Open Book: “Gosnell”

The first Wednesday of each month brings Open Book, a blog linkup co-hosted by My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com with a roundup of what participating bloggers have been reading lately.

Gosnell by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer is not easy to read. The style is smooth and fluent, but the topic’s a tough one: Kermit Gosnell, former abortion doctor, now serving life in prison. He killed children who survived attempts to abort them. He was found responsible for the death of a woman who came to him for an abortion and died under what passed for his “care.”

He committed terrible crimes. He is in prison now. Reporters covered the trial as it happened, once they were shamed into it by people like journalist Kirsten Powers. Three years after Gosnell’s conviction, there is now a book that sets down not only what happened, but tells more about the people who were involved. As McElhinney and McAleer tell their stories, the book becomes less about a court case and more about human beings, capable of good choices and bad ones.

I listened to McIlhinney and McAleer talk about their book at CPAC, a political conference in Washington. An odd venue, but perhaps that was the place to reach readers who might not otherwise hear of the book. McAleer was a quiet man, leaving most of the talking to his co-author (who is also his wife).

McIlhenney was not at all quiet. She was passionate and angry as she talked about Gosnell. She was indignant. She called Gosnell “America’s biggest serial killer,” and she meant it. She made no bones about it: she had no objectivity left regarding her subject.

Familiar as I was with the Gosnell case, and as impressed as I was by McElhinney’s passion, I wondered what could be new in the book. As I read, I quickly realized that the close attention to the individuals involved in the case, starting with the investigators, set Gosnell apart from anything else I’ve read on the subject.

The authors’ perspective is unique as well, as McElhinney explains in the preface: “I never trusted or liked pro-life activists. Even at college I thought them too earnest and too religious.”

Fast forward to April 2013 and Kermit Gosnell’s trial in Philadelphia, when everything changed….[T]he images shown in the courtroom were not from activists, they were from police detectives and medical examiners and workers at the 3801 Lancaster Ave. clinic….What they said and the pictures they showed changed me. I am not the same person I was.

The “objective” book about Kermit Gosnell has yet to be written. For now, from that angle, the grand jury report about him will suffice. Why take time for a book-length account of such a sad and painful story, told with a definite point of view?

To meet people like Detective Jim Wood, who was part of the team investigating Gosnell for prescription drug offenses long before the abortion story was uncovered, and to meet Christine Wechsler and Joanne Pescatore from the D.A.’s office. They and many others described in the book were good people who did hard jobs well.

Semika Shaw and Karnamaya Mongar and their families get respectful attention from the authors, much more so than they did from authorities at the times of their deaths at Gosnell’s clinic. Those women are worth reading about.

The authors interviewed Kermit Gosnell in his Pennsylvania prison, dedicating a chapter of the book to the surreal, disturbing encounter. Gosnell’s calmly repeated assertions that he has done nothing wrong boggle the mind after three hundred pages of documentation to the contrary. The book would have been incomplete without the interview. Many people, including the authors, were changed by the Gosnell case; what of Gosnell himself? He hasn’t changed a bit, as the interview makes clear. “I very strongly believe myself to be innocent of the heinous crimes of which I am accused.”

That’s an update, not closure. Closure might not be possible in the wake of the butchery at Gosnell’s clinic. There may yet be some good outcomes, meaning fewer deaths and injuries, if states move ahead with the kind of abortion-facility regulations recommended by the Gosnell grand jury. The authors of Gosnell urge action, not promises.

McElhinney and McAleer are working on a Gosnell film, which they screened at CPAC to an audience that should have been larger. It’s a drama, not a documentary, still in post-production. It looks good, and it will deserve a wide audience. Anyone who reads Gosnell will want to see the film, and anyone who sees the film is going to want to find the book.

For some people, the hard part of picking up the book will be the aversion prompted by the very name Gosnell. The authors share the aversion, but they have nonetheless written a clear and diligently-researched book. They introduce the reader to people worth knowing. McElhinney and McAleer have a sharp eye for medical and legal matters, and a deep concern for justice and human dignity.

The people this book was really written for, though, are the people who aren’t moved by Gosnell’s name or crimes or trial. In Gosnell, Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer are pleading: wake up.  From every page, they reach out to shake the reader out of indifference. As McElhinney writes,

I am absolutely certain that the dead babies spoken of in court were unique people whom the world will now never know. I hope this book and the movie go some way to mark the fact that they lived and in their short lives made a difference. Time will tell. This story can change hearts and minds; it has mine.

Undermining Religious Liberty in the Name of “Health Care”

Congress is about to take a vote on Obamacare: repeal, replace, whatever. Amid all the tinkering, I am not hearing much from Members of Congress about what made the “Affordable Care Act” utterly unacceptable to so many Catholics, including me: the contraceptive mandate.

Health care, redefined

Catholic institutions provide health care to more Americans than does any other network. Before the ACA, Catholics had served their neighbors very well without  adopting the fiction that “health care” meant contraception, including abortion-inducing measures.

Implementing the ACA, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that as of 2012, birth control for women was henceforth “preventive” health care that had to be covered under all health insurance policies, with no co-pay by users. The HHS contraceptive mandate meant that Catholics, and others who have religious objections to contraception, were expected to violate their consciences by helping employees procure contraception.  That was the earliest manifestation of the anti-religious-liberty aspect of Obamacare.

What had been a private decision – whether to use contraception – suddenly became a public matter. Bosses weren’t just invited into their employees’ bedrooms; HHS dragged them in there.

Standing up for religious liberty

The U.S. Catholic bishops did the nation a service by speaking with one voice against the mandate. Catholics in over 100 cities rallied in support of religious liberty in the face of the mandate.

Attempts by the government to “accommodate” a select few institutions were inadequate. Litigation began, and continues to this day, as people like the Little Sisters of the Poor fight the government to be relieved of the mandate.

Catholics haven’t been the only ones to stand up for the First Amendment’s religious liberty protections. The most famous anti-mandate court case so far, Hobby Lobby et al., was won by people who were Mennonites and evangelical Protestants – not Catholics.

Five years ago this week, I spoke at a religious liberty rally in my state’s capital city, prompted by the HHS mandate. Organized by Catholics, it attracted an ecumenical crowd. We rallied outside a federal courthouse, getting thumbs-up signs from drivers passing by. Faith in God and respect for the Constitution energized and united us.

For our children’s sake, let’s remember why we refused to accept a government mandate that attempted to tell us what was OK under our religion. Let’s refuse to buy into any public policy, present or future, that interferes with our First Amendment rights.

“We’ve rendered enough.”

What follows below are excerpts from what I told my fellow Granite Staters at the rally five years ago. The only things that have changed since then are that Hobby Lobby has won a very narrow Supreme Court victory, and the ruinous fines that loomed in 2012 have been kept at bay by litigation.

When my own state’s contraceptive mandate passed a dozen or so years ago, I didn’t recognize its significance.  I opposed the bill, but I settled for quietly shaking my head instead of taking up the argument. It did not occur to me or to anyone else in the room that New Hampshire’s mandate would help pave the way for the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to require that all Americans purchase health care, define contraception and abortifacient drugs as “preventive care”, and refuse to recognize conscientious objections to this arrangement.

Back in 1999, that would have seemed a huge leap. Now, looking back, I wonder how I could have failed to see what was coming. It is to the great credit of American Catholic bishops that they have been so outspoken in defending religious liberty against this encroachment (see their statement here). The bishops have done their job. It’s now for the rest of us to bring the no-mandate message to Concord and Washington.

The HHS mandate says certain procedures are “preventive” and thus must be free to women. Except that’s not really free: everyone, including women with religious objections to the procedures, must pay, since everyone will be required to carry insurance. Religious institutions providing insurance to employees will have to pay to include that coverage even if the procedures violate the tenets of the religion in question. There is no opting-out. In response to protests, the President has delayed implementation of the mandate to August 2013, as though the outrage will cool by then.

What will happen at that time to religious institutions, such as hospitals and adoption agencies, that will not pay into such a health care system? They can knuckle under, which is undoubtedly what HHS expects, or they can close down, or they can continue to operate but pay heavy fines to the government.

But what about the First Amendment? The HHS mandate attempts to get around that by exempting certain religious employers – but not the ones that serve people of other religions. As others have pointed out, Jesus and the apostles would flunk that test. Employers refusing to submit to the mandate will be fined.

A government that attacks my religion today can attack yours tomorrow. Today, I am being told that I can hold whatever beliefs I want, as long as I’m prepared in August 2013 to pay a fine for taking those beliefs seriously. Tomorrow, or next week, or next year, you could be getting that message.

It does not matter if those of us who reject the mandate are in a minority. The Bill of Rights was not put into the Constitution to protect majorities.

When the American bishops spoke up earlier this year, they were greeted with a well-orchestrated & well-funded campaign promoting a lie: that anyone opposing the mandate is waging war on women.

A co-pay is not a war.  Respecting Catholic beliefs is not an act of war. When you keep your hands out of my pocket when you pay for your preventive care, that’s not an act of war.

On the other hand, a federal mandate that threatens the Catholic Church’s ability to operate thousands of schools and hospitals and adoption agencies DOES amount to a war on women. When this mandate imposes a fine a on a church that is one of the foremost health care providers in the nation, that’s not only a First Amendment violation. It’s stupid, shortsighted policy that will have a devastating effect on American women. 

Up to now, people of faith have “rendered unto Caesar”, as the saying goes, on things like this. Just as I behaved when NH’s mandate was enacted, we’ve gone along to get along. The HHS mandate is a line in the sand, drawn by Caesar, and it’s time to say “we’ve rendered enough.”

I’m not asking for any favors. I claim the protections of the First Amendment against those who would force individuals and institutions of any religion to participate in providing procedures they recognize as immoral. That’s solid ground on which to stand.

[Cross-posted to Leaven for the Loaf.]