Gosnell: The Bigger Picture

Despite a media blackout and a shoestring budget, the independent film Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer was, surprisingly, the tenth highest-grossing movie in the nation the week of its release. A drama depicting the true story of a Pennsylvania abortionist who was recently tried and convicted of various crimes, including first-degree murder, it was very well done and definitely worth seeing. The truth it presents speaks for itself, so rather than repeat that message here, I offer a reflection sparked by my personal experience of the movie.

Reason. Reason is what separates man from the animals. Reason is how we reflect God most profoundly. It is what makes free will possible. It is how we ensure that we are following the laws of God rather than our own ideas about God and His laws. Emotions must always be submitted to reason, not the other way around, or we end up rationalizing actions that “feel” right rather than deliberately choosing actions that are right.

The path of reason, however, is banked by chaos. If you stray from the path — no matter how good it feels to do so — you will end in chaos. I bring this up as a sort of introduction to what both my mother, who saw the movie with me, and I independently experienced as the most powerful scene in the movie.

No, the scene I mean wasn’t the initial search of Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic and the discovery of all its bizarre and morbid horrors. No, it wasn’t the tragic testimony of Karnamaya Mongar’s daughter about her mother’s untimely demise in Gosnell’s clinic. No, it wasn’t the jury’s emotional reaction to the photo of “Baby A,” whose spine was cut after being born alive during an abortion procedure in Gosnell’s clinic. Rather, the scene that packed the most powerful punch for us was the courtroom testimony of a woman who was a legally practicing abortionist. Why? Because after settling deep into the abortion-clinic crime scene, it whipped us back out to the big picture, where a man like Gosnell is nothing more than a drop in the bucket of the noxious slime that is the abortion industry at large.