For decades, my fellow academics have been playing upon people’s emotions by exploiting human tragedy for political gain. In recent years, that tendency has become more pronounced. Perhaps the most salient example is the attempt to use school shootings to advance a gun control agenda that will ultimately increase homicide and other crimes of violence. Perhaps the time has come for conservative academics to respond by making better use of tragedy for political gain.
There could be no better starting place for the exploitation of tragedy than the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. I began discussing Gosnell years ago in one of my criminology classes (Trials of the Century) at UNC-Wilmington. In that class, I assigned the grand jury report from the Gosnell case to seniors majoring in criminology. Since the Gosnell book came out last year I have started using it instead. Now that the movie has been released, I will consider showing it in class. It may be the only time students at UNCW will be exposed to an honest treatment of abortion in their four years of college.
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