One of the last people seated in the witness box at Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial was a character witness for a co-defendant, and had nothing to do with Gosnell’s abortion clinic.
But the woman happened to be six months pregnant, and nearly waddled to the stand. If the jury had any doubts about the second- or third-trimester abortions Gosnell performed at his west Philadelphia clinic, she offered a stark visual.
So, too, did the cellphone photographs staff took of a nearly 30-week baby so large that Gosnell callously joked it could “walk to the bus.”
That boy, Baby A, is the first of three babies Gosnell stands convicted of killing. The 72-year-old Gosnell waived any appeals to avoid the death penalty, and will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The high-profile murder trial of a high-volume abortion provider reignited one of the nation’s most intractable debates.
People on all sides of the abortion debate — from proponents to clergy and lawmakers — were quick to attack Gosnell, whose methods were unorthodox even when they weren’t criminal.
“Gosnell’s conviction is proof that he ignored not only state and federal laws, but standards that are set by the medical profession on best practices in reproductive health care, including safe abortion care,” said Dr. Nancy Stanwood, the chair-elect for the New York City-based Physicians for Reproductive Health.
“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,” said U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, who co-chairs the House Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.
Opponents of abortion were joined by proponents in calling Gosnell’s conviction appropriate, but they remained divided over what it may portend.
“Justice was served to Kermit Gosnell and he will pay the price for the atrocities he committed,” NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse G. Hogue said last week. “We hope that the lessons of the trial do not fade with the verdict. 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.”
The Gosnell case could serve as a fulcrum for more dialogue about abortion, said O. Carter Snead, a University of Notre Dame bioethicist and law professor.
“I would hope that people on both sides of the abortion debate, after this Gosnell atrocity … would sit down and say we have to find a way to talk about this,” Snead said.
Gosnell’s clinic went more than 15 years without a state inspection, a span that saw the practice become reckless and the doctor rich.
According to staff members, Gosnell had once performed mostly first-trimester abortions, but that proportion changed as first-trimester patients found other options than his chaotic, dirty clinic, and second-trimester patients increasingly had fewer options.
Gosnell came to rely on untrained staff, unsterile equipment and unorthodox abortion methods that included women delivering babies that were then “snipped” with scissors after they were born alive, the jury found.
Gosnell was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 drug overdose of a patient, a 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan.
“The fact that we’ve got such a paralyzed political system when it comes to this question leads to attorneys general, governors and others not doing anything in the face of obvious harm to the public,” Snead said. “This is a grotesque wakeup call for us to sit down and have a hard conversation about a very difficult question.”
Relatively few women seek second-term abortions, and only a fraction of them wait until after 20 weeks. Abortions at 21 weeks or more make up only 1.5 percent of the total performed in the U.S. each year, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
That group might include teens in denial, the poor trying to raise money for the fee, or women trying to get several days off of work or family responsibilities in states with waiting periods.
Stanwood said that what she described as “arbitrary” restrictions on abortions in some states could drive some women to use clinics such as Gosnell’s.
“He was preying on women who were on the social margins, who didn’t have ready access to health care,” she said.
The Buhtanese refugee who died at Gosnell’s clinic, Karnamaya Mongar, had sought an abortion closer to her Virginia home when she was 15 weeks pregnant, and went to three clinics before she found Gosnell a month later.
Her case exemplifies one of the many reasons women delay getting an abortion, especially as states adopt more and more restrictions, Nash said.
“It’s so heartbreaking,” said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute. “If we were able to provide health care to these women, who are so in a sense displaced because they don’t have a connection to the health care system, either because of financial reasons, or fear, or lack of knowledge … we could really make a huge dent in the unintended pregnancy rate.”
About the Author
