Reporters laughed. At her regularly scheduled Thursday-morning press conference as leader of the House Democrats, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was asked to explain the moral difference between killing “a baby born alive at 23 weeks,” as Dr. Kermit Gosnell did in his Philadelphia clinic, and “aborting her moments before her birth.” The question had come up because the House Judiciary Committee had just approved the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, sponsored by Arizona Republican Trent Franks, which would ban abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. It’s a perfectly reasonable question, but one that Pelosi answered with derision and evasion, dismissing the reporter, even excoriating him, for daring to be male while asking it.
