UW student health plan exposes widespread lack of transparency

An investigative journalist from The College Fix recently exposed a troubling practice at the University of Wyoming. Over 600 foreign students have been automatically enrolled in health insurance that covers elective abortions.

That article caught my attention. We live in a state where the last Planned Parenthood clinic shuttered its operation in 2017. Also, Wyoming’s department of health “has received fewer than five [abortion] reports over the last five years,” according to Mariah Storey, a vital services unit supervisor, quoted in Rewire News. From this, one might assume that abortion just isn’t an issue in the Cowboy State.

But when you dig just a little bit deeper, you find that there is more going on than meets the eye. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, reported 380 abortions in the years 2011, 2013 and 2014. That’s 75 times the reported number!

Why is there such a huge disparity between the official tally and Planned Parenthood’s own data? That’s a question that deserves an answer. The fact is that Wyoming’s current abortion reporting laws have no provisions to enable enforcement. Abortionists who thumb their noses at Wyoming’s reporting requirements face no penalties whatsoever.

And thumb their noses they do. Dr. Brent Blue, who performs surgical abortions out of Emerg-A-Care in Jackson, Wyoming, told Rewire, “I do not report to the state because it is none of their business.” While Blue refuses to report to the state of Wyoming, he does diligently report to the Guttmacher Institute.

Dr. Giovannina Anthony, who performs medical abortions about a block away from Blue, agrees. The same article from Rewire quotes her as saying, “If you are looking for numbers, that [the Guttmacher Institute] is where you should focus your efforts. Their stats appropriately assess the need for reproductive services. They do not ask intrusive, irrelevant questions.”

Blue and Anthony are the chief abortionists in Wyoming. Their open flaunting of Wyoming law sounds eerily similar to Dr. Gosnell, who is currently spending the rest of his life in a Pennsylvania prison. That monster considered any and every health regulation to be an unnecessary annoyance that he was free to ignore in “service” of his patients. At least that’s how he self-justified his disease-ridden practice and murderous methods.

If Blue and Anthony openly ignore Wyoming’s reporting laws, I wonder what other Wyoming laws they feel free to break? Wyoming law forbids abortion once the child is developed enough to survive outside the womb. Do they care about that one, or do they think it’s “none of our business”? They are required to offer an ultrasound picture to the mother. Do they also think this is an optional law?


Dr. Brent Blue

Writing in Vice News last spring, Blue said about the ultrasound law, “It’s a law that has no teeth, and there’s no way to enforce it. It won’t change one thing for us.” His open contempt for the law is chilling.

Not only does Wyoming have more abortions happening within her borders than are ever reported, there are also many abortions happening across state lines. The Centers for Disease Control reported that in 2014 (the most recent data available) 642 Wyoming residents procured abortions in Colorado, Montana and Utah.

This figure gives added relevance to the UW student insurance plan. Less than sixty miles from campus, there is a Planned Parenthood clinic in Fort Collins that averages three dozen surgical abortions each weekend of the school year. This is an “in-network” facility for United Health Care, the plan offered to UW students. It means that students who do not read the fine print are unwittingly subsidizing Planned Parenthood by their insurance premiums.

The College Fix contacted UW’s Office of Risk Management about the insurance coverage. Laura Betzold, the chief risk officer, confirmed that “elective abortion” is covered by the plan even though such coverage is not mandated by any state or federal law. So why is it included in the UW plan?

Apparently, insurance for elective abortions has become the latest hot-potato issue in the culture wars. As recently as the 1990s nobody included such coverage, according to Elizabeth Nash, Senior State Issues Manager at the Guttmacher Institute. Then, abortion special interest groups started quietly pressuring insurance companies to add the coverage.

This went largely unnoticed until it broke into the public eye during debates over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as ObamaCare. When the government gets into the insurance business through its state exchanges, can it cover elective abortions without running afoul of the Hyde Amendment? That is the federal law, renewed each year since 1977, which prohibits federal money from being spent on elective abortions.

This debate was finally settled with an Obama executive order that prohibits the ACA state exchanges from covering abortions. If the UW health plan is subsidized by any federal money, it would be in violation of that executive order.

Governor Matt Mead’s chief of staff, Mary Jo Gray, wrote in an email to The College Fix: “The University of Wyoming student health plan is funded entirely by students participating in the health program. No state money is provided for the plan.” That’s a good thing.

But questions still remain. How many of the students who sign up for this plan know about the abortion coverage? When Betzold was asked this question, she replied: “Students are provided electronic access to a summary brochure and a detailed policy document with all policy terms, including coverages and exclusions.”

That is true. I was able to go onto the UW website and find the Insurance Certificate listing “elective abortion” coverage. Even knowing what I was looking for, it took me about half an hour of searching. For foreign students who are automatically signed up for the coverage, one has to wonder how many get that far.

As the newest front in the culture wars, abortion insurance is not a neutral issue. Oregon recently enacted a state law that requires every plan to include it. On the other side of the coin, Texas passed a law that bans such coverage except when the woman’s life is in danger. In all, 29 states have some kind of restriction on the abortions that insurance can cover. Wyoming has none.

So, why has the University of Wyoming chosen to weigh in on such a loaded issue? The governor’s office told The College Fix that it is merely because the United Health Plan submitted the most competitive bid to the University. There is no reason to dispute that fact. Abortions are probably cheaper than live births.

But money is not the only consideration when it comes to proper health care. We must consider the well-being of our students first and foremost. Before offering them a plan that pays for abortion, we should at least be assured that it is proper “health care.”

Roe v. Wade made abortion “the law of the land” over 45 years ago. But we still have no serious clinical study that proves it enhances the physical, emotional, or mental health of the mother. Even the Guttmacher Institute has not conducted such a study. It’s another thing that nobody really wants to know.

Knowledge is power. The first thing that Wyoming should do is strengthen reporting laws so that the likes of Dr. Blue will begin to follow them. Once our state’s health department has actual data, perhaps we could lead the country in commissioning a study of whether abortion is actually “health care” at all.

WTE: Cheney’s bill to release WSA lands is something we can all get behind

The commissioners of Big Horn, Lincoln and Sweetwater counties have asked Wyoming’s congressional delegation to address a 40-year-old problem. They want Congress to remove over 386,000 acres of land from a limbo created by the Federal Land Policy & Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976. Congresswoman Liz Cheney responded on September 27 by introducing the “Restoring Local Input and Access to Public Lands Act” (H.R. 6939).

The Wilderness Act of 1964 created the National Wilderness Preservation Service (NWPS) and gave Congress the authority to designate acres from the National Park Service and the National Forest Service as “Wilderness Areas.” In general, wilderness designation restricts logging, mining, vehicles (including bicycles) and road maintenance—any form of human development.

Congress then designated 15 wilderness areas in Wyoming totaling 3,111,975 acres. These offer some of the best packing and snowshoeing in the United States.

As a young man, I fell in love with Wyoming in the Washakie Wilderness near Dubois. There is no better way to experience her rugged beauty. There is, however, a price to pay for the privilege of walking in undisturbed wilderness.

First, the ability to enjoy them is limited to those fit enough to hike rugged trails and camp in primitive conditions. Many Wyoming citizens, and an even larger percentage of Americans will never see these preserves.

Second, lands that once contributed to the local economy through multiple uses are now restricted to the single use of hiking. As loggers and miners were pushed off the land, towns lost jobs and counties lost taxes.

Third, by restricting mechanized equipment, trails fall into disrepair and undergrowth accumulates. As a result, a wilderness area becomes a tinderbox ripe for the annual wildfire season. These threatens not only wildlife, but also property on the non-restricted lands nearby.

Despite such costs, wilderness areas are beautiful and important parts of Wyoming’s total land management. Most Wyomingites are willing to pay the price. But because wilderness designations are always a balance between costs and benefits, the Wilderness Act of 1964 was careful to keep the authority for creating them in the hands of elected officials.

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976 changed all that. The new law instructed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to suggest some of its holdings for Wilderness designation. But it also added a twist. The FLPMA instructed the Secretary of the Interior to designate these areas as Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) and to apply wilderness area restrictions to these lands for up to 15-years while they were studied.

This end run around the Wilderness Act of 1964 gave temporary restrictive authority to an unelected official, bypassing our elected representatives. Thus, with the stroke of a pen the BLM restricted Wyoming citizens from mining, logging and even mountain biking on over 700,000 acres that historically had been accessible.

The story gets worse. When the 15-year temporary period was over, Congress neither acted to designate or to release these areas. The temporary restrictions just rolled into a perpetual status lasting 40 years and counting.

During these years there have been many attempts to negotiate a resolution to the impasse. But through countless hours of negotiation, heartbreaking compromises and herculean efforts the results inevitably end up in federal court.

Groups favoring the unilateral restriction of wilderness areas have no reason to negotiate. They cynically sit back and watch the process knowing that no matter what is decided, an army of lawyers can undo the deal and make the personal opinion of some unelected federal judge to be the only opinion that matters.

It’s no wonder that so many people are feeling disenfranchised and marginalized. The American ideal of self-governance offers the promise of good-hearted people dealing face to face to solve complex problems. It was designed to be both transparent to public scrutiny and responsive to the voting public. Its success depends entirely on elected people, not faceless appointees, writing the laws.

That is why three Wyoming counties have decided to go to the root of the problem. They are not challenging Congress’ creation of 15 wilderness areas in Wyoming--nobody is. But they are challenging the BLM’s authority to unilaterally and perpetually restrict an additional 42 wilderness areas without congressional action.

Years of fruitless negotiation have proven that unless congress acts directly, the people of Wyoming will never be given the chance to work together. Passage Cheney’s bill would enable these counties to negotiate in good faith and with final authority.

By introducing the “Restoring Local Input and Access to Public Lands Act,” Cheney is not undermining local control of public lands but giving it back. Since local control and elected representation was taken away by a bad act of congress in 1976, only congress has the power to restore it again.

Marijuana Legalization: Colorado is Counting the Costs

Like most of my readers, I have never experienced marijuana. So, when the subject comes up in debates about public policy, we don’t feel qualified to weigh in and instinctively defer to others. This results in a skewed public discussion. While more than half of Americans have never used marijuana, and the overwhelming majority do not currently use it, much of the policy discussion is driven by those who do.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that the only people who talk about marijuana are pot-heads. I’m only saying that the voices participating in public debates about legalization are probably not representing a cross section of the general public. Let’s address this imbalance by educating ourselves enough to participate in the debate that is not going to go away any time soon.

Marijuana refers to two species of the cannabis plant (sativa and indica) which contain a cocktail of more than 100 cannabinoids. For hundreds of years its leaves, stems, seeds and flowers have been dried and ingested in various ways to induce a euphoric feeling. The main cannabinoid that causes this “high” is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

One important fact to know is that the concentration of THC can vary widely from plant to plant. Unlike alcoholic beverages, which always specify their concentration on the label, the THC in cannabis is more of a crap shoot. In recent years, growers have made strains of the plant that are significantly more concentrated than they were decades ago.

Medical marijuana refers to using the whole, unprocessed plant to self-medicate for various conditions such as pain and nausea. Because it is impossible to determine consistent dosages from whole plants, and because the additional cannabinoids in the plant have not been tested for safety, the FDA has not approved its use for medical purposes. Medical marijuana should not be confused with medicine which is made from the cannabis plant.

There are three such medicines that have undergone clinical trials and are approved by the FDA. Two of them, dronabinol and nabilone, contain THC and are approved drugs that are often prescribed for AIDS patients and people undergoing chemotherapy. The third, Epidiolex,® is a cannabidiol (CBD oil) extract that is prescribed for certain forms of epilepsy. CBD oil is also available over the counter and sometimes recommended by doctors. Additionally, nabiximols is a drug combining CBD and THC which is sold in Europe but is not approved by the FDA.

The push for medical marijuana is not about making the medicinal use of THC and CBD available to suffering people. It is already available. Medical marijuana legislation is about bypassing quality control, dosing, labelling and clinical trials. While this makes access to THC cheaper for the patient, it also makes it more dangerous and more easily obtainable for non-medical use.

In fact, legalization of “medical marijuana” has a habit of becoming the gateway to “recreational marijuana.” That’s the pattern we saw played out on our southern border. In 2012, when Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use, they had already been leaders in medical marijuana.

Six years have passed since Colorado’s ballot initiative that commercialized pot. That’s enough time to see how it’s working out and it’s not pretty. Bob Troyer, U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, recently published a guest commentary in the Denver Post. It should be required reading for anyone who thinks legalization is a good idea.

For starters, marijuana use among Colorado’s youth is 85 percent higher than the national average. This is a troubling statistic because the neurobiology of the developing brain makes youth far more susceptible than adults to addiction. As the marijuana industry seeks to make more money, creating a large pool of heavy users is most easily accomplished in the youth market.

On the road we are seeing that marijuana-related traffic fatalities are up by 151 percent. Remember, that number doesn’t just mean that marijuana users are dying on the road. It also means that non-users are being killed in greater numbers.

One of the arguments for legalization claimed that alcohol and opioid use would decline. This proved not to be true. Colorado’s alcohol consumption has risen steadily since pot legalization. Also, studies now show that heavy users of marijuana are more likely to abuse opioids.

Another argument is that, since people are going to use it anyway, we might as well make it legal and tax it. In the bargain, we will get rid of the black market and make the world a safer place. This argument plays well among libertarians and fiscal conservatives. But now all three elements of its narrative have been disproved.

First, legalization did not merely harness the market of people who were already using. Rather, it is creating more users every day. The very act of legalization sends a public message that marijuana is a harmless drug. On top of that false message, the pot industry is aggressively expanding the market for its product. Do we really think that seductive ads targeting our kids are harmless?

Second, the promise of increased state revenue has not panned out. Pot taxes have increased Colorado’s revenue by less than one percent. But even this gain is wiped out by the regulatory costs coupled with public health and safety losses.

Third, the black market has not gone away. It has exploded. Colorado has become an exporter of marijuana. Last year alone 6.4 metric tons of the stuff was grown in Colorado but was not sold there. Federal lands became the home of more than 80,000 black market plants. Organizations from Cuba, China, Mexico and elsewhere now operate sophisticated money laundering and drug-trafficking operations within the state.

Troyer lays out all these devastating statistics and more in his informative column. But he does not deal with the family cost. I have read a good number of articles both for and against legalization. Some are written from a medical perspective, some from a legal perspective, some by libertarians and some by liberals.

However, no one ever talks about the simple fact that the more widely mind-altering drugs are available, the more difficult it is for families to keep their children free of their corrosive effects.

Somewhere along the way we forgot that freedom is for families. The family is the basic building block of society. Strong families give us healthy societies. Broken families give us unhealthy societies. Our lawmakers need to remember this when making policy.

The modern impulse to deregulate absolutely everything from porn to pot has cost the family dearly. It pits the radical freedom of the individual against the healthy freedom of the family. As a result, both families and individuals are harmed. It’s high time we remember that individual freedoms can only be preserved when families are supported. This should be a simple litmus test.

When legislators are considering anything and everything, the most important thing to do is to stand in the shoes of mothers and fathers. Don’t ask merely about the revenue possibilities. Don’t just ask about the cost of enforcement. Don’t ask about whether you want the personal freedom to do this or that.

Rather ask this: would this law help me raise my children or, would it make my job more difficult? That’s the one question that was overlooked in Colorado. Now, the whole state is paying for it.

Read More:
Jeff Hunt, USA Today: Marijuana devastated Colorado, Don't legalize it nationally.
Luke Niforatos, Legalizing pot has been a failed experiment

We should all support Cheney's Wilderness Study Area bill

Washakie Wilderness Area, Norton Point

Last spring the commissioners of three counties (Big Horn, Lincoln and Sweetwater) formally asked Wyoming’s congressional delegation to address a 40-year-old problem. They have asked that Congress act to remove over 386,000 acres of land from a limbo that was created by the Federal Land Policy & Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976.

The story begins with the Wilderness Act of 1964 that created the National Wilderness Preservation Service (NWPS) and gave Congress the authority to designate lands from the National Park Service and the National Forest Service as “Wilderness Areas.” Once designated, the federal government restricts most forms of human development including logging, mining, mechanized vehicles (including mountain bikes) and road maintenance.

Wyoming's 15 Wilderness Areas

Under the Wilderness Act, Congress designated 15 wilderness areas in Wyoming totaling 3,111,975 acres of land. These large tracts of land offer some of the best backpacking, horse packing and snowshoeing in the United States.

There is no better way to experience the rugged beauty of Wyoming than to hike a couple of days into these regions far away from the crowds and the sound of human mechanization. I know because as a young man just out of high school, I fell in love with Wyoming in the Washakie Wilderness Area just out of Dubois.

There is, however, a price to pay for the privilege of walking in undisturbed wilderness.

First, the ability to experience their enchantment is limited to those who are young enough and fit enough to hike rugged trails and camp in primitive conditions. Without vehicle access, large numbers of Wyoming citizens, and an even larger percentage of Americans will never have the joy of seeing one of these preserves.

Second, lands that once contributed to the local economy through multiple uses are now restricted to the single use of hiking. The people who once made a living through sustainable logging, or mining needed to find work elsewhere. As they were pushed off the land, counties lost revenue in the form of taxes.

Third, by restricting the use of mechanized equipment, trails fall into disrepair making even hiking and horseback riding difficult. With restrictions on power equipment comes the inability to clean out deadfalls and undergrowth. As a result, a wilderness area becomes a tinderbox ripe for the annual wildfire season. This not only threatens wildlife, but also property on the non-restricted lands surrounding them.

Despite these costs, wilderness areas are beautiful and important parts of Wyoming’s total land management. Most Wyomingites are willing to pay the price for a few carefully chosen tracts of land to be kept as nature preserves.

Because wilderness designations are always a balance between costs and benefits, the Wilderness Act of 1964 was careful to keep the authority for designating wilderness areas in the hands of our elected officials. Wilderness designations should be made judiciously and with the consent of the people who are paying the price.


The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976 changed all that. This new law allowed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to suggest new areas for the NWPS but it also added a twist. The FLPMA instructed the Secretary of the Interior not only to identify possible areas for addition to the NWPS, but to designate these as Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) and to unilaterally apply wilderness area restrictions to these lands for up to 15-years while they were studied.

This Act represented an end run around the Wilderness Act of 1964. By giving temporary restrictive authority to the Secretary of Interior, it bypassed the requirement that wilderness areas be designated by elected representatives.

Thus, with the stroke of a pen the BLM designated over 700,000 acres of Wyoming land as WSAs. Suddenly, without input from our elected representatives, the people of Wyoming lost mining, logging—even mountain-biking—rights on these previously accessible BLM lands.

The story gets worse. In 1991 a new Secretary of the Interior released the long-awaited study of these WSAs along with a recommendation that Congress make about 41 percent of the 707,000-acre total into wilderness area and release the other 59 percent back to multiple use. But Congress never acted on this recommendation. Rather, 40 years after the unilateral restriction of three quarters of a million Wyoming acres, our elected officials have yet to weigh in.

Pete Obermueller

In 2015 Pete Obermueller, director of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association, launched the most recent attempt to get these lands out of limbo. The Wyoming Public Lands Initiative hoped to capitalize on Wyoming’s unique situation under federal law in order to negotiate a resolution of the WSA problem.

That was almost three years ago, and the results are still projected for next spring. One of the problems that perennially discourages local attempts to negotiate with the federal government is that after countless hours of negotiation, heartbreaking compromises and herculean efforts the results of the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative will inevitably end up in federal court.

We have seen this with every good-faith effort to come together on wolves, sage-grouse, grizzly bears and a thousand other matters. When Congress gives broad authorities to unelected bureaucracies, bad things happen.

They begin by “clarifying” what Congress left unanswered. This produces mountains of red-tape and confusing guidelines. Each new guideline in nuanced language will become an invitation to some special-interest group to hijack the process of negotiation. Groups having no intention of compromising with anybody can cynically sit back and watch the process knowing that no matter what is decided, an army of lawyers can undo the deal and make the personal opinion of some unelected federal judge to be the only opinion that matters.


It’s no wonder that so many people are feeling disenfranchised and marginalized. The American ideal of self-governance offers the promise of good-hearted people dealing face to face to solve vexing and complex problems. It was designed to be both transparent to public scrutiny and responsive to the voting public. Its success depends entirely on elected people, not faceless appointees, writing the laws. For this reason, three Wyoming counties have decided to break out of the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative and go to the root of the problem.

Let’s be absolutely clear. Nobody is challenging Congress’ creation of 15 wilderness areas in Wyoming. Rather, Big Horn, Lincoln and Sweetwater counties are challenging the BLM’s authority to create an additional 42 wilderness areas without congressional action. These counties alone encompass over 54 percent of the lands that were unilaterally regulated by the federal government contrary to the 1964 Wilderness Act.

They have been convinced by 40 years of fruitless negotiation that unless Congress acts directly, the people of Wyoming will never be given the chance to work together. If special interests wield litigeous power to scuttle good-faith negotiations, only an act of Congress can enable good people to come together and resolve the problem.

Liz Cheney

Congresswoman Liz Cheney agrees with these three county commissions. On September 27, the “Restoring Local Input and Access to Public Lands Act” (H.R. 6939). This does not undermine local control of public lands but gives it back. Since local control and elected representation was taken away by a bad act of congress in 1976, only congress has the power to restore it once again.

Kudos to our lone representative in congress. Let’s help her succeed.

WTE: America’s most prolific serial killer almost got away with murder

What if I told you that a Wyoming native played a key role in taking down America’s worst serial killer? Beginning in the 1980s he killed more victims than the any other serial killer in U.S. history and he almost got away with it.

His victims mostly went unnoticed until 2010 when authorities raided his business looking for evidence of an illegal drug operation. What they found was an office filled with corpses—more than thirty of them. They also found evidence of hundreds, perhaps thousands, more.

One industrial-strength garbage disposal had been completely worn out. Evidently it was used to grind up bodies for disposal into the Philadelphia sewer system. A waste-disposal company unknowingly had hauled off countless more for incineration. Still others had been taken to his vacation home and used as bait in his crab cages. So much evidence was lost that we will never know the full count.

Kermit Gosnell is serving life without parole. A movie about his murder trial opens in Fort Collins and nationwide this Friday, October 12: Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer.

It is a riveting story on several levels. Perhaps uppermost is the question: how was he able to commit so many murders without getting caught? He had numerous witnesses with evidence literally piled up in the hallways. How could all of this go unnoticed for decades?

Answer: he was hiding his murders in plain sight. This was made possible because they took place in an abortion clinic, giving him an almost impenetrable layer of protection. Nobody wants to look at abortion clinics or think too carefully about them. Scrutiny of abortion practices is America’s last taboo.

Consider your own reaction to the paragraph above. Did the sudden appearance of the word “abortion” made you hesitate? Words do powerful things to us, but none greater than this one.

It does powerful things to politicians, too. While nail salons receive health department inspections every year, Gosnell’s clinic had not been inspected by Pennsylvania’s Department of Health for over 17 years—not once. Grand jury testimony stated that the governor’s office quashed these inspections because it was an inner-city abortion clinic.

Gosnell was charged with hundreds of violations of Pennsylvania’s abortion law. But these charges had nothing to do with his murders. He was convicted of multiple murders because of his practice of having his nurses deliver alive-and-healthy babies who were later killed by cutting their spinal cord with a pair of scissors.

Defense attorneys sought to portray him as merely a sloppy practitioner of partial-birth abortion. That procedure kills the baby after it is mostly, but not completely, delivered. Gosnell couldn’t be bothered to observe that fine distinction. After all, if it is legal to kill a baby a few centimeters and a few seconds before birth, what magically makes it illegal a few feet and a few minutes farther away?

This defense strategy cast a spotlight on a plainly indefensible idea: that humanity and the protection of law are bestowed on a person by his passage through space and time. This logic inevitably leads to blurring the line between medicine and murder. Those unable to see that a fetus is a baby find it equally difficult to see that baby as a murder victim.

America’s press corps went into vapor-lock. The most sensational trial of a serial killer in the history of America had virtually no reporters in the court room. It could not be covered because the reporters could not say why it was wrong.

One who noticed their absence was Mollie Ziegler Hemingway who spent her earliest years in Kemmerer. As a reporter for GetReligion.org she watched local coverage on Gosnell’s trial for three weeks waiting for any national coverage. On April 7, 2013 she published a story about the media blackout and followed up with six more in the next week.

Meanwhile, J.D. Mullane, a reporter for Calkins Media, snapped a photo that went viral. It showed rows of empty seats that had been reserved for the press. The picture and the stories prompted Kiersten Powers of USA Today to break the media silence with a column subtitled: “We’ve forgotten what belongs on Page One.”

Once the dam broke, all the major networks and newspapers dispatched reporters to Philadelphia to cover the trial. The national attention had a significant impact both on the trial and on public opinion.

In the movie, the role of Mollie Hemingway and J.D. Mullane are woven together into a fictional character named Mollie Mullaney, a heroine of the story. Her character reminds us of the vital need for an unflinching press corps that will cover, and not cover-up stories that challenge the status quo. By reporting what we don’t want to know the press can help us come to our senses and regain our humanity.

The Federalist: How America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer Almost Got Away With Murder

 

He had numerous witnesses, with evidence literally piled up in the hallways, stored in freezers and refrigerators. How could all of this go unnoticed for decades?

H.H. Holmes used to be considered America’s most prolific serial killer. He is said to have murdered 230 victims during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, is suspected of killing more than 90 women between 1982 and the early ‘90s. Yet both are dwarfed by a killer whose victims began disappearing in the 1980s.

Continue reading on the Federalist.

America’s most prolific serial killer almost got away with murder

Dean Cain as Detective James Wood and AlonZo Rachel as his partner, Stark

What if I told you that a woman born and raised in Colorado and Kemmerer, Wyoming played a key role in taking down one of America’s worst serial killers?

The Green River Killer

H.H. Holmes used to be considered America’s most prolific serial killer. He is said to have murdered 230 victims during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, is suspected of killing over 90 women between 1982 and the early 90s. Both are dwarfed by a killer whose victims began disappearing in the 1980s.

For years, the murders went largely unnoticed. Then, in 2010, the Philadelphia police combined with the DEA and the FBI to raid his place of business. They were looking for evidence of an illegal drug operation. What they found was an office filled with corpses—more than thirty of them. They also found evidence of hundreds, perhaps thousands, more.

For instance, an industrial-strength garbage disposal had been completely worn out. Evidently it was used to grind up bodies for disposal into the Philadelphia sewer system. A waste-disposal company unknowingly had hauled off countless more for incineration. Still others had been taken to his vacation home and used as bait in his crab cages.

The principle of habeus corpus requires that prosecutors have evidence of a body to prove murder. Because of his effective disposal of remains, we will never really know the final count. The sheer volume of his crimes was too physically taxing to perform alone. So, he hired assistants and trained them to help. They helped bring victims into the office and dispose of the evidence.

Some even performed murders on his behalf, but they were not prosecuted. Eyewitnesses could testify to what they had done but proving intent would be more difficult. The serial killer had trained girls as young as 15 years old in his own private medical school. There he taught as a legitimate medical procedure what anyone else would have recognized as murder in cold blood.

The name of America’s most prolific serial killer is Kermit Gosnell. He avoided the death penalty by waiving his right to appeal. He is currently serving life without parole. His story is told in the movie, Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. It opens nationwide this Friday, October 12.

It is a riveting story on several levels. Perhaps uppermost is the question: how was he able to perform so many murders without getting caught? He had numerous witnesses with evidence literally piled up in the hallways, stored in freezers and refrigerators. How could all of this go unnoticed for decades?

Answer: he was hiding his murders in plain sight. This was made possible because they took place in an abortion clinic, giving him an almost impenetrable layer of protection. Nobody wants to scrutinize abortion clinics or think too carefully about them. They have become sacrosanct, so that their very mention freezes us in place.

Consider your own reaction to the paragraph above. If you’re like most, the sudden appearance of the word “abortion” made you hesitate to consider whether you wanted to continue reading this story. Until it was mentioned, you might have suspected who I was talking about, but it was less emotionally conflicting.

Words do powerful things to us, but none greater than this one. It does powerful things to politicians, too. Because of the “A-word,” Philadelphia authorities were reluctant—unreasonably reluctant—to inspect Gosnell’s clinic or follow up on numerous complaints. While nail salons receive health department inspections every year, Gosnell’s clinic had not been inspected by Pennsylvania’s Department of Health for over 17 years—not once.

This is a bi-partisan problem. It’s not only Democrat politicians who will move heaven and earth to block abortion-reporting laws, pro-life judges and health standards for abortion clinics. Republican politicians also work to frustrate common-sense legislation and minimal enforcement of the laws. Most are afraid that if they look too closely at abortion practices their political ambitions will be destroyed by powerful lobbyists.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge

In the case of Gosnell, it was a Republican governor, Tom Ridge, (later named the first Secretary of Homeland Security by George W. Bush) who prevented discovery of the murders. Grand Jury testimony alleged that his office instructed the Pennsylvania Department of Health not to inspect Gosnell’s clinic unless it received a complaint. This permitted the practices and conditions of the clinic on Lancaster Street to be effectively unaccountable to anyone but Gosnell.

Opening statements in Gosnell’s trial were held on March 18, 2013. He was charged with over 200 counts of violating Pennsylvania’s law requiring a 24-hour waiting period and 24 counts of illegal abortions after the viability of the child. However, none of these illegal abortions counted toward his title as America’s biggest serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders because of his practice of having his nurses deliver alive-and-healthy babies who were later killed either directly or by neglect.

His defenders, both in the courtroom and in the press, sought to portray him as merely a sloppy practitioner of partial-birth abortion. That procedure kills the baby after it is mostly, but not quite completely, delivered. Gosnell couldn’t be bothered to observe that fine distinction. After all, if it is legal to kill a baby a few centimeters and a few seconds before birth, what magically makes it illegal a few feet and a few minutes after birth?

This defense cast a spotlight on a plainly indefensible idea: that humanity and the protection of law are bestowed on a person by his passage through space and time. This ridiculous logic inevitably leads to a blurring of all human decency. Those who are unable to see that a fetus is a baby have no reason to see a baby as a murder victim—for the very same reason.

Empty press seats, Photo: J.D. Mullane

America’s press corps went into vapor-lock. Gosnell’s actual practice was too sick to support. But there was no logical way to distinguish his practice from what they were already supporting. So, they just didn’t show up.

The most sensational trial of a serial killer in the history of America had virtually no reporters in the court room. The biggest crime since 1893 could not be covered because the reporters could not say why it was wrong.

One of those who noticed was Mollie Ziegler Hemingway who spent her earliest years in Kemmerer and later grew up in Colorado. As a reporter for GetReligion.org she watched local coverage on Gosnell’s trial for three weeks waiting for any coverage by the mainstream media. On April 7, 2013 she published a story about the blackout and followed up with six more, published between April 10 and April 16.

Meanwhile, J.D. Mullane, a reporter for Calkins Media, snapped a picture of rows of empty seats that had been reserved for the press. The photo went viral, prompting Kiersten Powers of USA Today to break the media silence. She published a column subtitled: “We’ve forgotten what belongs on Page One.”

Mollie Hemingway, Reporter at GetReligion.org

Once the dam broke, all the major networks and newspapers dispatched reporters to Philadelphia to cover the trial. This had a significant impact both on the strength of the prosecution and on American public opinion.

In the new Gosnell movie, the role of Mollie Hemingway and J.D. Mullane are woven together into a fictional character named Mollie Mullaney. In many ways she is the heroine of the story. She reminds us of the vital need for an unflinching press corps that will cover, and not cover up stories that challenge the media narrative. Only by exposing the darkness of our hidden inhumanities can the press help us regain humanity.

WTE: The Grizzly Details

Mark Thomas Uptain was a devoted husband and father of five children and an elder at First Baptist Church in Jackson, Wyoming. He was a community-minded businessman, an outdoorsman, and a part-time hunting guide. He was killed by a grizzly bear on September 14, 2018.

Uptain was retrieving an elk with his client when a sow charged him and killed him after a protracted struggle. Details are sketchy, however it seems that he fended off the initial attack and walked about 50 yards uphill when the bear returned with her cub killed him with an instantly fatal bite.

Uptain’s body was found on the following afternoon. An empty can of bear spray was recovered nearby. Based on his injuries, wardens and biologists concluded that both the sow and her cub together attacked the guide.

On Sunday, September 16, searchers returned to the scene and killed both bears. Dan Thompson, Game and Fish’s large carnivore chief, gave the order. The she-bear smelled of bear spray, confirmation that they had killed the culprits.

“She was teaching an offspring that killing humans is a potential way to get food,” Thompson explained. “It’s not something we want out there on the landscape.”

The investigators and wildlife biologists remain puzzled by the behavior of these bears. To be sure, grizzly bears are aggressive and inherently dangerous. However, it is highly unusual for them to attack human beings unprovoked.

Almost every grizzly fatality can be traced either to a sow protecting her threatened cub, or either sex fighting for a carcass that it had claimed. In this case, neither scenario was true. Rather, every sign indicates that the sow and her cub stalked the two men. This behavior is a frightening development.

Sy Gilliland, owner of SNS Outfitter and Guide, has 41 years of experience as a guide in Wyoming and Montana. He is currently a member of the governor’s Animal Damage Management Board. Commenting on Uptain’s death, he said, “I can only imagine how horrific this was. You’ve got a bear population that’s basically un-hunted, is an apex predator, and has no fear of humans.”

He speaks for many in the Yellowstone area who have been trying for more than a decade to return management of the grizzlies to local control.

There have been only twelve Grizzly fatalities in Wyoming’s statehood. Prior to 1975 there were only four, but in 1975 the federal government listed grizzlies in the Yellowstone area as a threatened species. Since 1982, we have seen eight people killed by grizzlies.

The National Park Service website says that in 1975 there were only 136 grizzlies. Federal and state agencies created a bear recovery plan in 1993 that called for three specific benchmarks to be met for six consecutive years before they could be delisted. By 2003 every requirement had been met.

Still, it took four more years of legal wrangling to delist the bears in 2007. Immediately, radical environmentalists sued and, by 2009, a federal judge had ordered the relisting of grizzlies.

After eight more years of study and a steadily growing population, U.S. Fish and Wildlife again delisted the bears in 2017. Nobody knows how many grizzlies are in Wyoming today.

They are only officially counted in the Designated Management Area (DMA) surrounding Yellowstone National Park. The most reasonable estimates, in this area alone, are well over 1,000. That number doesn’t even include the bears in the park itself or those outside the DMA--like those recently reported in Cody, Dubois and near Thermopolis.

To cull the grizzly population in the DMA, Wyoming issued 23 licenses for a short season to begin on September 1. However, two days before it was to begin a federal judge in Missoula, Montana blocked the hunt. Last week he unilaterally returned the bears to “threatened species” list.

Something must be done.

Not only have most of Wyoming’s grizzly fatalities occurred since they were listed in 1975, but they are growing more frequent with every passing decade. Additionally, of three grizzly fatalities in Wyoming’s 128-year history, two have occurred in the past eight years.

Every year the number of grizzly-human encounters grows. They have become so common that they are hardly reported any more. Gilliland said, “We’re at a point where the bears need to be under state management. If we don’t do it with sportsmen and hunters, we have to do it with control action. And that control action means government wildlife personnel killing rogue bears as they did last Sunday morning.”

Every year government wildlife managers kill 15-20 bears that have become dangerous. About the same number are killed by hunters in self-defense or by ranchers protecting their livestock.

Now that the delisting battle has been raging for fifteen years, not only are visitors to the park in greater danger, but Wyoming’s citizens are increasingly threatened outside the park. Mark Uptain is only the latest casualty. There will be more.

The 1993 grizzly recovery plan was designed to balance a healthy grizzly population with common-sense safety for Wyoming’s citizens. It’s time that we value human life enough to follow it.

Science, History and Truth, Reflections from the Swamp

America has been transfixed by events in Washington, D.C. over the last two weeks. Allegations of sexual assault against a candidate for the Supreme Court have poured gasoline on an already-raging fire in the body politic.

Judging by the emotions on display last Thursday (September 27), both Christine Ford and Brett Kavanaugh have been deeply and irreparably harmed. As much as I grieve for both them and their families, I grieve even more for the damage that has been done to our community.

I am angry that so many politicians and pundits have done everything in their power to set Americans against one another. They have left us no place for peace. They have done their darnedest to fan the flames of contempt and hatred that their own side feels for the other.

There are three elements that make this possible. First, the question itself is binary. There is no middle ground between yes and no. Second, we cannot help but form an opinion about the question. Whether we speak it out loud, or not, it is there. Third, are the emotions. Satan is always busy stirring up feelings of outrage and scorn for anyone holding a contrary opinion.

We have had enough of the feelings. I don’t want to talk about them today. I will only say this much: Stop and think about your own emotions. When you have a different opinion from someone else, why do you become angry? Is that rational? Is it helpful? Is there another emotion that could be more helpful?

You can ponder these questions for yourself. What interests me today is the question of truth. The emotional urgency that has been stoked in all of us has produced some fascinating results that destroy one of the most commonly heard falsehoods of our day.

The postmodern worldview is a part of the air that we breathe. It claims that truth is subjective and relative. “You have your truth, and I have mine.” Facts and logic are swept from the field leaving emotion to rule the day.

This postmodern way of thinking at first was applied to religion. People would say, “you can believe in God if you want, but I choose not to.” Questions about the ultimate truth of God’s existence and nature were ignored in favor of questions about subjective choices in each person’s heart.

In this worldview, there is no room for the objective question of whether God exists quite apart from your belief. It is as non-sensical as saying “you can believe in gravity if you want, but I choose not to.” In fact, that is precisely where postmodernism has taken us. Once religious truth was denied, all truth claims were placed on the chopping-block.

In morality, values-clarification exercises teach that there are no moral truths at all. There is just a process that each person must find within the self. Process theology teaches that God Himself is always evolving so that one fixed and final Truth simply does not exist.

In the field of psychology, mental disorders are being redefined as mere differences. This denies the very existence of mental order. In the field of biology people are asserting crazy things about human sexuality that they would never dream of saying about animal sexuality. Last week, for instance, nobody ever thought to ask the female grizzly bear how she identified.

But if the furor of the past couple of weeks has done anything, it has exploded the myth that truth is subjective and relative. Nobody in his right mind can possibly say, “Judge Kavanaugh is speaking the truth; and Dr. Ford is speaking the truth.” No matter the side of the question on which you find yourself, you cannot say both things.

Pointy-headed philosophers may assert that truth is only a construct of the individual mind. But when “your truth” and “my truth” come into conflict, both must give way to “the truth.” Individual minds meet in the real world and what happens in the real world determines what is true.

That brings us to a second point. Truth is about history. Science can tell you what might have happened or what could happen in the future. But only history can tell you what actually did happen; and only tomorrow can reveal what will happen.

This week we have been inundated with the word “credible.” That comes from a Latin root and it means “believable.” To say that something is credible is not saying that it happened or that it didn’t happen. It is only saying that there is no known reason why it could not happen.

It is credible that the sun will rise tomorrow. But whether it actually does depends on whether or not Jesus returns in glory between now and then. On the other hand, it is not credible that I played a football game in 1960 for the simple reason that I didn’t exist then.

In our day we are fascinated by the ability of science to make predictions. We can calculate the motion of objects and land a human being on the moon. We can measure the erosion of a stream and project backward to what it looked like a hundred years before.

But we should never forget that the predictions and suppositions of science are never more than educated guesses. Whether they actually happened in history can only be known by history. Despite all the scientific predictions about Apollo 13, it did not actually land on the moon. All of science’s best calculations of stream erosion can only be validated by a photograph from the past.

This brings us to a third important point. The truth or falsehood of assertions about the past ultimately depends on people. People manned Apollo 13 and watched it from mission control. A person snapped the photograph of our hypothetical stream bed. More than that, only that person can tell us when he took the picture.

Truth is history and history is told by eye-witnesses. Absolutely everything that you know about history has been handed down to you through a chain of people. What we call prehistoric is actually “pre-people.” The history actually happened, but if nobody was there to witness it, we cannot truly know it.

The truth exists whether, or not you ever learn of it. But knowing the truth depends on the people around us. Some people are reliable witnesses who give us true history, and some are unreliable witnesses who give us falsehoods. Our lives are enhanced by those who tell us the truth. Our lives are made poorer by those who don’t.

That brings us back to the beginning. The deep sadness of our current turmoil is the fact that lies are being told with impunity, and not just in Washington. We have falsehoods taught in our schools, in churches, in the press, in Hollywood, in literature and in science.

With every lie, real people are hurt. The cancer is spreading and there’s only one way to combat it. We must each make a personal commitment to the truth, to seek it out diligently and to follow wherever it leads. Our very lives depend on it.