Kermit Gosnell and the Normalcy of Evil

Yesterday Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder, found guilty of killing three babies following botched late-term abortions. Prosecutors called Gosnell’s clinic a house of horrors. There will surely follow a great deal of debate about definitions of viable life, the standards of regulation of abortion clinics, and so on.

Will clearer definitions and better regulations really remove the possibility of the butchery uncovered in the Gosnell case? It took Gosnell’s employees quite some time to decide that working in filth, storing fetal body parts in jars and empty cat food cans, and snipping the spines of tiny, squirming, crying babies were bad ideas (one man claims to have done over a hundred snippings himself before his conscience felt compromised). Would a clearer understanding of legal requirements have stopped them before they obeyed their employer?

How does such evil flourish? How can it emerge in the context of a practice that has become, in our culture, so normal—or as Hannah Arendt, in her reflections on the Nazi executioner Adolph Eichmann, suggested: How can evil be so banal?

Over the last forty years or so, activism, science, and government—in a kind of legislative ménage à trois—have successfully spawned a cultural perception of normality when it comes to abortion. Sure, there are protestors in front of clinics, but the word abortion has become more ideological than a description of something real. It is the political dividing line between those claiming loyalty to the yet-to-be born, and those standing for rights of the ones who would have to give birth. It is word that is now included in our growing list of inalienable rights.

And then Gosnell shows up and makes it all real.

But we don’t want it to be real (is that why the press seemed so light on the story over the last two and a half years? Was everyone running around asking, “Is it real? Is it real?”). We have worked so hard in protecting our sensibilities by limiting our in-utero descriptions of life to terms like zygote and fetus, but certainly not baby. We seem to have agreed, overall, that it isn’t viable life until we say it is, and that would be somewhere around 21 weeks after conception.

So quit looking at that sonogram. Stop counting those fingers and toes. Ignore that fluttering butterfly that the technician said was a heartbeat. It’s not a living being. It’s not. It’s not. It’s not.

Unless someone like Dr. Gosnell successfully pulls a few fetuses into the light of day and their labels are magically changed to babies.

Kermit Gosnell is such a benign name. It isn’t a Hannibal Lector name that would automatically conjure of images of horror. It’s almost a warm and fuzzy name because it is shared with one of our favorite frogs. It’s very, very normal, just like the word scissors. With scissors we cut out paper dolls and remove tightly-wound strands of ribbons from wrapped gifts. We also use them, it appears, to sever the spines of tiny babies. After all, seconds earlier, they were only fetuses. Is there a 5-second rule on this?

Critics of Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, argue that evil does not spring from passive, ignorant people blindly following the orders of their evil leaders; they say it comes from regular, everyday people becoming immersed in evil ideologies, and then acting in accord with those ideologies. Perhaps they are correct.

The Gosnell case has caused me to think anew about how we determine good and evil. If it is by legislation, then we can act morally (does that word even have a definition?) only to the degree that our legislators and judges inform us. At what point do we look around and examine our normals and discover that we’ve adopted a received morality and have slowly cooked in its cultural juices, like little Kermits in a kettle?

There are certain clues that should tip us off here. When various groups begin redefining our terminologies for us, we should put up our anttenae of suspicion. When pressure on legislators results in our lines of morality being shifted, we should ask a few questions.

In the 19th century, there were a number of state and federal supreme court cases related to slavery, several of which declared imported Africans to be under full control of their owners. One case denied protection under the constitution for those slaves and any of their descendants.

We’re all probably happy that someone challenged those views of normalcy. What the law seemed incapable of doing was ultimately accomplished by people with a moral compass.

Sometimes, when our courts rule and slaves are freed, women given equal legal status with men and so on, we might find that our so-called normals really did need to be shifted. But not always. And never without examination.

I’ve referenced this text of Scripture before, but I feel compelled to do it again:

Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you . . .” (Matthew 20:25-26)

When our leaders and the powerful lobbies that influence them inform us about what is good and right and legal, is the conversation over for we who follow Jesus? And I’m not only speaking of abortion (clearly that debate has never abated), but of questions regarding immigration, human trafficking, economic policies, and a number of others. Or, is there a point where we look beyond the lines of legislation and declare,

It will not be so among us.

The Inner Logic of Celebrations

Yesterday was May 5, also known as Cinco de Mayo. Like other occasions (St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s Day, for example), the original significance is mostly lost on us and we conflate the days as episodic excuses for getting plastered and eating piles of food. Like we need an excuse for doing that.

Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day (which is September 16), but rather the celebration of the underdog Mexican army whipping the tar out of the French in 1861. The French came back in victory a year later and took charge of Mexico until the US joined in and chased the invaders back to France a few years later, which was a smart thing to do since the French aren’t good at making beer and their food would have made the southwestern part of the US a boring place to eat (what—like people would buy fast food at Escargot Bell?

The occasion that really intrigues me is El Dia de los Muertos—The Day of the Dead (November 1 and 2). I’ve learned some things about it and it’s more than rowdy partying and sugary skeleton heads. It’s about remembering all those who have gone before us. It’s about not letting the memory of our ancestors die over time. I like that idea. And I wish that our culture had a better oral tradition (I talked about this a few posts ago).

A friend explained to me the inner logic of this celebration, and I incorporated it into my novel, A Body Given, as a conversation between a women who is helping to care for a young girl rescued from slavery in Guatemala as she spoke to her Anglican priest:

Father Mora opened the door of his bedroom and stepped into the hallway. He saw Reina leaving the room she shared with Ana, carefully shutting the door behind her. She smiled when she saw the priest.

“Buenos diás, Padre,” whispered Reina.

“Buenos diás.” Father Mora motioned toward the kitchen, and followed Reina there.
He often spoke with Reina in English, helping her to become fluent in the language. His frequent visits from church leaders from England and the US made it important for her to be able to speak to them. “How is Ana doing, Reina?”

Reina went to the sink and started making the morning coffee. “She is better, I think, Father. She still holds tightly to me, and she sleeps much. I think she smiled a little last night when she was sleeping. I pray that God heals her dreams.”

“I pray that also. Does she eat well?”

“She eats as though she wants to grow up to be a man.” Reina laughed at her own joke. “Everything I make for her, she eats, and then eats more.”

“Your food is a comfort to all of us, Reina.”

“Where is Father Alec? Will he have coffee?”

“He joined me for prayers early this morning,” said Father Mora. “I think he’ll sleep just a bit more. No coffee for him—only tea.”

As the coffee brewed, Reina made preparations for breakfast. She set plates and silverware on the table where the priest sat, and then paused to speak to him.

“Father, do you think that Ana will really heal? That she will have a good life now?”
Father Mora reached for the plates and arranged them around the table. “God will heal her, Reina. She will always bear the scars of her abuse, but there is great hope for her. It is our privilege to be God’s hands to care for her, and God’s heart to love her.”

Reina nodded as she placed knives and forks around the table. “But there are still others, Father, others that we will not find, ones that will suffer and die, and be forgotten.” Her eyes filled with tears. He remained silent, honoring her grief. After a few moments, she spoke again.

“Father, in a little while we will celebrate El Dia de los Muertos, yes?”

“Yes, of course. The Day of the Dead.” While Father Mora tried to help the people of his parish elevate All Saints Day above the practice of remembering the dead, he couldn’t help but look forward to the mass celebrations that he had enjoyed his entire life. He recognized that he was like everyone else—a product of his own culture.

“My grandmother was from Mexico,” said Reina, “and she used to tell me that we have that day so that we will always remember those who have died—so that we will not forget them. I still know stories of uncles and aunts, grandparents and great-grandparents and even the ones who lived before them. The stories helped me to see that I was part of a larger family than I could ever know. My grandmother taught me something else that I have never forgotten. She taught me that there is not one death, but three. The first is when your body dies and you can no longer share life with the living. It is the death that comes to us all. The second is when you are buried in the ground and your body returns to the earth. There is always sadness when these two deaths happen. But the third is the saddest of them all: It is when you are forgotten, and there is no one left to remember you.” She paused, carefully arranging a place setting next to a colorful ceramic plate. “For many of us, the third death is really the first.”

“You and Ana are here now,” said Father Mora. “God has not forgotten you. You are remembered.