Diane Robertson
After a two-month trial and 10 days of deliberation the jury came back with a verdict of “Guilty” for the Pennsylvania Abortionist, Kermit Gosnell. The jury decided that Baby A, Baby C and Baby D were born alive and lived before their spinal cords were severed at Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic in West Philadelphia.
Jurors acquitted Gosnell of third-degree murder, instead finding him guilty on a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter for the 2009 death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar of Virginia, who died from a drug overdose while undergoing an abortion at his clinic.
The jury acquitted Gosnell of murder in the death of Baby E, citing not enough evidence that baby E lived outside its mother’s womb. Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart previously dismissed three additional first-degree murder charges against Gosnell, each involving infants.
While prosecutors sought the death penalty, on Tuesday, May 14th, Gosnell received 2 life sentences without parole.
The gruesome details of Gosnell’s operation came out more than two years ago during a grand jury investigation seeking evidence for prescription drug trafficking. Instead, authorities raiding Gosnell’s clinic found fetuses in bags and bottles. Deceased infants were stashed in the same refrigerator employees kept their lunches. Gosnell kept jars of severed feet. The furniture was filthy and bloodstained. Gosnell reused disposable medical equipment and did not clean medical instruments between abortions. Cats, cat feces and cat urine were found on the premises.
Untrained clinic workers testified that they and Gosnell regularly “snipped” the necks of babies during late term abortions. Of the three babies Gosnell has been convicted of murdering, one of the babies was said to be at least 30 weeks along and was so big that Gosnell joked that the baby could “walk him to the bus.” Another baby was said to be alive for about 20 minutes before a clinic worker snipped the neck. A third was born in a toilet and was moving before another clinic worker snipped its neck. Pennsylvania’s law only allows abortion before the 24th week of pregnancy.
The Gosnell trial has struck a nerve throughout the nation. Abortion supporter, Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said, “Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell.”
Pro-life Congressmen are calling this what it is: murder. “Some abortionists may have cleaner sheets than Gosnell, and better sterilized equipment and better trained accomplices, but what they do — what Gosnell did — kill babies and hurt women — is the same,” Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said in a statement.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he was “praying for the lives taken by Kermit Gosnell,” and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted that “the Gosnell ordeal shouldn’t slip quietly from our conscience.”
Fetuses, babies, toddlers, kids, tweens, teens, young adults, middle aged, and elderly– we have different words for every stage of human life. Our laws should treat each stage of life as valuable as the next. The Gosnell trial has opened the eyes of millions who believed a fetus is a mass of cells or a “choice”. Abortion is a synonymous word for murder. Other people in different stages of life should not be more important and more valued than the babies inside their mother’s wombs.