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Gosnell: An Agonizing and Important Viewing Experience
As I sat down to write this review of the Gosnell movie, which I watched too late last night, this video came into my Facebook newsfeed:
https://www.facebook.com/karuturi/videos/10160793764615300/
This is a baby. I’m not sure how anyone can see a fetus past eight weeks or so and think of it any other way. There are arms, legs, fingers, toes and vital organs. I became pro-life in a science class, seeing how advanced, how early, a “cluster of cells” really is.
The Gosnell movie has an uphill climb: for the pro-choice crowd, hearing about what a legal abortion looks like, how a serial killer took advantage of the holy sacrament of abortion in order to avoid clinic inspections and investigations into deaths at his clinic is a non-starter. How many dedicated pro-choice Americans want to hear about what abortion actually is? And for pro-life Americans, we know how barbaric the procedure is; why watch a movie about it?
And yet, the movie is doing so well it grossed in the top ten of films the week it was released. The Daily Wire reported, “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer” surpassed box office expectations upon its release last week by entering into the Top 10 grossing films with a revenue of $1,235,000 on just 668 screens.”
Why are so many Americans paying to see the film, which, despite its brutal subject matter, isn’t remotely visually gory? I think it’s why one of Gosnell’s clinic employees photographed one of the infant victims, Baby A: to pay witness. The movie pays witness not just to his many victims, but to the millions of victims of legal abortion over the last decades. And for many other movie-goers, not just committed pro-lifers, it’s just an interesting story: how did he get away with his crimes, barbaric as they were, for as long as he did?
It’s sadly simple: Gosnell was able to kill so many babies born alive because it was easier not to see; it was easier for authorities, for colleagues, for journalists; nobody wanted to take on an abortionist and be labeled as pro-life.
Recently I was talking to a young relative, who, as a reflexively liberal 20-something, told me he was pro-choice. I asked him when he thought it should be illegal, and he informed me after the first trimester. I told him that was not the law in most states; and opened the pregnancy app on my phone (I’ve had three babies in four years, I never delete it) and showed him what a fetus looks like and is capable of up until what point abortion is performed by reputable abortionists (24 weeks), and it’s legal even later in some states. I then scrolled back, and showed him what a baby looks like and what it’s doing at 18 weeks, at 12 weeks, at 8 weeks. He sat there dumbfounded and horrified; he had no idea a fetus wasn’t a clump of cells at these points in a pregnancy. It took approximately ten minutes, with an assist from the computerized graphics of a pregnancy app and basic facts about biology, to turn him pro-life.
This is precisely why a movie like Gosnell is such a threat. And it’s why, despite the film grossing well in its first week, it’s getting pulled from theaters “inexplicably.” The Daily Wire also reports, “Despite the solid performance for an independent film of this sort, nearly 200 theaters have inexplicably dropped the film, including those in major cities where it was performing the strongest. Coming into its second week, “Gosnell” has dropped from 668 theaters to 480 theaters — a full 188 theater drop, 15 of which were top-performing multiplexes.”
In the coming weeks, Gosnell will disappear from theaters, and his name will go back into the dustbin of history. What is most disturbing about the doctor and his crimes is the likelihood that they are not isolated, that he is not the only late-term abortionist killing babies born alive. And he is one of the thousands performing legal abortions on millions of women and millions of babies; victims in a continued disinformation campaign about the brutality of the procedure and the advanced nature of what a baby at the gestational age past a handful of weeks actually is.
Published in Entertainment
Since the film was doing so well, the political pressures had to be enormous to remove it from theaters. I have a hard time believing that all those theater owners were Lefties. What other pressures could have been put on them? Bombing their theaters? Threatening them with violence or demonstrations? This is tragic–not just for the filmmakers but for the whole country.
Which is why the left fights “must view the sonogram” laws. Once the “unviable tissue mass” gets humanized, mothers have a harder time telling the doc to get rid of it. “It” becomes a person . . .
Thank you for this review and your personal reflections on the lies of the abortion industry.
We attended the movie on opening weekend, as you say … to pay witness.
My favorite scene in the movie … was Gosnell’s lawyer comparing the nice lady abortionist’s procedures with Gosnell’s …
And here’s my favorite go-to pregnancy app from a NASA scientist …
This is why any honest, reasonable person cannot be pro choice. Because you have to tell yourself comforting fairy tales about what actually is happening in a legal abortion. The fact remains that if you have an abortion you are killing a human being. There is no way to get around it. No matter how many excuses are made. No matter how the child is conceived. Gosnell is making people look at the reality. People prefer the convenient fantasy.
@columbo, this was the most compelling scene for me, too. According to Klavan, the actual transcript from the trial had her saying 40,000 abortions. They decided that number was too high and wouldn’t be believed so they lowered it. Everybody I know that has seen this movie agreed this scene was powerful. I plan on buying the DVD and showing it to those who didn’t go see it for whatever excuse they had.
The exception to that is the activist or the radical who has reconciled themselves to the idea that human life has no absolute value. There are those who are callously materialistic or such fanatics for their cause that they have looked at these facts and shrugged their shoulders. I believe that they are by far more rare than the vast swaths of people who have not thought it through far enough but they are probably increasing in number.
“To pay witness.” That says it all.
They certainly do prefer that fantasy. The one that I particularly dislike is the “well, I would never have an abortion because I think that the baby is alive, but I cannot force my views on another” To me, this is the biggest cop out imaginable. If the child is alive, then performing an abortion is murdering the child. If its murdering the child, then you have a moral obligation to protect that defenseless infant. To continue to allow it, means one of two things. First, is that you aren’t really against abortions, you just don’t want to say that you aren’t, or…you want the option to get an abortion when it is convenient for you or a loved one. Neither of those are good views.
My wife saw the movie last week with friends from church and said that I needed to see it too. I’m in Wichita this week for work and went Wednesday night in case it disappeared on Friday. I thought it was well done without being gory. It was strange to hear Dr. Tiller’s name in a theater less than three miles from the church where he was shot. Especially how it popped up out of nowhere in the movie.