Thought Life
Warning: the video above has some graphic discussion and content. Watch with care.
This is a very, very, very bad season if you are an enthusiastic supporter of abortion. The lid is off on the reality of abortion, and it’s getting harder and harder to admit that the practice isn’t savage.
Not all clinics look medieval, of course. Some abortions happen in nice, shiny, well-staffed places. Babies are murdered by people who smile warmly and dress nicely. Let’s be clear: this is still barbarism. It’s still savage. It’s still murder.
But some clinics–like that of the now-convicted Kermit Gosnell–let us see the true horror of abortion. Another clinic has been exposed by former workers as, apparently, a site of truly mind-bending evil. It is a Houston clinic run by a man named Dr. Douglas Karpen. Karpen has seemingly been slaughtering babies for decades, including many babies that doctors consider “viable,” as they were born alive. The video above discusses Karpen’s practice in great detail. Here’s one quote:
A: “…the fetus would come completely out, and of course the fetus would still be alive, cause it was still moving, and you could see the stomach breathing, and that’s when he would snip the spine, and of course the soft spot was he would take one of the forceps…or one of the dilators and stick it down in the soft spot of the fetus’s head.
Q: You saw this happen?
A: Oh yes. I think every morning I saw it…every morning I saw…3-4 procedures [of this type].
Q: And you would see that baby alive, and he would kill that baby?
A: Either that, or actually twisting the head off the neck….[another woman] Sometimes he would force [the instrument] through the stomach.
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Don’t turn your eyes away. Read just one account of Karpen’s clinic:
December, 1989: Chad Traywick, a newly active pro-life activist, went to Karpen’s Houston abortion clinic for the first time to check out the best place for a protest he was planning. According to an article that appeared on WorldNetDaily.com on January 21, 2003, Traywick indicated that when he got to the clinic the place was empty but the door was inexplicably open. He walked inside and discovered a room containing several buckets. Suspecting the nature of the contents, Traywick grabbed one of the buckets and left. Once at home, Traywick and his wife, removed the remains of a 28-week old aborted baby boy and photographed them. Horrifically, the baby’s head and arm had been removed during the abortion process. Traywick named him Baby David and gave him a proper burial with over 100 people in attendance. Baby David’s image has been used on pro-life signs and literature to reveal the horrors of abortion to the nation.
There are many more such examples of the evil of Karpen’s work in Houston. Beheaded babies, impaled babies, babies ripped to shreds. It’s all there, and it looks to be graphically true. At one point in the video above, the former employees share how a “fetus” thought to be killed by Karpen’s abortion was alive, and grabbed Karpen’s finger.
Dear friend: can you read that sentence without weeping? I hope not.
Can I encourage you to do something? Forward on this story. Speak up to your friends about this clinic. Don’t forget this. Don’t let it leave your mind.
America has for decades enfranchised and encouraged its citizens to murder babies. That is what many have done. Something has shifted, though. People who blinded themselves to the evil of abortion–clinic workers, for example–are not doing so any longer. They’re rebelling against wickedness. They’re speaking up. They’re causing massive societal discomfort in the process.
Christians must speak up on matters like these. Karpen, like Gosnell, gives us an incredible opportunity to change hearts. But we’re not only after the end of abortion. We know that we, too, bear evil in our bodies. We, too, need forgiveness. We are privileged to extend it to all–to the culturally respectable, the vile, and all who will recognize their sinfulness, beat their chest, and cry out to the heavens for Christ to give them everlasting life they can never win on their own.
In preaching this gospel, though, we never make the mistake of quieting our moral witness. Speak up, and then speak up again. If you Tweet about this, you could use, simply, #Karpen. If you want to support a project that seeks to show how the gospel frees us from supporting abortion and loving sin, check out LIFE. It is both beautiful and powerful.
(Photo: E. Joseph Deering, Houston Chronicle)
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