I’ve been walking around the last few days with the name “Kermit” in my head and vomit close to the surface. You almost have to be made of Teflon to be able to stomach the events that are being laid out in a courtroom in Pennsylvania…tales so horrific it makes me wonder if history is repeating itself here and now and we’re stuck in Nazi Germany. The facts are as gruesome as some of the worst concentration camp stories, and the surrounding population is just as oblivious.
Kermit Gosnell ran an abortion clinic in Philadelphia in which he did things so atrocious it’s difficult to speak of them. An untold number of babies died along with at least one woman. At the moment he is on trial for only eight counts of murder.
And up until a short while ago, the mainstream media was silent. ABC, NBC, Yahoo, CNN, you name it. They. Said. Nothing. Scarily 1984-ish if you ask me, but not surprising in the least because a media that protects and fights for the slaughter of the innocent in the name of freedom of choice, has to do so to the very last, and this story is the very, very last.
This story is a pro-choicers worst nightmare in that it punches every last bit of carefully-formed rhetoric in the gut with the horrifying truth that abortion IS murder—that the blood and body parts of the innocent are strewn over all abortion clinics, not just the ones where they’re visible. The media aren’t silent because they don’t feel like reporting on it (although that might be the case in a few instances), they’re silent because in their minds the abstract idea of abortion is more important than the deplorable reality—so they must keep people in the dark.
Because that’s just what abortion is to the average Joe: an ideal, words, catch phrases, and abstract principles carefully constructed to be unconnected to our daily lives, yet in reality they mean the difference between life and death. Meaningless words like “fetus” or “blob” are used instead of “baby” or “human.” And the next young pregnant teenager “takes care of” her “problem” and goes back to work at McDonalds the next day, telling herself nothing’s different. That young woman matters little to the rich and powerful and to those who control the media. For them, abortion becomes the necessary “evil” that paves the way to more money, better careers, freedom of choice, empowerment, or whatever else—all of which, in their minds, are worth protecting at whatever cost. And the cost is tremendous—a generation of humanity discarded as if they were trash.
Honestly, I don’t want to read the reports about Kermit’s practice. I don’t want to look at the pictures or read the chilling first hand reports about the atrocities done there in secret. I want to pull the covers over my head and wish that the world wasn’t as it is—that people saw the truth of their actions and stopped doing bad things. And I want to fume with impotent anger at this man and his paid minions, and condemn him to places I don’t personally want to go.
But those things are unhelpful and unproductive, and they only serve to bring me to despair in humanity. What is needed is prayer—and boatloads of it. I must struggle with myself in order to see this man’s humanity—he has a spirit and a soul and is capable of seeking forgiveness for his actions. Seeing “humanness” was something he did not (or could not) do for the men, women, and children who came into his clinic. Let it not be counted among our sins.
I must also pray him into the Love and Forgiveness of Jesus Christ—while still praying for justice to be done. Maybe, at some point, he will come to the confronting reality of what he has done, and at that moment and the moments leading up to it he will need much prayer.
And I must pray for his victims, their families, the clinic workers, every single person who was at all remotely connected to him. This fight against abortion is one hundred percent personal in that we take people one at a time and care for them, separately, individually—just as Jesus did. Jesus’ way was personal and direct. While he didn’t beat around the bush with addressing the consequences of sin, he went straight to the sinners to show his love to them—sinners like Mary Magdalene, Zaccheaus, Peter, the woman at the well, and many, many more. And he does the same, or at least waits to do the same for Kermit Gosnell, and for you and I.
So I invite you to pray for this man’s soul, and all the souls connected in some way with the scourge of abortion, that the Lord God would enlighten their minds and fill their hearts with His love and forgiveness.