“Your referral has been documented and forwarded to the FBI Houston Field Office for any action deemed necessary,” wrote Steven D’Antuono, the section chief of the Financial Crimes Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, earlier this month to Cheryl Sullenger, the senior vice president of the pro-life group Operation Rescue.
This is the most promising move by a government entity in the case involving allegations that abortionist Douglas Karpen, M.D., murdered live babies after one of his many botched abortions. Despite horrific allegations against Karpen for actions taken in 2012, it appears that until now, neither Texas law enforcement nor federal officials have pursued the case with any intent to punish him.
What were those actions?
Four women who worked at Karpen’s Houston-area abortion facilities informed Operation Rescue in 2013 that Karpen was violating the law. According to Sullenger, she received photographs of more than one baby who had been born alive that the employees charged Karpen had killed by slashing or twisting their necks.
Despite the release of these photographs of what were referred to as “large” dead babies, allegedly after their birth, Karpen has not been charged with any crime as of yet. A grand jury opted not to indict him, but Operation Rescue has said they later learned the grand jury was tainted. They contend that the district attorney, Devon Anderson, and Karpen’s criminal defense lawyer, Chip Lewis, were close friends, with Lewis having donated $25,000 to Anderson’s political campaigns (a very large sum of money for a district attorney race).
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After no action was taken by Texas authorities, Operation Rescue contacted the U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives. This panel had been investigating charges that Planned Parenthood was trafficking in the sale of aborted baby parts. After reviewing the case, the congressional committee passed the information on to the Department of Justice in 2016. Unfortunately, the DOJ was still under the control of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the same person who met with former President Bill Clinton at an Arizona airport a few days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced no charges would be brought against Hillary Clinton in the e-mail investigation.
Finally, when President Trump took office in 2017, the panel again referred the case to the Department of Justice, now under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sullenger followed up with her own letter in August 2017, asking him to open an investigation into the allegations against Karpen.
In addition to the accusations that Karpen murdered babies born alive in his clinic, he was also alleged to have committed sexual harassment against employees and patients.
While Karpen, if guilty of killing babies born alive after botched abortions, should certainly be punished to the full extent of the law, this case illustrates the moral degeneration of our legal system since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion. Even if Karpen is innocent of killing babies who survived one of his attempts to abort them, it is beyond doubt that he has killed many unborn babies in the wombs of pregnant women who have come to his clinic.
It should not be surprising that a society that has accepted the legal killing of millions of unborn babies since Roe v. Wade has experienced a natural progression to killing babies outside the womb. After all, it is only a matter of geography. Once it is acceptable to kill unborn babies, the killing of an infant moments after a live birth is the next logical step. Sadly, many Americans have concluded that since the Supreme Court has proclaimed it is a “constitutional right” to kill an unborn child, it must also be morally correct. And, since unborn babies can be killed, why not the elderly or the severely handicapped, who are also an inconvenience to society?
Another stark reality of this case is that the likelihood of Karpen eventually being punished for alleged sexual harassment is probably greater than for the allegations that he twisted off the necks of children born alive, much like twisting off the neck of a chicken.
It is also unfortunate that Texas authorities took no action in the case. After all, murder cases are generally handled at the state level. However, the federal government has increasingly usurped the role of the states in all sorts of criminal law. In fact, that is exactly what the Supreme Court did in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade case. The 14th Amendment simply requires states to apply equally the protection of their laws. Homicide statutes in Texas and the other 49 states are the proper place for the prosecution of the killing of all babies — born and unborn.
Still, the publicity of such incidents as are alleged here can play a vitally important role in the push to change the minds of the voters across America as to what is involved in an abortion. It is not just “terminating a pregnancy.” It is the taking of a human life. At the end of the day, the Supreme Court would not have been allowed to usurp the proper role of the states if the American people had risen up and told them that their decision itself was unconstitutional.
Operation Rescue’s Sullenger said, “The letter I received from the Department of Justice is encouraging. The photos depict wounds inflicted on those babies that could not have been done inside the womb. After having personally attended the trial of Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of murdering living babies after failed abortions, I knew we could never give up seeking prosecutions for Karpen’s similar crimes. We are grateful for this new FBI investigation that has renewed our hope that Karpen may finally be brought to justice.”
If so, at least it will remove one abortionist from society, and hopefully open the eyes of Americans who are blind to the reality of those babies who have been killed inside, and in some cases, outside, their mother’s womb.
