Like A Really Bad X Files Episode -- But Not Fiction

From the March 9, 2013 Philadelphia Inquirer's coverage of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell:

Still, West testified, she hated working in the room where Gosnell performed abortions - never more than the night a staffer asked for help with a problem at Gosnell's Women's Medical Society clinic in West Philadelphia.

"There was this clear glass pan, and I saw it, and I thought, 'What do you expect me to do?' " West testified Monday at Gosnell's murder trial.

"It wasn't fully developed," West told the Common Pleas Court jury, referring to the 18- to 24-inch-long newborn in the pan. It didn't have eyes or a mouth but it was like screeching, making this noise. It was weird. It sounded like a little alien."

Questioned by Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore, West, 53, said she did not know what happened to the "specimen" - the term she said she used because "it was easier to deal with mentally."

Yes, like learning to regard Jews as untermenschen, or rationalizing that blacks weren't capable of caring for themselves as free men.  It is amazing what human beings can do to justify evil. Unfortunately, as one of the commenters on the article pointed out, if Gosnell had been a bit cleaner (sterilizing equipment for his black patients, not just his white ones), and had not insisted on performing abortions so late, this would not be a news story at all.

Another Area Where We Are Getting More European

This article in The Atlantic points to another area where if progressives really wanted to be more like Europe, they would be making common cause with social conservatives:

The state's new law restricting abortions to the first 12 weeks is blatantly unconstitutional -- and not that different from what a lot of European nations have in place.

One of the great ironies of American abortion-rights law is that it is one of the few areas of social regulation where America is to the left of Europe. The latest explosion in one of the laboratories of democracy is a piece of legislation in Arkansas outlawing abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, which passed this week when the Republican legislature overruled the gubernatorial veto of Democrat Mike Beebe.

Should this clear violation of the viability framework laid out in Roe v. Wade be allowed to stand -- and experts on both sides of the abortion fight predict that it won't be -- it would serve to make Arkansas the most restrictive state in the nation when it comes to the legal availability of abortion. (It may not actually become the hardest state to in which to obtain an abortion; other states already have less functional though more legal access to abortion). It also serves to make Arkansas the one American state to take a direct European-style approach to the regulation of abortion.

You can argue whether abortion should be lawful or not, but progressives fundamentally believe in the right of the government to tell you what to do about every other part of your life.  If pregnancy resulted from capitalism or attending worship services, I am sure progressives would have no problem banning abortion.

Amazing How Young The Human Brain Develops

From February 26, 2013 Medical Xpress:

A team of French researchers has discovered that the human brain is capable of distinguishing between different types of syllables as early as three months prior to full term birth. As they describe in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team found via brain scans that babies born up to three months premature are capable of some language processing.

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-human-brain-discriminate-syllables-months.html#jCp

Can they understand the syllables that form the phrase "partial-birth abortion"?