The Abortion Trial of Kermit Goswell

[Phoenicks]

This topic is about the Abortion Trial itself and not the social or political issues of Abortion. This is meant only as a news story. If you can't separate those issues, please post instead in Nicoleta's Bus.

I could only find two noteworthy news pieces on this topic. The lack of coverage of this topic is not the topic of this thread.

The first is the Huffington Post, which says:

Ashley Baldwin, Teen Worker At Kermit Gosnell's Abortion Clinic, Testifies

PHILADELPHIA -- An unlicensed doctor fled out the back the night the FBI raided a Philadelphia medical clinic in 2010, a witness testified Thursday as a murder trial centered on the unorthodox facility.

Abortion provider Kermit Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing a woman patient and seven babies allegedly born alive, and with performing illegal, late-term abortions at his thriving inner-city clinic. Co-defendant Eileen O'Neill, 56, of Phoenixville, is charged with billing as a doctor and participating in a corrupt organization.

Eight former employees have pleaded guilty, some to third-degree murder, and have testified this month about bizarre, often-chaotic practices at the clinic.

The second, the best piece I could find, is Conor Friedersdorf writing in The Atlantic. I withhold a link to his piece because he includes graphic pictures, but his article is called "Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story". The relevant quote:

The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I've read. "This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths."

Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate's coverage includes testimony as grisly as you'd expect. "An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions," the channel reports. [The rest has been cut for graphic content.]

The rest of the story is very graphic. Be warned before seeking it out yourself.

Kermit Goswell, the head of the abortion clinic, is charged with counts including murder of female patients and delivered babies, and of the deplorable conditions his clinic operated under.

 

[Sith Droideka]

There are quite a few articles about it under opinion at the Wall Street Journal.

By the way, why, exactly, can we not discuss its lack of coverage? It has everything to do with this topic.

 

[Phoenicks]

You can discuss it, or anything you want to. My topic is about the trial itself, for fear of becoming "X political elements in the media are suppressing this story". I think that this topic was important enough that there be nothing objectionable that requires it to be placed in the Bus.

 

[Fig]

How many news stories can you find about the average murder trial?

The problem isn't that this one is getting lukewarm coverage. The problem is the occasional media frenzies over certain specific murders: usually those murders that have just the right amount of horror/shock and (one of) fame/drama/love/sex to fire off everybody's morbid curiosity. Then they get way overblown media coverage, in every little detail, because that sells.

This has way too much of the horror, and way too little of any of the others. It wouldn't be nearly as much of a seller. Hence why it's not getting media coverage.

(Note: any debate on actual political bias in the media belongs in you-know-which forum. That include any rants and accusation about anybody suppressing this story, which is inherently partisan, and thus inherently political, so inherently doesn't-belong-here)

 

[Italy-kun]

I feel bad for laughing, but I read the title as "The Abortion Trial of Kermit the Frog."

 

[Lord Naarghul]

Convicted on 3 counts.

Doctor Kermit Gosnell found guilty of murdering infants in late-term abortions | Fox News

A Philadelphia doctor was found guilty Monday of murdering three babies born alive in an abortion clinic, Fox News confirms. He was acquitted in the fourth baby's death, and found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of an adult patient.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, was convicted of first-degree murder and could face execution in the deaths of three babies who authorities say were delivered alive and then killed with scissors at his grimy clinic, in a case that became a flashpoint in the nation's debate over abortion.

Gosnell was cleared in the death of a fourth baby, who prosecutors say let out a soft whimper before he snipped its neck.

Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the drug-overdose death of a patient who had undergone an abortion.

Gosnell appeared hopeful before the verdict and calm afterward; jurors and lawyers on both sides were more emotional.

The jury will return Tuesday to hear evidence on whether Gosnell should get the death penalty.

Former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal late-term abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants "snipped" the newborns' spines, as he referred to it.

"Are you human?" prosecutor Ed Cameron snarled during closing arguments as Gosnell sat calmly at the defense table. "To med these women up and stick knives in the backs of babies?"

The grisly details came out more than two years ago during an investigation of prescription drug trafficking at Gosnell's clinic in an impoverished section of West Philadelphia.

Authorities said the clinic was a foul-smelling "house of horrors" with bags and bottles of stored fetuses, including jars of severed feet, along with bloodstained furniture, dirty medical instruments, and cats roaming the premises.

Pennsylvania authorities had failed to conduct routine inspections of all of its abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell's facility was raided and closed down. In the scandal's aftermath, two top state health department officials were fired, and Pennsylvania imposed tougher rules for clinics.

Four former clinic employees have pleaded guilty to murder and four more to other charges. They include Gosnell's wife, Pearl, a cosmetologist who helped perform abortions.

Both sides of the abortion divide seized on the case. Abortion foes said it exposed the true nature of abortion in all its disturbing detail. Abortion rights activists warned that Gosnell's rogue practice foreshadows what poor and desperate young women could face if abortion is driven underground with more restrictive laws.

Midway through the six-week trial, anti-abortion activists accused the mainstream media of ignoring the case because it reflected badly on the abortion rights cause. Major news organizations denied the allegation, though a number promptly sent reporters to cover the trial.

After prosecutors rested their case, Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart threw out for lack of evidence three of seven murder counts involving aborted fetuses. That left the jury to weigh charges involving fetuses identified as Baby A, Baby C, Baby D and Baby E.

Prosecution experts said one was nearly 30 weeks along when it was aborted, and it was so big that Gosnell allegedly joked it could "walk to the bus." A second fetus was said to be alive for some 20 minutes before a clinic worker snipped its neck. A third was born in a toilet and was moving before another clinic employee grabbed it and severed its spinal cord, according to testimony. Baby E let out a soft whimper before Gosnell cut its neck, the jury was told; Gosnell was acquitted in that baby's death.

Gosnell's attorney, Jack McMahon, argued that none of the fetuses was born alive and that any movements were posthumous twitching or spasms.

He also contended that the 2009 death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar of Woodbridge, Va., a Bhutanese immigrant who had been given repeated doses of Demerol and other powerful drugs to sedate her and induce labor, was caused by unforeseen complications.

Gosnell did not testify, and his lawyer called no witnesses in his defense. But McMahon argued that the doctor provided desperate young woman with "a solution to their problems," and he branded prosecutors "elitist" and "racist" for pursuing his client, who is black and whose patients were mostly poor minorities.

"We know why he was targeted," McMahon said.

Prosecutors described Gosnell's employees as nearly as desperate as the patients. Some had little or no medical training, and at least one was a teenager still in high school. One woman needed the work to support her children after her husband's murder.

Stephen Massof, an unlicensed medical school graduate who could not find a residency, told jurors that Gosnell taught him how to snip babies' spines, something he then did at least 100 times at the clinic.

"I felt like a fireman in hell," Massof testified. "I couldn't put out all the fires."

Gosnell still faces federal drug charges. Authorities said that he ranked third in the state for OxyContin prescriptions and that he left blank prescription pads at his office and let staff members make them out to cash-paying patients.

He performed thousands of abortions over a 30-year career. Authorities said the medical practice alone netted him about $1.8 million a year, much of it in cash. Authorities found $250,000 hidden in a bedroom when they searched his house. Gosnell also owned a beach home and several rental properties.

"He created an assembly line with no regard for these women whatsoever," Cameron said. "And he made money doing that."