“And this is the verdict: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.” ~John 3:19
Most people would not call a movie about an imprisoned serial killer “light,” but I’m not most people. The new release, Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer, exposes the evils of an abortion-ridden culture, and it does so in some unexpected ways. This movie shines a light on the last choice any woman ever wants to have to make, and it takes great pains to maintain the dignity of women who find themselves in a situation where they don’t feel they have any other options.
The Gosnell movie did not show us a lot of day to day business at the clinic. We didn’t really see a lot of blood and gore or agonizing women in premature labor. We saw only snippets of patients and procedures. The entire movie ran from the perspective of the police and the District Attorney. I went in expecting a medical menagerie and got served a crime scene investigation/court trial.
What I saw in that particular type of portrayal of this horrific story was that, in a sea of thousands of people who saw and knew the evils being done to women and children in this case over the course of three decades, there were two or three who cared; who dug deep; who pursued justice at all personal and political costs. In a world full of irresponsible authorities who avert their eyes when difficulty comes at a call of personal sacrifice, that, friends, is one of the most honorable, noble, and rare traits ever found.
The film provokes it’s watchers to consider whether unwanted people are still people; whether mistreatment, murders, and even full-scale massacres are acceptable because someone else requested and paid for them; whether women are really better off when they choose to eliminate their children; whether abortion is truly a liberating “choice” or whether it is a life sentence to an end of guilt, shame, or even, in some cases, death.
At one point, the film highlights what “normal” abortion clinics do for babies born alive, and, in that moment, we all are awakened not to how different it is from Gosnell’s procedures, but how tragically similar. Though not on trial in a court of law, yet, all are indicted along with him in that moment.
The movie shows how biased the media is on this subject by depicting images of the courtroom void of news reporters and any media presence at all at the trial. It teaches us how true it is that the problem with humans is not that we do not have enough light, but that we love darkness. Even when darkness is clearly exposed, most simply pretend not to see.
“Gosnell” was not a story about abortion as much as it was a story about justice – justice for impoverished women; justice for living, moving newborn babies; justice for serial killers; justice for hundreds of millions of lives snuffed out under the guise of modern medicine. As we saw Dr. Gosnell’s endangered pet turtles throughout the movie, we are reminded that justice is both endangered and, all too often, quite slow in coming in our world today. It will not be so in the after world.
In conclusion, Dr. Kermit Gosnell is sentenced to life in prison. Did you catch that? A man who sentenced so many to an untimely and unholy death was punished by being afforded life. Life in prison is still life. If there was one line that echoed loudly in my mind from this film, it was the concluding words scrolling at the end informing us that an administer of thousands of deaths was himself sentenced to life. Life. He was given life. Guilty as the day is long, even the long arm of the law and worldly justice honors life in such a degree that they know better than to take it away from another.
Everyday Encounters With the Creator 