(National Right to Life News) Understanding that the national media completely ignored the 2013 trial of serial killer (of babies) Kermit Gosnell, we (meaning me) expect zero follow-up after the perfunctory stories about his death at the State Correctional Institution-Smithfield, near Pittsburgh, at age 85.
After all, why talk about a man who killed thousands of unborn babies, including (at a minimum) hundreds of huge babies he delivered alive and then “snipped” their spinal cords? Granted, then Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams described Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society as a “house of horrors” and added “My comprehension of the English language can’t adequately describe the barbaric nature of Dr. Gosnell … Pennsylvania is not a third-world country,” but why pay him heed now?
But consider: “Photos of Gosnell’s abortion work flashed on screens around the courtroom for the jury, and always brought gasps from spectators attending the trial,” Bucks County Courier Times columnist JD Mullane wrote today. “But among those not in the courtroom to record the macabre testimony was the national press.”
No surprise there. But why would we expect them to have any more interest today than they exhibited 13 years ago? After all, it was not until Kirsten Powers of USA TODAY wrote a blistering column headlined “Philadelphia abortion clinic horror: We’ve forgotten what belongs on Page One“ about the media’s stunning lack of interest that they were shamed into grudgingly covering the trial.
Tweet This: The media had a stunning lack of interest in the Kermit Gosnell case until they were shamed into grudgingly covering the trial.
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Ironically, her column ran the same day as a photo which went viral taken by Mullane that showed three rows in the Gosnell courtroom, marked as “Reserved for National Media.” The Media Heavyweights then kind of covered the trial which went on for another month.
“After that one-two punch, the national media, arrived to cover the case,” Mullane wrote. How long did the trial and deliberations go on? Roughly five weeks of testimony, followed by ten days of deliberations by a jury of seven women and five men, and the verdict on May 13, 2013.
Personally, I have no problems speaking ill of this man whose reign of terror went on for 30 years, abetting by the state Department of Health, local doctors, and servile public officials up to and including the governor.
And the abortion industry, too. They knew of his endless string of atrocities but kept silent. Evidence?
Tweet This: The abortion industry knew of Kermit Gosnell's endless string of atrocities but kept silent.
Utterly without shame, in 2009, Gosnell applied for membership in the National Abortion Federation (NAF). After Gosnell’s conviction on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter, the NAF piously insisted he was rejected because his clinic did not meet “their guidelines for safety and quality of service.”
In fact, their investigator found the clinic “beyond redemption” and the investigator—and NAF— told no one!
The Special Grand Jury’s 281-page report documented Gosnell’s three-decade long butcheries. Here’s a long but necessary excerpt:
He botched surgeries and then failed to summon emergency help when it was needed. His entire practice showed nothing but a callous disdain for the lives of his patients. As far back as 1972, he was notorious for his mistreatment of the women who came to him for treatment.
Randy Hutchins testified that Gosnell told him about what has been called the “Mother’s Day Massacre.” According to a February 25, 2010, article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Gosnell offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.
Unbeknownst to the women, Gosnell planned to use an experimental device called a “super coil” developed by a California man named Harvey Karman, who had run an underground abortion service in the 1950s. Hutchins related what Gosnell explained to him:
At the time that he agreed to do this, there was a device that he and a psychologist were working on that was supposed to be plastic – basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. All right. They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, it would then – the gel would melt and these 97 things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus, and the fetus would be expelled. The problem was that they never tested it. They didn’t test it on any animals. They never did any – any – any other human trials. This was not something that was sanctioned by the FDA. This was just something that he decided – he and this guy decided they were going to use on these women.
Hutchins actually was mistaken in his belief that no other human trials been conducted. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer article, Karman had tested his device on hundreds of Bangladeshi women who had been raped by Pakistani soldiers. Those women suffered a high rate of complications. Nonetheless, Karman brought his “super coil” to Philadelphia, where he found an ally in Gosnell.
Enough…or is it? What qualifies as “enough” for a man whose sins against almost exclusively poor women of color are unmatched for cruelty and exploitation?
You answer the question. I cannot.
Editor's note: This article was published by National Right to Life News and is reprinted with permission.
