When I read that President Obama refused to comment on the murder trial of abortion butcher Kermit Gosnell "because it's an active trial," I knew immediately he wasn't being truthful.

In fact, the second I heard about Obama's excuse for dodging the question, I tweeted that ongoing investigations or trials did not preclude his publicly weighing in on the Trayvon Martin case or on the case of his friend and Harvard professor Henry Gates, about which he said the Cambridge police had acted "stupidly."

If there ever has been a case of tainting the jury pool, Obama's public identification with Martin was it. So please spare us any pretense toward restraint in such matters.

Obama declined to comment on Gosnell for the same reason the liberal media have consciously blacked out the story.

When Obama was asked, he didn't just beg off because "it's an active trial"; he offered up the obligatory disingenuous liberal talking point: "I think President Clinton said it pretty well when he said abortion should be safe, legal and rare."

This formulation has always bothered me because it is fundamentally dishonest -- and particularly so in Obama's case.

If an unborn baby is not a human life -- an evil sophistry that has been responsible for millions of murders in this nation -- then why in the world would it be important to make it rare? If we are just talking about clusters of cells, an unviable tissue mass, then why worry at all about reducing the practice?

The reason is that Clinton knew, as do all pro-abortion politicians, either that abortion is sinister or that a significant majority of voters believe it, so proponents have to at least pretend to be sensitive to it. They must make it appear as if they are trying to take steps to reduce the practice, even as they do so many things to encourage it.

Make it rare? It bears repeating that Obama strongly opposed the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which would have required doctors to assist babies born as a result of a failed abortion. How about his opposition to a bill that would have prevented partial-birth abortion?

If Obama wanted to make abortion rare, would he be such a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood and its notorious abortion industry? No one could be more in bed with that organization than Obama, who is planning on attending the organization's fundraising gala this coming Thursday.

Obama and the pro-abortion left don't want to call attention to the grisly practices of Gosnell for a number of reasons. You can disguise the practice of abortion with euphemisms, such as "they snipped the baby's spinal cord," but in the end, we are talking about the intentional killing of human life, and it follows that a facility so morally corrupt as to routinely engage in that despicable practice might not dot and cross all its other ethical i's" and t's.

If Obama or the leftist media were to shine a disinfecting light on the Gosnell trial, it might lead to a public discussion on abortion and an inquiry into how widespread such abuses are. The less attention the left permits to be drawn to this the better.

But there are additional sinister reasons Obama and his liberal media cohorts have suppressed the news on this story, knowing as they do just how horrendous Gosnell's clinic was.

The pro-abortion left ridicules and condemns Second Amendment advocates for being paranoid purists in opposing all restrictions on gun rights, but in the purist and paranoia categories, they make gun advocates look like pikers.

Abortion is the left's holy grail; it is liberals' sacred ritual, about which nothing negative may be uttered for fear that it might lead to even the slightest infringement on it. Likewise, the abortion lobby simply will not countenance any restriction on abortion or any negative light to be cast on any abortion practice or clinic for fear that it could lead to a slippery slope whereby abortion might actually become significantly rarer. That would be a big setback for the lucrative abortion industry and for the campaign blood money it generates for supporting politicians.

Obama and the pro-abortion left definitely want abortion to be legal, but they sure don't want it to be safe for the baby or rare. To suggest otherwise is being dishonest or willfully blind.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book, "The Great Destroyer," reached No. 2 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction. Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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