne Gacy (convicted of 33 murders), Ted Bundy (confessed to 28 murders, and was convicted of two) or Jeffrey Dahmer (confessed to 17 murders and was convicted on 15 counts). Since Gosnell was only convicted of three counts of first degree murder, the "America's Biggest" moniker is a bit of a stretch.

If we're going by convictions alone, then I agree with Marty. Gosnell clearly isn't up there (although then neither is infamous murderer Ted Bundy). But if we're going by how many people the person is believed to have killed, almost no one can even touch Gosnell.

And I don't mean because he performed abortions. Marty erroneously assumes people who think of Gosnell as a serial killer do so only because they think of every abortion as murder. No doubt there are plenty of people who think that, but that's not the issue here. I suspect Marty would understand the distinction if she had read the grand jury report (warning: not for the faint of heart, includes photographs and very graphic descriptions). Even if you view abortion as an amoral action, and certainly not as murder, Gosnell still contends for the title "serial killer," and one with an almost unprecedented death toll.

The grand jury report details Gosnell's practice of infanticide in "Section IV: The Intentional Killing of Viable Babies." As if anticipating how people will try to say this was just a sensationalized way to describe late-term abortion, the report explicitly describes "the untold numbers of babies--not fetuses in the womb, but live babies, born outside their mothers--whose brief lives ended in Gosnell's filthy facility." [Emphasis added.] The report also has the bolded subsection "Gosnell and his staff severed the spinal cords of viable, moving, breathing babies who were born alive." Talk about redundant. It's like they couldn't overemphasize the point that we are not talking about late-term abortion.

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But sure, Marty, he's a serial killer only because anti-abortion folk "aren't really talking about the kinds of crimes most people associate with serial killers." I guess murderers are only serial killers if they kill adults or at least big kids. Infanticide doesn't count.

The grand jury report goes on to detail how Gosnell had to have known he would often have to kill viable babies based on his "standard procedure" for illegal late-term abortions.

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Gosnell would cut the child's spinal cord; then he would suction out the brains after delivery, a step which serves zero medical purpose. The grand jury expected Gosnell did so to make it look like he had performed a legal abortion procedure (in some late-term abortions the fetus' skull is collapsed to ease removal from the woman). One of Gosnell's former employees testified that she witnessed Gosnell do this "hundreds" of times. Another employee acknowledged that late-term fetuses nearly always had their spinal cords cut after "precipitating" (Gosnell's vocabulary for birth). A third employee testified similarly:

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The report continues:

Gosnell’s staff testified that killing large, late-term babies who had been observed breathing and moving was a regular occurrence. Massof said that Gosnell cut the spinal cord “100 percent of the time” in second-trimester (and, presumably, third-trimester) procedures, and that he did so after the baby was delivered.

Massof testified that he saw signs of life in some of these babies. He recalled seeing a heartbeat in one baby and observed a “respiratory excursion” (meaning a breath) in another. On other occasions, he observed “pulsation.” Gosnell dismissed these observations as “spontaneous movement.” “That was his answer for if we ever saw anything that was out of the ordinary, it was always a spontaneous movement.”

There's reason to believe that babies born after 24 weeks could survive. In fact, as the report points out, a doctor is required to provide assistance to preterm born babies, and failure to provide assistance is infanticide under Pennsylvania law.

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There's a whole lot more in Section IV of the grand jury report. Testimony about fetal parts clogging plumbing when women delivered in the toilet; one case in which a fetus looked like she was swimming before staff cut her neck; a teenager who delivered a stillborn 30-week fetus at a hospital when Gosnell's clinic was unreachable mid-procedure; a neonatologist testifying that Gosnell's method would cause the baby a "tremendous amount of pain"; and Gosnell describing one writhing child as "chicken with its head cut off." If you think the film portrayal was unbelievable, you should try reading the actual testimony. It's a real life horror story and, in my opinion, overwhelmingly heartbreaking, enraging, and exhausting. The section concludes by stating Gosnell most likely "killed the vast majority of babies" from illegal late-term abortions [emphasis added].

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This is all terrible, but where does it leave us regarding the original question? If we assume newborns should be included in serial killer body counts (crazy, I know!), what are Gosnell's metrics compared to other serial killers?

The grand jury estimated Gosnell performed at least 4-5 illegal abortions (that is, abortions after 24 weeks) every week, and had been doing this for years. To be conservative, let's assume (1) only 3 illegal abortions per week, (2) for only 40 weeks per year, and (3) only for 2 years. That would be 240 illegal late-term abortions. (Let me emphasize there's no reason to make these conservative estimates except to illustrate my "yep he's a serial killer" point. If instead we assumed 4 illegal abortions per week for say 50 weeks a year for more like 5 years, it could be as high as 1,000 illegal late-term abortions. But whatever, let's go with only 240.)

The grand jury believes, based on the evidence and corroborating testimony, that Gosnell killed viable born children in the "vast majority" of his attempts at illegal late-term abortion. But let's say it wasn't the vast majority. Let's say it was only 20% of the time. So even assuming only 240 illegal abortions and even assuming only 20% of them were actually infanticide, that still would mean Gosnell killed 48 babies. That already puts him right up there with the highest number Robin Marty quoted, which was Gary Ridgeway pleading guilty to 48 counts of murder. To be fair, though, Ridgeway is thought to have killed up to 71 people. So if we make some extremely conservative and unwarranted estimates about Gosnell's body count, he'd only be America's 2nd biggest serial killer. No big deal, right?

On the other hand, if we go with what the grand jury actually reported, Gosnell was performing 4-5 illegal abortions per week. Call it 4.5 per week. Even if we still say only 40 weeks and only 2 years (again, no reason to do that really), if we take "vast majority" to mean even just 51%, that puts Gosnell at 183 infanticides, easily dwarfing any other serial killer in American history and, actually, putting him in the top 3 slots for serial killers throughout the world.

Calling Gosnell "America's Biggest Serial Killer" is only a "stretch" if Marty doesn't think there's any significant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide or (more likely) if she just hasn't really looked into this case she opines on. But we can hardly blame her for that. She's only a journalist.


Further Reading:
We've forgotten what belongs on Page One, Kristen Powers, USA Today, April 11, 2013
Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story, Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, April 12, 2013
Why I Didn't Write About Gosnell's Trial--And Why I Should Have, Megan McArdle, The Daily Beast, April 12, 2013
Gosnell and Abortion (summarizing the media silence), Nathaniel Givens, Secular Pro-Life Perspectives, April 17, 2013

Post-publication edit: Wikipedia lists Gosnell as a serial killer under "Medical professionals and pseudo-medical professionals" which it categorizes separately because of "their ability to kill simply and in plain sight." Gosnell is listed for 4 proven victims and "100+" possible victims. Interestingly one of Gosnell's employees, Steven Massof, is listed as the third biggest medical professional serial killers in the world because he confessed to snipping the spines of more than 100 babies.

Anyway, if we count medical professionals and look at possible (not only proven) victims, using the still-conservative estimate of 183 infanticides for Gosnell would make him the 5th biggest serial killer in the world and the 2nd biggest in America after Charles Cullen (a nurse thought to have killed up to 400 people).

It's been five years since Kermit Gosnell's conviction

Yesterday, as pro-life advocates around the United States celebrated Mother's Day, Kermit Gosnell marked the five years of life as a convicted felon.

Gosnell, the notorious Philadelphia abortionist, was convicted on May 13, 2013 of three counts of murder, one count of manslaughter, and 211 counts of violating Pennsylvania's abortion waiting period law. The murder counts were for the deaths of three infants known only as Baby A, Baby C, and Baby D. The manslaughter count was for the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee who died after Gosnell administered her an overdose of sedatives during her abortion at 19 weeks.

Abortion advocates are sick of hearing about Gosnell. He was an outlier, they claim. Why are we still harping on this, five years later?

The truth is we have no idea if Gosnell was an outlier. He, like many others in states with abortion-friendly governors, operated without oversight for years. The reason he finally got caught? His over-prescription of narcotics caught the attention of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

That is part of a pattern. Time and time again, dangerous abortionists operate unimpeded for years, even decades, leaving a wide path of destruction in their wake. The abortion industry routinely refuses to police its own. To give just three examples (which are by no means the only ones):

• Michigan abortionist Alberto Hodari received a $10,000 slap on the wrist in the 2003 abortion death of Regina Johnson; horrifically botched an abortion in 2008; also in 2008, forced a woman to go through with an abortion after she had changed her mind; was cited for numerous health and safety violations in 2009; also in 2009, missed an ectopic pregnancy; and remained in practice until his retirement in 2013. 
• James Pendergraft's medical license was suspended four separate times, but each time, he was allowed to resume his butchery. Like Gosnell, his downfall only came when he was caught dealing drugs—but even now, a Florida abortion facility affiliated with Pendergraft continues to operate without a license. 
• Abortionist Steven Chase Brigham is so horrific, the vehemently pro-abortion blog RH Reality Check reported: "Since the early 1990s, public records show, Brigham’s patients have suffered emergency hysterectomies, severe bowel injuries, severed ureters, and sweeping lacerations to the uterus. Over a period of two decades, Brigham has been barred from practicing medicine in at least six states, sued by his landlords and business associates, and even served jail time for failing to pay taxes. And yet today, Brigham remains in control of a network of 15 abortion clinics in four states, and there appears little that most state authorities are able—or willing—to do about it."

Gosnell himself showed early signs of psychopathy on Mother's Day of 1972:

It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre—the brainchild of Harvey Karman, an eccentric California man without medical training who had served 2½ years in prison for performing illegal abortions in the 1950s. Karman teamed with a young Philadelphia doctor who offered to perform abortions on 15 impoverished women, each between four and six months pregnant, who were bused to the Philadelphia clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972.

What the women didn’t know was that they were guinea pigs for a device Karman had invented, which he called the “super coil.” He had tested it only on wartime rape victims in Bangladesh, where he had traveled under the sponsorship of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

That young Philadelphia doctor, of course, was Gosnell. The way the “Super Coil” worked was that a bunch of razors were coated with a protective gel and wrapped into a ball before being placed into the mother’s uterus. After warming up in the body, the gel would melt and the razors would spring open, cutting up the baby.

Of the 15 mothers who underwent the procedure, nine suffered serious complications, including one who needed a hysterectomy. Others had a punctured uterus, hemorrhage, infections and retained fetal remains. Karman’s conviction (only for practicing medicine without a license) was overturned and Gosnell totally got away with it. 

Imagine if Gosnell's license were revoked in 1972! Karnamaya Mongar, and tens of thousands of innocent children, might still be alive.

Justice delayed is justice denied. If health officials acted promptly to shut down abortionists upon their first offense, countless lives would be saved, and women would be spared injury and heartache.

Pro-life, pro-woman advocates are working hard to make that happen, but the usual suspects are fighting progress. Five years after Gosnell's conviction, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are in court, trying to eliminate an Indiana law that requires annual inspections of abortion centers and reporting of abortion complications.

Gosnell, Four Years Later

This past Saturday marked the anniversary of Kermit Gosnell's 2013 murder conviction. Although Gosnell had countless victims, only four were the subject of the conviction. Three were newborn infants who died when Gosnell "snipped" their necks. One was Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old Bhutanese refugee who Gosnell killed in a botched abortion.

The Susan B. Anthony List writes:

Four years ago today, abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted on 3 counts of murder of babies who he was attempting to abort. Even though the media tried to ignore the case, pro-lifers ensured it got national attention, opening America's eyes to the barbarism of late-term abortion-on-demand.

By the way - what was the only difference between these 3 babies and the thousands of others Gosnell killed? They were on the *outside* of the womb when he killed them. Think about that for a minute.

The Gosnell case galvanized support for two key abortion reforms: increased facility regulations, and bans on abortion after 20 weeks.

On facility regulations, the Supreme Court tragically prioritized abortion industry profits over women's safety in Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt. Pro-life organizations continue to sound the alarm and make the case that the abortion industry cannot police itself; if you haven't already, read over Americans United for Life's incredibly thorough Unsafe report. Until we have a better Supreme Court makeup, we will do the best we can to close dangerous abortion businesses with the few regulations we do have. Thankfully, some of the worst facilities shut down while strict regulations were in effect, and have yet to reopen.

Twenty-week bans have been more successful. Just last week, Tennessee became the twenty-first state to enact one. Of those twenty-one states, ten passed their legislation after Gosnell's conviction. No pro-abortion group has brought a Supreme Court challenge on 20-week bans yet, probably for fear that they will lose and establish a pro-life precedent, as happened with partial-birth abortion bans. Instead, they've brought challenges only in jurisdictions with judges who are known to support abortion, with the result that three states (Idaho, Georgia, and Arizona) cannot enforce their laws. That still leaves eighteen states where medically unnecessary, barbaric late-term abortion procedures are illegal.

We have made progress. But we have a long way to go. May the memory of Gosnell's victims compel us to work harder!

"Gosnell" book review

[Today's guest post is by Crystal Kupper.]

As a grad student/military wife/mom/freelance writer/runner who moved continents last year with four small children in tow, I rarely read anything these days unless it’s a textbook or test result. But when I saw that a husband-and-wife journalism team from Ireland had written a book about Kermit Gosnell, the law-breaking abortionist from Philadelphia, I knew I had to clear my schedule.  

That chance came just a few days after Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer was released on January 24. Thanks to my father’s retirement party, I flew to Oregon on a lightning-quick trip (congratulations, Dad, and your grandkids are expecting you!). Though I spent more time traveling than partying, the flights from Eugene to Philly did give me many uninterrupted hours to both start and finish the book. Sadly, the woman next to me reading Gloria Steinem’s autobiography didn’t seem to notice my pick, but I appreciated the irony from the universe.  

And oh, how ironic the entire Gosnell story is.  

Kermit Gosnell was a wealthy Pennsylvania abortionist in one of Philly’s poorest neighborhoods. Never one to let laws and regulations hold him back from advancing the cause of “women’s health,” Gosnell relied on shortcuts, cats, hitmen, high school dropouts and teenagers, beyond-lazy government officials, complete media silence and absolute fear to keep his clinic at 3801 Lancaster open and running. Despite dozens of clear-cut chances to get caught, Gosnell managed to molest, neglect, physically damage, abuse, harass, violate, steal from, lie to, cheat, racially segregate and murder for decades — and that’s just his women patients.  

Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer (of the documentary Frack Nation fame) stay true to their journalist roots with the story of how the law eventually caught up to Gosnell’s money-making schemes (let’s just say Gosnell took “Reduce, reuse, recycle!” way too far). In 2013, the beach-house owning, cash-rich M.D. was convicted of killing four people, but is thought to have murdered hundreds — perhaps thousands — in a 30-year spree. McElhinney and McAleer describe the investigation inside the grossly-kept Women’s Medical Society in a fairly straightforward, newspaper-ish manner; an entertaining Ann Rule true-crime style wasn’t necessary, as the actual, bare facts are ghoulish enough.  

I was giving birth to my third child when Gosnell was at court. I remember holding my precious, perfect daughter in one hand while scrolling through the news stories with the other, and my brain and heart just couldn’t reconcile the two: a beautiful newborn safe against my chest, while on the other side of the country — in what one day would be very close to my new home — newborns the same age had been stabbed with scissors and had their spinal cords “snipped,” all for their crime of being alive. Gosnell tells it all in a fairly unemotional manner, though the authors’ humanity (don’t tell the good doctor such a trait still exists!) slips through occasionally.  

If you’re just now hearing about this, it’s not your fault. Though Regnery Publishing says that Gosnell was the fourth best-selling non-fiction hardcover over its first week (and a movie is also in the works), the New York Times left it off its eponymous best-sellers list. That’s quite a feat for a book that is currently sold out on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Books A Million (not to worry, one can still download the Kindle version)! Such a blackout would be in keeping with the media’s near-absolute refusal to cover the trial — a topic McElhinney and McAleer devote considerable space to.  

In a major surprise, the only role religion plays in Gosnell is to support what Gosnell does, and from Gosnell himself! In bizarre letters to and a visit with the authors, Gosnell uses several Scriptures to justify abortion as a social good (apparently “Every seed has not its destiny to fulfill its potential” and “Fruit trees only flourish over years when well-pruned in early spring” apparently really mean, “Kill that crying, breathing, swimming bastard baby using thine holy scissors.”). Another irony, given the events of the past week: Gosnell indirectly killed a non-English speaking, disadvantaged female immigrant from Nepal. Crying out for justice for the dead Karnamaya Mongar, however, hasn’t been such a popular, widespread cause [note: SPL fully supports immigrants’ rights to actual, safe, professional medical care in whatever country they reside].  

Can Gosnell be dismissed as an outlier, a “rogue practitioner” as Ruth Bader Ginsburg called him? Reading this book convinced me that the answer is probably no. If states with a fair amount of abortion limits (abortions in Pennsylvania are prohibited after 24 weeks, for example, though that didn’t stop the generous Gosnell) are routinely ignoring filthy, deplorable conditions in abortion clinics and blatantly unlawful workers and practices, as they did with 3801 Lancaster, then what might be happening in my home state? Oregon has virtually zero restrictions surrounding abortion; you can abort your unborn child at 40 weeks for literally any reason whatsoever, no questions asked. If Gosnell could operate for decades in a redder state like Pennsylvania — protected by officials who didn’t want to paint abortion in a negative light — what could be going on in the bluest of the blue states, where violently ending pregnancy is just as much of a sacred right as cheering for the Ducks or Beavers?  

This book isn’t an easy read, but it is a necessary read if you want to be fully informed in the human rights debate. Before 24 hours passed on the last page, I had loaned it out with a near-apology: “This is going to disturb you, but I’m not sorry. You need to know.”  

You do, too.  

Apparently protecting embryos is more extreme than severing babies' spines.

Pro-choice activists mock the most socially unpalatable aspects of the pro-life position. Broadly speaking, pro-lifers believe human life is morally relevant when the human organism begins: as a zygote. This means we oppose killing not only fetuses, but also embryos and zygotes. And so, while we primarily object to surgical abortion, many of us also object to embryonic stem cell (ESC) research, contraception that prevents implantation, and aspects of in vitro fertilization (IVF)—all processes the public tends to be a lot more okay with than abortion.

Pro-choicers like to emphasize these objections, implying or outright saying we’re out-of-touch zealots with whacked priorities. They paint a dystopian picture where women can’t access the most common forms of contraception, people keep suffering from ailments ESC could have cured, and infertile couples have nowhere to turn. They usually go further and suggest we want people to suffer in various ways, or at least we are indifferent to suffering as we elevate the welfare of microscopic one-celled “seeds” over everyone else.

I have plenty of problems with these assertions. It’s obnoxious when people ignore your stated motivation in favor of the secret more sinister motivation they’re sure you have. It’s equivocating to try to claim motivation is more about effect than intent. And the dystopian predictions require a whole host of assumptions beyond “zygotes are morally relevant” to actually come true.

But what annoys me most is the hypocrisy.

If zygotes are morally relevant, pro-lifers have to argue for socially unpopular opinions, like that certain forms of contraception may be immoral. That’s true. But if fetal life is morally irrelevant, pro-choicers have to defend (or, more typically, wholly ignore) socially unpopular realities, like that healthy women abort healthy fetuses 4 months into pregnancy and beyond thousands of times a year. They abort fetuses developed enough that Planned Parenthood can harvest intact organs. They abort fetuses developed enough to sometimes survive the abortion by accident.

Most Americans consider contraception morally acceptable; they’d likely be averse to a worldview that takes a moral stand against certain forms of it. But at the same time, most Americans recoil at the idea of late-term abortion of healthy fetuses carried by healthy women. I think many simply don’t realize how extreme the American version of abortion rights is. (Other first world countries have abortion laws more restrictive than our own.)

Moreover, when darkly predicting what pro-lifers want to do about contraception, ESC, and IVF, pro-choicers are theorizing about what could happen someday if XYZ factors come to pass. But the dismemberment of late term fetuses is happening now. It’s already a reality, and it’s not even a secret.

Remember last year when Carly Fiorina said this regarding the CMP videos?

Fiorina got a lot of flack for allegedly making things up, but pay attention to the nature of the objections. People were quick to point out that the CMP videos never had a scene exactly as Fiorina described. So the objection was “There isn’t specific video footage of what she said!” The objection was not “Planned Parenthood never harvested the brains of fetuses who were developed enough to have a heartbeat or kick their legs.” You know why? Because Planned Parenthood has done that. They don’t even deny it.

The entire CMP controversy is a great example of pro-choicers ignoring the most perverse aspects of the American pro-choice stance. The rampant accusations of edited footage and public deception all focus on whether PP profited in their exchange of fetal organs for money, not on whether they harvest fetal organs from late-term fetuses. They do. But sure, let’s talk more about what might happen with the copper IUD and ignore that we’re ripping babies apart.

(Yes, I said “babies.” I get objecting to calling a zygote or blastocyst a “baby” because of the completely different imagery the word brings to people’s minds. But when I’m talking about fetuses at this level?

Objecting to calling ^that a baby is, to me, just another way of trying really hard to pretend this isn’t happening.)

The typical pro-choice defense here is that late-term abortions are due to fatal fetal abnormalities or threats to the mother’s life. It’s no doubt true that, proportionally, late-term abortions are more likely to be for those reasons than earlier term abortions are. But what research we can find indicates most late-term abortions aren’t done for those reasons. Pro-choice activists try to use heartbreaking stories of planned pregnancies gone horribly wrong to sidestep the more common scenario of healthy late term fetuses aborted in far less dire situations.

For the most part Americans seem to take the “abortion is a necessary evil” perspective. On average, Americans think early term abortion ought to be legal but remain divided on its morality and resistant to late-term abortion. And yet we already have the regular destruction of fetuses who were so developed all but the most insistent pro-choicers would recognize them as babies.

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How much darker would things get if more of America moved from a pro-choice perspective to a pro-abortion one? We’re not even getting into what could happen if our society switched from “abortion: the necessary evil” to “abortion: the responsible, empowering, moral choice.” We’ve already had glimpses of that world, with issues like renaming "infanticide" as "after-birth abortion," claiming that "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person," and resisting requirements to try to save the lives of babies who accidentally survive abortion.

And this is what I mean by hypocrisy – pro-choicers bash us for being concerned about aspects of IVF, but what does the average American have a bigger problem with? IVF clinics possibly shutting down someday, or people tearing babies’ legs off now? Which worldview really has the extreme repercussions here?

Note I’m not saying pro-choice people are all okay with late-term elective abortion. I think--and polls back me up--that most of them are pretty uncomfortable with it. But I am saying it’s a fact of the American pro-choice political platform. And late-term elective abortion isn’t the only extreme aspect of this platform.

This is the platform that forgives Planned Parenthood for failing to report or, worse, covering up rape and sex trafficking. It’s the platform that has inspired Sanders to vote multiple times against criminal penalties for harming a fetus during the commission of a crime. It’s the platform that had Obama voting against legislation to protect preterm infants who accidentally survive abortion—because such protections would “undermine Roe v. Wade.”

Do you follow that? What does it say about American abortion rights if they’re threatened by specifying legal protection to born babies whose parents had wanted to abort? Obama isn’t the only one who sees the problem. When Gosnell was found guilty of severing the spinal cords of born babies, some abortion rights supporters objected to him being charged with murder—because what he’d done was so similar to late-term abortion. You’d think this similarity would suggest a problem with late-term abortion, but apparently instead it’s a problem with how society reacts to killing born babies. We are through the looking glass here, guys, and it's not the pro-life side that pushed us there.

And while most pro-choicers wouldn’t go so far as to outright defend Gosnell’s infanticide, plenty did follow the same strategy they typically follow when we get to the edges of the pro-choice position: “If we just don’t talk about this, maybe it will go away. Let’s keep pretending our defense of abortion has no relation to literal murder. Maybe we should write a snarky blog about how pro-lifers are suspicious of the Pill.”

I think the most relevant abortion debates take an unblinking look at early term abortion and discuss its many moral, legal, and social factors. But I don’t think every single abortion debate has to focus on only the most common forms of it. I think it’s fair to look at the trickier, less socially acceptable implications of a perspective (be it defense of zygotes or lack of defense of newborns). But if pro-choicers are going to scrutinize the edges of our side, they should have the courage to look as critically at their own.