Calls on America to Prevent Such Criminal Activities in the Future by Better Regulating Abortion Clinics Under the Same Rules that Govern Other Out-Patient Surgical Facilities

Contact: Samuel B. Casey, 703-624-4092 cell, 202-587-5652 

PHILADELPHIA, May 13, 2013 /Christian Newswire/ -- After deliberating more than ten days, a jury in Philadelphia today convicted Dr. Kermit  Gosnell, 72, one of Philadelphia's oldest and wealthiest abortion doctors, of three counts of first degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter.  The convictions were based upon the horrendous and extensive evidence presented by the prosecution through 54 witnesses to the jury during more than a month-long trial that concluded with Gosnell's defense attorney offering no witnesses or other evidence in his defense, except to argue (contrary to the evidence) that the babies Gosnell killed were already dead when they were born and the prosecution's case was "the most extraordinary hype and exaggeration in the history of the criminal justice system" solely based upon the "political climate of racism and elitism." But even defense counsel made a critical misstep when he argued that the neck snipping was to alleviate any pain that the brain might detect, indicating that there may have been brain function and the sensation of pain in these babies before their spinal cords were cut. Pennsylvania law says brain wave activity after birth is evidence of being "alive."

On the three first degree murder counts for which he faces the death penalty, Gosnell was found to have intentionally killed (or supervised the killing) of three infants who had been born alive after Gosnell (or his unlicensed staff) either botched their chemical abortions using Digoxin (that was supposed to fatally cause the babies to die of heart attacks in the womb), or never even used Digoxin (since no puncture wounds were found in the victims), but in any event finished the job by severing the children's spinal cord with surgical scissors plunged into the backs of their necks. One witness recalled a baby that writhed in pain from the pressure of the surgical scissors around his neck. Gosnell joked, "that's what you call a chicken with its head cut off."

On the third degree murder count, Gosnell was found 'with reckless disregard' to have supervised the drug overdose by his unlicensed employees of a 41-year old immigrant Nepalese woman named Karnamaya Mongar. The evidence showed that when Gosnell heard Mongar's respiration had slowed prior to her late-term abortion procedure, he responded by giving her more drugs. After being told half way through the abortion that Mongar had turned gray, Gosnell continued the abortion for twenty more minutes. A drug that could have counteracted the drug overdose was expired in the cabinet and went unused.  Additional time was lost when the responding EMT's trying to rush Mongar to the hospital were blocked by the locked emergency exit for which Gosnell had lost the key.

Gosnell was also convicted on many of the lesser remaining charges including racketeering, performing illegal abortions after 24 weeks, failing to observe Pennsylvania's 24-hour waiting period before an abortion can be performed and endangering a child's welfare for employing a 15-year old in the procedure area.

Two other unlicensed employees of Gosnell's inaptly named 'Woman's Health Society,' Lynda Williams and Steven Massof, who had already pled guilty to two counts of third-degree murder, murder conspiracy and other charges (to avoid the death penalty) testified that they snipped the spines of more than 100 babies after seeing them breathe, move or show other signs of life. "Severing the spinal cords of moving, breathing babies outside their mothers' wombs was, according to Massof, 'standard procedure,' at Gosnell's clinic. "Gosnell encouraged his staff to kill babies born alive; Lynda Williams, Adrienne Moton and Steven Massof all followed his barbaric example," said the nearly 300-page Grand Jury report, issued January 14, 2011, that formed the basis for Dr. Gosnell's indictment.

Sam Casey, JC-LOLP's Managing Director and General Counsel, said:

"While we were appalled that the mainstream media was rarely present during this trial and gave far too little coverage to a well-developed case which effectively took the covers off what the abortion industry too often gets away with in this country, we are pleased that justice was done today by a jury of Dr. Gosnell's peers here in Philadelphia.  In Pennsylvania, what Dr. Gosnell seemingly dismissed and the responsible regulatory agencies apparently ignored as permissible "after-birth abortions" were today rightly adjudged murders in the first or third degrees because that is precisely what they are."

Last week, JC-LOLP joined with other pro-life leaders in America in signing an "Open Letter to our Fellow Citizens" stating that although only one abortion doctor was being prosecuted for murder in Philadelphia, the practices of the "entire abortion industry" should remain on trial in the 'court of public opinion:' "We remember the wrongful death of Tonya Reaves at the hands of Planned Parenthood last July [in Chicago]. We remember the needless death of Jennifer Morbelli at the hands of Dr. LeRoy Carhart [in Maryland] just a few months ago. We have recorded the deaths of countless other women as well who have lost their lives to the euphemistic 'freedom of choice' [or been otherwise harmed in unsafe unregulated or under-regulated abortion clinics]. In history, there are often significant moments that make the once-hardened hearts of people more malleable.  These changed hearts are then more eager to bring about social reform and work toward justice...The trial of Kermit Gosnell is just such a moment."

On May 3 and 5, FOX News Channel aired a shocking documentary "See No Evil" on Gosnell's abortion practices that the jury never saw. The documentary about Gosnell's 40-year career as the abortion industry's pioneering "doctor" included Gosnell's infamous "Mother's Day Massacre" when he injured nine women by testing an experimental abortion device on them that caused plastic razor blades to lacerate their wombs. Even then, however, Gosnell escaped receiving any disciplinary action, with the state turning a blind eye, as it would for the next four decades as he operated his "House of Horrors."

While it is sad that justice and media attention now comes so late after so many mothers and children have been harmed and killed, it is important that all Americans see, hear and learn the bitter lesson that Gosnell teaches us: pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is not health care.  Whether "legalized" or not, abortion is a dirty business that exists for the compensation of abortionists and the politicians whose war chests they fund, not for the assistance of thousands of women and children they daily victimize, harm and kill.

So now that Gosnell stands convicted and may soon find himself on death row, we are left to ponder, why late-term abortion, a practice permitted by our courts so long as the baby is in utero, be forbidden by our laws and consciences when the baby has just been removed from the mother by her abortionist moments before? Is it because ordinary citizens serving on the trial jury in Philadelphia believe that the expansive power to destroy human life established by five members of our United States Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe and Doe decisions, and affirmed in its 1993 Casey decision, is deeply immoral and ought in no way to be extended under our Constitution to permit infanticide.  If Gosnell asks the Court to reverse his convictions on constitutional grounds, they ought to tell him there is no way our Constitution protects infanticide. If we insist Kermit Gosnell should die, then perhaps, as many suggest, we must reexamine the "assumicide" in Roe and Doe that erroneously assumed without any proof that we don't know when life begins and that the legalization of abortion would make abortion safe because we could trust the doctor-patient relationship. The evidence in Gosnell's trial puts the lie to these judicial "assumptions."

For those who think that Gosnell is the sole perpetrator of such unlawful "after-birth abortions," JC-LOLP commends the investigatory work of Live Action and Operation Rescue whose web sites provide ample evidence that the abortion industry, despite its protestations to the contrary, widely practices what Gosnell preached to his employees and was finally caught red-handed doing. In fact, the Gosnell Grand Jury Report reveals that other abortion providers regularly referred its second and third trimester abortion clients to Gosnell (which is how Mrs. Mongar arrived only to be killed by the drug overdose administered to her by Gosnell's unqualified staff).  Indeed the Gosnell Grand Jury Report (at page 8) also reveals that the abortion industry's trade standards association, the National Abortion Federation, inspected Gosnell's facility, refused to certify it but also failed to report the numerous violations and sub-standard practices they observed. As to why this happened, the Grand Jury Report (at page 13) concluded: "Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that. But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."

At JC-LOLP, we are working to ferret out the 'Gosnells' of this world, as we seek to prevent and mitigate these heinous crimes and close or correct the sub-standard abortion facilities and medical practices that propagate such crimes.  The Gosnell Grand Jury (at page 16) recommended that "the Pennsylvania Department of Health plug the hole it has created for abortion clinics. They should be explicitly regulated as ambulatory surgical facilities, so that they are inspected annually and held to the same standards as all other outpatient procedure centers. Inspectors should review patient files, including ultrasound images, on site. Equipment, and employees' licenses, should be scrutinized. Second-trimester abortions should be performed or supervised by physicians board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology."

That is why JC-LOLP worked with many other community groups for over the past two years submitting agency comments in support of the Virginia law and regulations that now require Virginia's abortion clinics, as even reported in the New York Times, to abide by the same rules and regulations that apply to all Virginia outpatient surgical facilities. While predictably the liberal media like the Washington Post's editorial board waxes uncharacteristically 'libertarian' in their objections to such reasonable regulations, we are pleased that already one sub-standard Virginia abortion clinic, Hillcrest in Virginia Beach, that claims to do up to 7% of Virginia's abortions (about 1600 per year) is shutting down rather than comply with the same regulations Virginia applies to all other out-patient surgical clinics. We should also never forget that had such regulations been effectively enforced in Pennsylvania, Gosnell would also have been shut down and Karnamaya Mongar, and countless number of infants, would not have been murdered. 

Casey said:

"Since abortion operates under the guise of health care in this country, the abortion industry must be properly regulated for the safety of all pregnant mothers who are deciding whether to terminate their pregnancy or not.  For example, Virginia's permanent abortion facilities regulations will now prevent abortion facilities from subjecting women to unlicensed drug prescriptions, facilities where medics can't even get a patient safely out of the facility, and patient unsanitary conditions, including physicians performing abortions with unwashed hands or blood splattered on examination tables and medical trays, all of which actually occurred in the Gosnell case."

About the Jubilee Campaign's Law of Life Project
The Law of Life Project is a public interest legal organization dedicated to legally defending the right to life and dignity of the human being from biological conception until natural death in all matters worldwide where such a defense is required.  Jubilee Campaign is an international charitable organization that seeks to be a "voice for the voiceless" promoting the human rights of all, particularly women and children in countries which imprison, terrorize or otherwise oppress them.   www.lawoflifeproject.org