Cardinal says Gosnell’s atrocities point to ‘liberal abortion culture’

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, shown at left in a courtroom artist sketch during his sentencing at Philadelphia Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia May 15, was sent to prison to serve three life terms without parole for murdering babies during late-term abortions and for other crimes at his squalid clinic. In a deal that spared him from the death penalty. Catholic News Service

If New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushes to have “a right to an abortion” codified in state law, he will face “vociferous” and “rigorous” opposition from Catholic and other pro-lifers, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York said.

But the cardinal hopes it doesn’t come to that because Cuomo, he said, has told him “he wants to work hard on alternatives to abortion,” such as expanding adoption, having “greater latitude” in maternity leave and better assisting pregnant women in need and those with small children.

“The governor and I have worked closely on other issues,” Cardinal Dolan said.“We’ve been with him and we’ve appreciated what he’s done. I want to believe he means it when he tells me he’s not going to expand what is already a terrible liberal abortion culture.”

It is an “extreme oxymoron that abortion is seen as helping women’s health, especially if half the babies abortedare female,” the cardinal said. “So how does this help them?”

Besides abortion, the provisions of Cuomo’s proposed 10-point Women’s Equality Act address pay equity; sexual harassment in the workplace; human trafficking; income, housing, family-status and pregnancy discrimination; stronger order-of-protection laws for victims of domestic violence; and recovery of attorney fees in employment and credit/lending cases.

“We’re in his corner on most of them–nine out of 10,” Cardinal Dolan said. “But just this one about expansion of abortion that causes us pause... Please, this is the last thing this state needs.”

New York decriminalized abortion in 1970, before the Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal virtually on demand across the country.

“Unfortunately we’re known as ‘the abortion capital of the world,’” the cardinal said. “We have the highest rate in the country–in New York City 40 percent of babies are aborted; and among Latinos and African-Americans, it’s up to 60 percent.”

Cardinal Dolan said he hoped the gruesome details of how now-convicted Philadelphia abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell ran his abortion clinic and the late-term abortions he performed “will unmask some of the horror that is now obvious in this unfettered abortion-on-demand culture that’ we’ve got.”

Gosnell’s first-degree murder convictions in the deaths of three babies born alive during abortions “should make all of us pause... Even so-called ‘pro-choice’ people never wanted it to come to this. Now we’re learning what went on in Philadelphia tragically is not an exception... These (abortion clinics) are pretty clandestine operations that are not open to scrutiny.”