Politicians call for an end to the media blackout on Gosnell

Rep. Chris Smith.

Yesterday, ten members of the U.S. House spoke out on the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell and called out the mainstream media for its blackout on the case.

As New Jersey’s Chris Smith eloquently stated:

If Dr. Gosnell had walked into a nursery and shot seven infants with an AR-15, it would be national news and the subject of presidential hand-wringing. …

Will the decades-long major national news media cover-up of the brutality—and violence—of abortion methods ever end? …

Will Americans ever be told the horrifying details as to how — and how often — abortionists dismember, decapitate, and chemically poison innocent babies?

A more valid question has rarely been asked by a politician. Representative Chris Smith – along with Representatives Vicky Hartzler, Scott Perry, Scott Garrett, Roger Williams, John Fleming, Joe Pitts, Keith Rothfus, Andy Harris, and Marlin Stutzman – spoke on the House floor for nearly an hour.

These ten speakers had no qualms about calling out Gosnell – and abortion in general – for exactly what both have done to innocent children. In the U.S., where we have nearly 314,000,000 people, abortion has ended the lives of a number equivalent to one sixth of our population – over 55 million. While every single baby killed is a tragedy, how many Americans are actually aware of the sheer number of deaths we have allowed, in large part by standing by and refusing to show up?

Naturally, the mainstream media is not aiding the American public or leading them to outrage over the horrific things that happened in Gosnell’s clinic. (They are chief among those who refuse to show up.) Americans deserve to have the facts, to realize that this is where abortion leads, to discover that Gosnell is not the only abortionist behaving in such a reprehensible way. Abortion is not and never has been an end in and of itself.

Representative Marlin Stutzman summarized it well:

This is not a discussion about abstract concepts like ‘choice,’ we are talking about brutal deaths of newborn children.

Mr. Speaker, Kermit Gosnell is a predator who must be publicly exposed and openly denounced and that’s why I come to the floor—to bring attention to this case. That the American people are informed of it, aware of it, and realize the acts that are happening within our own country. …

How is it that, in our age of constant news, not a single major news outlet—not a single major news outlet—has devoted serious attention to the atrocities that weren’t committed halfway around the world but in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? Has our national conscience been irreversibly seared by the deaths of more than 1.2 million unborn children every year in this country?

American media is not state-run. It ought not to be beholden to any special interest group – most certainly not the abortion lobby, which targets and kills over 1 million innocent Americans every year. Our media ought to be different from the media of oppressive foreign regimes that cover only issues important to the current government.

Whether President Obama speaks out against snipping the necks of newborn babies or not, the American media ought to be all over the story. The Gosnell trial is a public interest story. Horrific and gory as it is, it cannot escape the public’s attention any longer – not at the hand of a group that was originally designed to inform Americans about injustice, not help cover it up. As Representative Chris Smith said:

In today’s edition of USA Today, columnist Kirsten Powers writes:

‘Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven’t heard about these sickening accusations?

It’s not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page.’

She goes on to point out: ‘A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press.’

It’s time for the American public to play the job of the American media. If the media will not speak out against injustice – or at least relate the facts – we must do it. Join the call to end the media blackout of the Gosnell trial. Start by tweeting #Gosnell and sharing and tweeting this informative photo.

"GONE" by TooManyAborted.com