The murder of an unborn child is inherently wrong. It is no more just to kill an unborn child for convenience than it is to kill a toddler or any child at any stage of development to avoid hardship. A society that condones the murder of one of its most innocent, vulnerable members, is incapable of cherishing and nurturing human life or valuing childhood and motherhood.
Last Monday, testimony resumed in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial with a state inspector testifying about what she found inside Gosnell’s “Baby Slaughter House of Horrors” abortion clinic in West Philadelphia where he conducted his late-term abortion business for decades without inspection or accountability.
For those not familiar with Dr. Kermit Gosnell, he is charged in the drug overdose death of a 41-year-old patient, and the deaths of seven babies allegedly born alive at his West Philadelphia clinic. For over 30 years, Dr. Kermit Gosnell ran the Women’s Medical Society in Philadelphia, a women’s health clinic where abortions were performed.
In Dr. Gosnell’s clinic, the walls, the furniture, the chairs, the hospital beds, were bloodstained. The surgical tools used to operate on women often went uncleaned between patients. Fetal parts were kept in the freezer and in jars that lined the hallways. Medical equipment — tools used for saving lives — were broken and corroded. The office was a dangerous maze of narrow hallways, which made moving women from floor to floor or room to room difficult.
According to the Grand Jury investigation, the conditions inside were described by the agents as: “filthy,” “deplorable,” “disgusting,” “very unsanitary, very outdated,” and “horrendous.” “There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets.” Scattered throughout the clinic, in cabinets, in the basement, in a freezer, in jars, and in bags and plastic jugs were fetal remains. You can read the Grand Jury report at this link, if you have the stomach.
When Dr. Gosnell wasn’t killing babies or patients, the Grand Jury report alleged, he was infecting women by not using sterilized tools. He spread venereal disease from patient to patient — oftentimes young women from poor backgrounds and immigrant communities. During his surgical procedures, he would often puncture and perforate women’s wombs and they would later need hysterectomies or further surgery, leaving some unable to have more children. Sometimes, according to the report, he’d leave behind fragments of the fetuses, causing his patients to get infections and nearly die. When they would get so sick that they would need to go to an emergency room, Gosnell and his staff would refuse to let them go. It didn’t matter: the hallways were too narrow to transport patients on a gurney. And the emergency exit was padlocked; the key was hard to find, and the lock harder to open.
Elinor Barsony, a Pennsylvania Department of Health employee testified that she saw women who had been drugged into stupors and left unmonitored for hours. The so-called “doctors” who worked for Gosnell doing abortions through every stage of pregnancy had no medical licenses. One of the ladies who worked in the place of an anesthesia dropped out of school in the sixth grade. Another was a 15-year old high school student, Tina Baldwin, the daughter of another of Gosnell’s employees, who drugged women with a one-size-fits-all cocktail of cheap drugs without regard to the woman’s height, weight, or medical history, and in helping with procedures, would allegedly deliver babies, born fully alive, and then sever their spinal cords. There were no nurses on staff, as required by law.
Some of the medications that were supposed to be administered to patients after anesthesia had expired in 2007. She found “filthy, corroded” tubing attached to what appear to describe as the abortion machines. Gosnell offered pain relief based on a woman’s ability to pay. Those who could afford it were dangerously drugged into oblivion while those who had less money were forced to endure hat can only be described as torture as they submitted to surgical abortions without adequate pain medication.
Former Gosnell employee Steven Massof, gave shocking testimony concerning the inner workings of Gosnell’s shoddy abortion business. He testified that he after he began doing abortions, he saw over 100 babies born alive who had their necks snipped in which was “literally a beheading – separating the brain from the body. He also testified that Elizabeth Hampton, another clinic employee was the women who would help “hold down the women” who were uncooperative during abortion procedures.
Tina Baldwin, the 15 year old high school student testified that women were often in excruciating pain for hours at a time because Gosnell was usually not on the premises. This meant they were immediately drugged — often to the point of overdosing. Restoril, a sleep disorder treatment with muscle relaxant properties, was the drug of choice — often given in addition to the sedation packages. Most of the time, eight or ten women were kept in a single room, moaning and groaning in pain. Gosnell’s instructions were to drug them up as much as possible to “quiet them.” We would take the loudest, “Put her in a room, let’s give her more medication, quiet her up. She’s upsetting everybody else. So usually she would get done first.” Baldwin also testified that Gosnell would slap women to get them to shut up; and if that didn’t work, he would completely sedate them because he was afraid that any screaming would be cause for attention from police.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
