Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of murdering patient, newborns
 

Philadelphia (CNN) -- Allegedly running what the prosecutor calls "a house of horrors," a Philadelphia physician, Kermit Barron Gosnell, was charged Wednesday with murder and other offenses related to illegal, late-term abortions.

The doctor is accused of causing the death of one of his female patients and killing seven viable babies in illegal abortions, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said.

The babies were born alive in the sixth, seventh and eighth months of pregnancy, but their spinal cords were allegedly severed with scissors, Williams said in a statement.

Nine other people who worked in the west Philadelphia medical office, including Gosnell's wife and sister-in-law, also were charged, Williams said. The practice, called the Women's Medical Society, served mostly low-income minority women for years, he said.

Williams provided a grisly scenario of the shuttered abortion clinic: A search of the office last year by authorities found bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses scattered throughout the building. Jars containing the severed feet of babies lined a shelf. Furniture and equipment was blood-stained, dusty and broken.

In an interview with CNN, Williams described the abortion clinic as "horrific" and providing "botched and illegal abortions."

"It was a house of horrors beyond any type of definition or explanation I can humbly try to give," Williams told CNN. "And it's very sad for the women that were there, that were subjected to such horrific and barbaric -- I would say medical treatment but it wasn't medical -- treatment.

"My grasp of the English language doesn't really allow me to fully describe how horrific this clinic was -- rotting bodies, fetal remains, the smell of urine throughout, blood-stained," Williams continued.

He said women patients were often "very poor."

"The doctor gained a reputation. People far and wide knew that he performed abortions at any time," Williams said.

Williams described one of the alleged infant deaths.

"The baby had been born and was on a cold steel table and murdered by using -- there's no medical basis for snipping or taking scissors and putting them into the neck and cutting, severing the spinal cord. It's just homicide. It's just murder," Williams told CNN.

Gosnell's attorney, William J. Brennan of Philadelphia, told CNN he was surprised at the "length and breadth" of the grand jury's presentment and report against Gosnell and the nine other defendants. Gosnell is facing hundreds of counts, including charges for seven first-degree murders charges and a third-degree murder, according to Williams and the grand jury's 62-page presentment.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/19/...ion=cnn_latest

SMH

I read the grand jury report last night because I just couldn't believe it. :(:(:(

My stomach turned just reading portions of it.

This is beyond disturbing and is precisely why I support pretty much anything that provides women with full access to healthcare.

This is reminiscent of how things were when abortion was illegal. Is it really a surprise that, with severe restrictions on when abortions can be performed and who can afford them, history repeats itself?

I guess part of my shock is that he was allowed to operate for so long that no one really complained.

Sheesh...and when you think about it...it's only 7 that's KNOWN.

When the clients are people there for illegal abortions, who do they complain to? You can't go to the police and say "I think the guy who did my illegal abortion has something shady going on". This wouldn't have been termed "murder" until after partial birth abortion was banned during the Bush administration.

I don't know Dee...

I mean even still how did they eventually find out about him?

*Sigh* then I hear that he possibly had a 16 year old there administering anesthesia.

It was part of the larger investigation about the woman's death. They had a warrant to investigate the practice and that's when they found what they found.

He DID have a teenager there working...he was the only licensed MD at the clinic, but there were others there doing his work...he'd show up later on during the day to "finish" the abortions. While it sickened me, I'm glad I read the report just so I knew for sure what happened.

Are you seriously saying that a VIABLE HUMAN should legally be able to be murdered?


I have two hotbutton issues. Abortion is one of them.

AF...I don't think Dee is saying that.

I am thinking that she is putting this in historical context...and it's sad that this was going on.

I interpreted her post to mean that because it's difficult for these women to get legal abortions they were going to this doctor to get illegal ones.

^^^this too

My response was more directed to the part about "severe restrictions on when they can be performed", and then her adding the comment about partial-birth...I can't even being myself to call it abortion, since you're not even TECHNICALLY aborting a pregnancy.

Ok, yeah, I had a real problem with that too especially with him aborting fetuses close to term.

That he had no conscience doing it and that some women went that long before having this done really turned my stomach.

This case is disgusting. I'm pro-choice, but this procedure is not reasonable. Anyway, not all shady abortion practitioners are outed so publically. Two physicians lost their licenses in MD last quarter. I just got my MD Medical Board bulletin last weekend. It's the best little bit of schadenfreude that we experience as physicians. We all pour through it looking to see if we know someone who screwed up (hopefully not for patient care issues, but there are usually lots of drug or alcohol abuse problems or physicians dinged for dating their patients.) One abortion provider actually killed a patient by not monitoring her correctly after providing anesthesia. The other would initiate the procedure in MD or DE and have the patient finish the procedure across state lines. I'm not sure what the benefit was since the procedure is legal. Maybe he was billing in both states for the same procedure? They didn't specify the full extent of the problem, but it got his license pulled. He probably had his license revoked in Delaware as well, since states have reciprocal agreements to enforce each other's medical board decisions. Lots of other shady things were in this issue, but I won't go into them.

Luckily, Pennsylvania has the death penalty. If it's not administered here, it's hard to imagine why they have such a statute.

They might have had valid reasons for going that long - they couldn't get an abortion at reputable places, they couldn't afford it, this was a last resort, things of that nature.

It's unfortunate that those who may actually need these procedures more often (lower socioeconomic status and all the sexual and opportunity-based implications that may have) usually have the hardest time being able to access them in safe and reputable conditions.

From what I read in the DA's report, it appears that it was indeed a facility of absolute last resort. It catered to very very very poor women, as well as immigrant women, some of whose English was not good, or had been used to unclean medical facilities. One of the former employees testified that there were a lot of African women who went there, many of whom had been victims of FGM. In the rare event that a white woman came in, there was a different waiting room and a different procedure room from the one used on women of color.

Basically, you have a lot of women who didn't know their bodies for whatever reasons; it's also believed that many of them didn't even know how far along they were.

If you can use Shady McQuack at 8 months, you could have used him at 3.

Either way, there is NO valid reason for aborting/murdering a viable baby. Period.

And you want your CHOICE? You got it, and you CHOSE to get nekkid. Choice made. That's my version of pro-choice.

My thoughts exactly. Couldn't have said it better. We make mistakes and the innocent have to suffer. And I have to believe that the way these innocent children were murdered was particularly heinous.

That's the thing--regardless of where one lies on the pro-choice/pro-life spectrum, everyone can agree that the manner in which these procedures occurred were barbaric to say the least.

Add to that the fact that this was done after viability, in situations where it was probably NOT to save the life of a mother, increases the ridiculousness of this situation.

This is easy enough to say when one is a member of the majority and has broader access to a number of medical procedures, elective or otherwise, but according to the court documents, this case is not as cut and dry as it would be if you or I were to go to Planned Parenthood or another reputable gynocological clinic to seek reproductive medical treatment (for any variety of procedures).

Women of lower socioeconomic status have limited access to these types of resources, including regular gynocological visits, prenatal care, etc., and abortion is not really an exception in that regard. Because they more than likely did not have health insurance (or did not have a plan that covered abortion as a valid medical procedure), they would need to save up the money to pay for the procedure ahead of time. Because they need to save up (and an abortion, IIRC, is a fairly expensive procedure), they get later and later into their pregnancies before they can do it, which leads to higher instances of illegal abortions.

Add on to it that women of lower socioeconomic status are also more likely to be victims of sexual abuse and assault and that makes the lines extremely blurry.

I don't think anyone in this thread is saying that the type of procedures the "doctor" was performing should be legal or were not disgusting, more that his victims included both the babies delivered and the mothers, no matter how willing the participant. His alleged actions were reprehensible and if found guilty he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

No. I am saying that when something is illegal, someone will still provide a means to do it. This is true for drugs, alcohol, smoking, abortion, whatever. There is no statement there about whether it is right or wrong, just that it happens and that I'm not surprised.

It's amazing we're still even having these types of conversations today, when legalized abortion has been such a huge boon to upper-middle-class white conservative America in terms of limiting things like crime and poverty-stricken social classes.

It's kind of a forest/trees thing on some level.

Either way - I don't think there are many who advocate any of these tactics (scissors? I honestly had to check to make sure it wasn't a tabloid/internet invention) - it's almost like a bad movie or video game. Unconscionable on every level, and sort of hard to even integrate into a rational mindset. Regardless of the social and legal forces that drove this into existence, what this 'clinic' did was horrible.

If it was consensual, then yes, I would agree with you but in a lot of cases today especially talking about rampant rape and abuse, women aren't being given that choice.

What do you mean here? Just that it's amazing that some people still don't have access, either financially or geographically?

Especially the women who were going to this clinic...from what I've read, many of these women were drug addicts, very young, and victims of domestic violence. This wasn't just a group of irresponsible young things who forgot to take the pill.

This just makes me want to cry... :(

No - although that also sucks.

I was going to send you a PM so that I didn't hijack the thread too much but it seems to be turned off - drop me a line if you want a more full explanation. I may have been speaking out of turn, or taking a lane-change for the thread.

Infants should not be murdered. A fetus is a fetus until birth/delivery. The term murder doesn't apply to abortion although it does apply to what this non-doctor did. Feel free to say 'kill' if you like, but murder's one of those words that means what it means, not what you want it to mean.
This is pretty much the only reason why someone would go to this sort of doctor, because for whatever reason - late term, abuse, money, immigration status, outright fear or shame - they could not go to a licensed provider.

If you abort, you abort. Late term abortions are not something that people generally do for shits and giggles in the first place, so I'm really not getting where your rage was coming from. Think about what it would take for YOU to be in a place where you would go see a doc like this one. Why would you assume these women are any different.

As others have said, this isn't something people do because they're HAPPY about it. This is a desperation measure.
You are awesome.
Nice, keep your opinions out of my uterus and we're all good. But god there is so much wrong with what you said here that I can't even begin. If this were any other medical procedure no one would think of blaming the victims, but here noooooo those damn sluts should have kept their legs closed, right?

Why the hell would you think that this is something people do just because they think it's fun? If abortion was safe, legal, covered by national health insurance and didn't involve people being harassed by protesters, do you think anyone would EVER have to go to a doc like this? Hell no.

Most late-term abortions are due to issues like Down's Syndrome or genetic problems that would result in the infant's death shortly after birth. They are not because suzy couldn't "choose" not to have sex. But even if they are, I'd rather women have access to the care than do this, because this is the result when abortion is illegal or when access is restricted.

AF, I totally agree with you.

Yep.

There aren't the proper words for this. I know so many couples who would love to have a baby of any ethnic background, and end up going to another country to get them - and these people were allowing a baby to be born just so they could kill the poor thing? At what point does a person lose enough of his or her conscience to stab a baby to death? Then keep jars of the babies' feet or other parts? If this isn't considered Hitleresque, I don't know what would be.

My mother told me a lot of stories of many women she knew who had illegal abortions, and the most horrifying one doesn't hold a candle to this band of morally starved individuals. I don't care how anyone feels about abortion, this was flat out murder, multiplied several times over. The death penalty and lethal injection would be much too civilized for these poor excuses for human beings.

The question is where do you draw the line? When is it a termination of pregnancy and when is it murder?

At one end, the Catholic Church draws the line at conception - ANY abortion is murder, and even most forms of birth control are considered sinful. Others draw the line at viability - abortion in the first two trimesters is ok, but abortion in the third trimester (when the fetus is potentially viable) is not.

My opinion? I'm pro-choice. What any woman does with her own body is her own choice. But if you're six months along and you haven't figured out whether to give birth or not, just have the kid, and keep it or give it up for adoption - as an abortion at that stage would cause about as much physical trauma as giving birth. That is what I would do.

I know two couples who had a child at 5 months. Both are alive and doing well, but a third couple's child has some challenges. Just sayin'.

While I would be considered pro-life, I think the point that you'd have to kill a child (as opposed to giving normal suctioning the lungs etc) would be the point of viability. What I see as the norm is that, if a pregnancy's wanted, any and all medical care would be given to the baby. If the pregnancy's unwanted, the baby gets no care at all.

I don't think there's a line you can set where it is murder as long as the child requires the mother to survive, honestly. Particularly when, as I said before, most late term abortions are due to serious genetic or other problems that often would result in an infant who would die fairly quickly. If you ban late term abortions, women who are desperate will go to quacks like this. I think we need to have even late term abortions be legal, yet try to make them rare through education and access to health care. And as long as you have a limit, such as 24 weeks or 22 weeks, then unscrupulous individuals will either delay women from seeking legal, safe abortions prior to the cut-off, or prey on those desperate enough to go to this sort of horror.

And I'm rather thrilled the Catholic Church doesn't make laws, enough said on that.
Super premies surviving is still the exception rather than the rule. 22 weeks is now being considered 'viable' when the fetus isn't even fully formed, the organs aren't all developed. Now you're talking about a LOT of NICU care for essentially orphans. It is easy to say it should be done for any individual infant, but a lot harder to advocate it as a policy. Ideally the child would be born, much later, and be taken care of. But if a mother does not want that, I don't believe you can force her to give birth to a baby that would only live if it were on life support.

I'm confused about what you're saying about killing a child here though, are you talking about a live birth where a child is then killed (which is murder) or something else?

You're mixing two issues here. While I agree with you that this case is horrific, comparing the decision to treat or not treat a severely premature baby with a partial birth abortion is fallacious. Caring parents can reasonably make the decision NOT to resuscitate a severely premature baby. That doesn't mean the pregnancy was "unwanted." Also, women who are choosing to have late term abortions are not having them because they just couldn't be bothered to do it earlier, "so what the hell." I don't think that there are any methods that leave infants to die of exposure.

Anyway, if you need to have a late term abortion, there are more humane ways to do this than what this man was doing. He was basically pithing these babies like you would a rat. I'm disturbed by his thought process. There are legitimate reasons for late term abortions, but luckily they are rare and many women still choose not to have them. But....that is their choice.