The lefty liberals may be losing their hold over the arts world

If you happen to be reading this column at breakfast, I’d recommend you skip to something more agreeable like Dear Mary and save mine till a bit later. It concerns the ugly details of one of the most revolting mass murderers in US history.

His name is Kermit Gosnell — a doctor who ran a particularly dodgy clinic in Philadelphia specialising in late-term abortions for mostly poor black women. When police raided it in 2010, they encountered a scene of quite appalling horror. In a flea-ridden, blood- and faeces-stained basement, Gosnell had been operating on women using unsterilised equipment, killing babies well over the legal term limit, sometimes by sucking out their brains with a machine. In jars, milk jugs, even cat-food containers, Gosnell stored his grisly trophies: bits of old foetus, including, for some bizarre reason, a row of jars containing just the feet. Gosnell, who had no training in either gynaecology or obstetrics, and whose practice made around $10,000 to $15,000 a night from abortions and prescriptions, is now serving life in prison.