Why I didn't write about Gosnell's trial -- and why I should have

I could also offer Kliff’s defense, that this is a local crime. But George Tiller’s murder was also a local crime. There was no “national policy issue” involved: murder is a matter for state law. And there was no real question that if Tiller’s murderer was caught, he was going to be tried and convicted for the killing. Nonetheless, lots of national journalists–including Sarah Kliff, for Newsweek–covered the killing and discussed what it meant for abortion provision nationwide.

If I think about it for a moment, there are obviously lots of policy implications of Gosnell’s baby charnel house. How the hell did this clinic operate for seventeen years without health inspectors discovering his brutal crimes? Are there major holes in our medical regulatory system? More to the point, are those holes created, in part, by the pressure to go easy on abortion clinics, or more charitably, the fear of getting tangled in a hot-button political issue? These have clear implications for abortion access, and abortion politics.

After all, when ostensibly neutral local regulations threaten to restrict abortion access–as with Virginia’s recent moves to require stricter regulatory standards for abortion clinics, and ultrasounds for women seeking abortions–the national media thinks that this is worthy of remark. If local governments are being too lax on abortion clinics, surely that is also worthy of note. …

But that doesn’t totally let me off the hook. I knew about the Gosnell case, and I wish I had followed it more closely, even though I’d rather not. In fact, those of us who are pro-choice should be especially interested. The whole point of legal abortion is to prevent what happened in Philadelphia: to make it safer and more humane. Somehow that ideal went terribly, horribly awry. We should demand to know why.