Culture of death update

Mark Steyn weighs in eloquently on the zombified Left's creepy, soulless attack on Rick Santorum. Just a bit:

Two weeks ago I wrote in this space: "A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present and future." Whatever my disagreements with Santorum on his "compassionate conservatism," he gets that. He understands that our fiscal bankruptcy is a symptom rather than the cause.

The real wickedness of Big Government is that it debauches not merely a nation's finances but, ultimately, its human capital – or, as he puts it, you cannot have a strong economy without strong families.

Santorum's respect for all life, including even the smallest bleakest meanest two-hour life, speaks well for him, especially in comparison with his fellow Pennsylvanian, the accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell, an industrial-scale abortionist at a Philadelphia charnel house who plunged scissors into the spinal cords of healthy delivered babies. Few of Gosnell's employees seemed to find anything "weird" about that: Indeed, they helped him out by tossing their remains in jars and bags piled up in freezers and cupboards. Much less crazy than taking 'em home and holding a funeral, right?

This is one of Steyn's best. Read the whole thing and pass it on. (My related posts here and here.)

Meanwhile, in Maryland, more details emerge in the case of late-term abortionists Steven Brigham and Nicola Riley, who allegedly operated a handy drive-thru style service in which the patient would be induced in New Jersey but deliver her baby expel the contents of the uterus in Maryland, where it's legal to abort late-term babies. After having her cervix dilated the young woman in question allegedly drove herself to the second location for the finish.

But hang on a sec. If you've never experienced the sensations created by a dilating cervix, whether naturally occurring (bad enough) or chemically-induced (much worse, I'm told), you may have passed over that phrase too quickly. The pain experienced by the 18 year-old as she drove must have been blinding and panic-inducing. And then it got worse; somewhere along the line her uterus ruptured. I don't know what that feels like, thank God. The good doctors were then allegedly forced to dump her at a Maryland hospital. It appears she nearly bled to death. Whether her uterus survived its run-in with safe-n-legal, I can't say. But let's have a round of applause for Justice Blackmun, Margaret Sanger, and all the selfless warriors who made "choice" the most important right of all. It's been very empowering.

The charges:

Brigham was charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of five viable, healthy preborn babies between July 9 and Aug. 13 of 2010, at what his co-defendant Nicola Riley described as a “secret late-term abortion clinic” in Elkton, Maryland.

Four of the babies were female. The one male baby was identified in the indictment as “Male Fetus Brewer.” That little boy was the son of a patient that suffered the life-threatening botched abortion that first drew attention to Brigham’s illegal bi-state late-term abortion scheme.

Big Government's Rusty Weiss reports that the party of death may perhaps claim some extra credit in these deaths: Doctor Charged With Murder Previously Had Frozen Fetuses in His Albany Office – Democrats Prevented Investigation

It was back in 1996 at Brigham's "American Women’s Services" clinic in New York state:

The [seventeen] frozen fetuses were discovered in a freezer at Brigham’s Central Avenue clinic, and were later buried in Albany Rural Cemetery.
Charges though, other than Medicaid fraud, were never brought. John Meekins, a former assistant attorney general who worked the case stated he “encountered political pressure against the investigation from the Albany Democratic machine, including a judge who had ties to the Colonie clinic’s landlord.”

Nothing to see, move along.

And Brigham's history of botched abortions and bleeding women goes back nearly two decades:

Investigators with the New York Health Department and Attorney General's office concluded patients at Brigham's clinics were refused abortions if they did not make extra cash payments, even though their treatment was covered by Medicaid. The clinics also made no arrangements with nearby hospitals in case of emergencies, and at least two women nearly bled to death. One woman required a colostomy following a botched operation, health department records alleged.

Still, Meekins characterized the late-fetal abortion allegations as "nebulous," but he also said several witnesses provided damaging testimony against the clinic.

"In fact, I spoke to an undertaker and he said he picked up the body of a child there that looked to him like it was fully developed. I couldn't get any confirmation of that," Meekins said. But a health department report refers to a coroner describing one of the fetuses as appearing in size to be about 7 or 8 months. [. . .]

In New York, Brigham owned and operated clinics in Nanuet and Colonie, including acting as a consulting physician after his medical license had been revoked by New York in January 1994.

The administrative charges included negligence related to a young woman who nearly bled to death after Brigham delayed getting her to a hospital following a botched abortion. 

Read the whole ugly story here. They don't call it the culture of death for nothing.

Related: Late-term abortionists charged with murders in Maryland

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