To the extent that physicians and other medical professionals allow themselves to see their role as one of mere utilitarian instrumentality they become part of a highly dangerous culture in which each of us must prove our “normalcy” and even our value in order to receive treatment, survive, and be allowed to be born.

Physicians and the Culture of Death

by Bruce Frohnen

Even during an age in which acts of callous brutality have become common, the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell shocks. It was Gosnell who ran the filthy abortion clinic in which live babies were murdered, women were subjected to “treatment” by unlicensed assistants (including massive and even deadly doses of drugs), and fetal remains were kept in jugs, jars and cat food containers. His conduct still shocks any conscience left functioning in our culture of death.

Sadly, while certainly shocked, I can’t say that I wassurprised by the Gosnell revelations in the sense of finding them unexpected. Indeed, what is perhaps most disturbing in this horrifying series of events is the genuine mainstreaming of the attitude that produced them. 

One could begin with the callous disregard shown by the mainstream media for the story itself. Most media outlets sought to ignore or bury the story, with all its embarrassments for the abortion industry. 

 But even more disturbing is the increasing sense in which Dr. Gosnell’s practices are outside the mainstream of medical ethics, not on account of what he did, but rather on account of how bad he was at doing it. 

I do not mean by this that all physicians believe in the value of infanticide. And, indeed, there are many, many conscientious physicians who seek to protect life from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death—what one would think would be the natural position for one who has chosen the healing arts as a vocation.

Moreover, the people of Pennsylvania at least have enough good sense to forbid abortions after the unborn child reaches 24 weeks, and few physicians in that state, apparently, are willing to abort children after 20 weeks. 

 But Gosnell generally is condemned in the press, not for performing late term abortions, but rather for giving later term abortions “a bad name” by performing them in an unsafe, unprofessional manner.

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